Students who still have finals scheduled in the building will be notified by the Registrar’s office of alternate exam locations, a campus alert stated.

The building was first evacuated Monday morning after reports of an unknown chemical in the building. A university alert sent that day indicated that public safety officials were working to identify the substance.

The East Lansing Fire Department responded to the scene to assist in assessing the situation, according to department officials. Ingham County Hazardous Materials (HAZMAT) officials said they were not involved in the response as of Monday morning.

Students and staff were evacuated from Wells Hall classrooms and all students are urged to avoid the area until further notice.

“This was done out of an overabundance of caution,” MSU Department of Police and Public Safety Deputy Chief Chris Rozman said on Monday. “We do not believe there to be any threat to the community at this point or anything like that. Our goal, our mission is to ensure the safety of the community. And that's what we're doing here today.”

Due to the size of Wells Hall, personnel decided to evacuate the entire building, Rozman said.

When asked if investigators had an idea about what chemicals were in Wells, Rozman said they are in the early stages of identifying the substances. The building would be closed “for most of the day,” he said at the time.

“We know that that's impactful to our students and everybody who's coming to the building that works in the building that may have classes or exams,” Rozman said. “So, we did work hard to get that information out very quickly after we identified that, after we located that chemical point to put a time frame on it.”

Human Biology sophomore Ben Vigier was in his French class taking an exam Monday when the alerts went out. The evacuation left students outside together while the exam was still fresh in their minds, making it difficult to preserve the integrity of the final.

“We think that we should be released from the final because all of us are speaking about what's on the final right now,” Vigier said.

Students left the building without their belongings, and police officers later retrieved personal items and returned them outside.

Computer Science senior Justice Yin said he was also taking a final exam when the building’s fire alarms went off at the same time he received the text message and email from MSU.

“At the start of the exam, we received a strange email from the university,” Yin said. “We weren't really sure if it was like a fire drill or something. They were just like, keep caution, but then the alarms went out, so we quickly evacuated.”