U.S. & World News

CHICAGO (CBS) ― Police are questioning a person of interest in connection with the campus threats at Saint Xavier University, and classes there are scheduled to resume Wednesday.

CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago's Pamela Jones reports no one has been named yet and no arrests have been made, but police say they expect to close the case soon.

The news appeared on the university's Web site Tuesday afternoon that all three campuses will reopen.

"I'm glad," said senior psychology major Angelo Bonadonna. "I'm just happy to get back to school really."

He's got only a few more weeks of class yet to finish his degree.

"You can't blame the school for closing down, but at the same time it's probably one student who just wanted to have a little fun with everybody," Bonadonna said. "It's really frustrating."

But now, police say they have a good idea of who's responsible for the threatening graffiti at Regina Hall, a co-ed freshman dorm, so school administrators decided to reopen.

University President Judith Dwyer said the school took law enforcement recommendations very seriously and "relied very heavily on them for this reopening."

"There is physical evidence which has been processed by our crime lab and there's been handwriting analysis and things of that nature too," said Chicago Police Department 22nd District Cmdr. Michael Kuemmeth. "We're still trying to tie that evidence to an individual of interest."

Police say the location of the threats narrowed their investigation to focus on people like residents and their guests.

"It's not exactly an open public area; access is somewhat limited," Kuemmeth said.

The now-empty seats in the library will begin to fill again bringing back the sprit of teaching and learning.

Classes for graduate students begin Wednesday night. Undergraduate classes start Thursday morning.

University employees are expected to report to work at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, and students can return to dormitories starting at 5 p.m. Wednesday. But students who do not return before next Monday will not be penalized academically, the university said.

Teachers will adjust for the time students missed, but officials say they won't have to extend the school year.

The campuses in Chicago and Orland Park were evacuated last week after a message in a bathroom reading "Be prepared to die on 4/14" was discovered.

Malcolm X College, was closed after threatening graffiti was found in a dorm in a campus bathroom. The institution was to reopen for evening classes on Tuesday.

Mother McAuley and Brother Rice high schools, Queen of Martyrs School, and Evergreen Park Southwest Elementary School, were also closed on Tuesday because of the threat at St. Xavier. The schools are all near the St. Xavier Chicago campus.

Other schools in the district -- located in the Evergreen Park -- canceled outdoor recess and PE classes Monday.

Oakland University in suburban Detroit was also closed because of threatening graffiti mentioning April 14. The school is reopening Tuesday.

The closures -- just two days before the anniversary of the Virginia Tech killings and exactly two months after the deadly rampage at Northern Illinois University -- illustrate a major challenge facing school administrators, who have to decide just how seriously to take such threats.

St. Xavier and Malcolm X are located about 15 miles apart, and although the wordings in the threats were similar, there was no indication they were related, Chicago Police News Affairs Director Monique Bond said.

The graffiti at St. Xavier -- the second of two threats found since April 5 -- was widely publicized over the weekend, and also mentioned in updates the college posted on its Web site.

While St. Xavier administrators decided Friday to close its campuses until further notice, classes at Malcolm X resumed late Monday afternoon. Bond said bomb-sniffing dogs from the Chicago Police Department swept through Malcolm X, but campus police made the final decision about when to reopen.

Evergreen Park school district superintendent Craig Fiegel said Fiegel called violent graffiti "the new bomb threat," recalling a period in the 1960s when bomb threats were regularly used to close down institutions. He said he worries that the closures could encourage other people who get a kick out of causing chaos.

"At what point is it serious and at what point do you have to go on with it?" Fiegel said.

At Malcolm X on Monday afternoon, student Edelena Lee had not heard of the threat or that the school had been locked down.

Despite disappointment that she may have wasted a trip to campus, she had no problem with the decision to close the school, particularly so soon after a gunman opened fire and killed five students and himself at NIU, about 65 miles west of Chicago.

"I think people have issues nowadays," said Lee, 30. "You can never be too cautious."

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)