“Bomb in one hour” the note read.

These four words mobilized Memorial Union employees into immediately securing the men’s restroom on the first floor of the building and contacting the ISU Police.

An ISU dining employee, Daniel Lee Grice, of Ames, reported that he’d found the note in the men’s restroom on the first floor of the Memorial Union on Wednesday.

“When I arrived our staff had secured the area and was contacting DPS,” said Richard Reynolds, director of the Memorial Union.

Gail Ferlazzo, associate director of the Memorial Union, said the building was not evacuated.

“It’s always a judgement call [whether or not to evacuate the building],” Reynolds said. “Given the information we felt that it was quite possibly not a serious threat.”

Reynolds said that the university has a specific policy for responding to bomb threats that were called in.

“There’s actually a form,” he said with a laugh.

But for this type of threat the protocol involves securing the site and calling the DPS, he said.

“Basically we locked the restroom and had people standing in front of it redirecting people to the bathrooms upstairs,” he said. ” We wanted the scene to stay intact.”

“ISU police and building staff searched the area and found no suspicious devices,” said ISU Police Deputy Chief Gene Deisinger.

There were initially two DPS officers who responded to the call, and three more came to help with the search, Reynolds said.

He estimates that the search took about 35 minutes. He said that the five police officers split up into groups of two with the five MU employees that were selected to help in the search.

He said each person who helped the DPS with the search was thoroughly familiar with the building and would have been able to spot anything out of the ordinary.

After the search proved fruitless, Reynolds said police conducted a series of interviews culminating in the arrest of Grice, who is being charged with filing a false report, a class D felony.

Deisinger explained that the charge was a violation of Iowa Code section 712.7, which deals with delivering false information about “incendiary or explosive device or material or other destructive device in any place where persons or property would be endangered.

Grice was arrested at the Memorial Union and take to the Story County Sheriff’s office.