Austin, Texas ? Campus threats forced lock-downs and evacuations at universities and grade schools in eight states on Tuesday, a day after a Virginia Tech student’s shooting rampage killed 33 people.

One threat in Louisiana directly mentioned the massacre in Virginia, while others were reports of suspicious activity in Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Michigan.

In Louisiana, parents picked up hundreds of students from Bogalusa’s high school and middle school amid reports that a man had been arrested Tuesday morning for threatening a mass killing in a note that alluded to the murders at Virginia Tech.

Schools Superintendent Jerry Payne said both schools were locked down and police arrested a 53-year-old man who allegedly made the threat in a note he gave to a student headed to the private Bowling Green School in Franklinton. Both towns are in southeastern Louisiana.

“The note referred to what happened at Virginia Tech,” Payne said. “It said something like, ‘If you think that was bad, then you haven’t seen anything yet.'”

In Austin, authorities evacuated buildings at St. Edward’s University after a threatening note was found, a school official said. Police secured the campus perimeter and were searching the buildings, St. Edward’s University spokeswoman Mischelle Amador said. She declined to say where the note was found and said its contents were “nonspecific.”

Amador said the university’s reaction was not influenced by Monday’s attack at Virginia Tech. “No matter what day or when this would have happened, we will always take the necessary precautions to protect our students, our faculty, our staff, the entire university community,” she said.

In Bloomfield Hills, Mich., police attributed a 30-minute lock-down at the exclusive Cranbrook Schools complex in response to jittery nerves following the Virginia slayings.

School officials called police after parents and students reported spotting a 6-foot-tall man in a skirt, high heels, lipstick and a blond wig near a school drop-off area outside Cranbrook’s Kingswood Upper School, Lt. Paul Myszenski said. Police were unable to find anyone meeting that description.

A scare at the University of Oklahoma at Norman started with a report of a man spotted on campus carrying a suspicious object, officials said.

The man was carrying an umbrella, not a weapon, and he later identified himself to authorities, University of Oklahoma President David Boren said. Boren initially had said the person was believed to be carrying a yoga mat.

“We now consider the matter closed,” Boren said. “We always want to err on the side of caution in a situation like this.”