Bowdoin College postponed a vigil for Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist and influencer killed at a Utah campus last week, due to a report of an “external threat” linked to the event.

In an email sent to Bowdoin students and employees just before the vigil was set to take place Sunday night, associate vice president for safety and security Bill Harwood said the Bowdoin College Conservatives event would be canceled “out of an abundance of caution.”

“In the past 15 minutes, we were informed by the Maine State Police of external threats connected to the event,” Harwood said in the email sent at 7 p.m. Sunday. “While details remain limited, the information we received is credible enough to require us to take immediate precautionary steps.”

The state police information analysis center received an anonymous report about a potential threat related to the vigil planned for Sunday night, Maine Department of Public safety spokesperson Shannon Moss confirmed Monday morning. The agency was unable to verify the threat but contacted Bowdoin, which canceled the event, Moss said.

The school’s safety and security office also asked community members to avoid the museum steps, where the vigil was set to take place, and to allow “campus safety and local law enforcement the space they need to continue their work.”

Bowdoin President Safa Zaki sent an email to students and employees around 9 p.m. Sunday detailing the decision to “postpone a student-organized vigil.”

“We did this on the basis of information that we received from the Maine State Police about threats suggesting individuals not affiliated with Bowdoin planned to come to campus to disrupt the event and cause harm,” Zaki wrote. “The bar for the college to postpone a student event is extraordinarily high and the circumstances in this case met that bar.”

Zaki added that local police came to campus and determined that there was no continuing threat.

“The college remains in close contact with state and local agencies, and we will issue further alerts if needed,” she wrote, calling the security concerns “deeply unsettling.”

Bowdoin Director of Communications Doug Cook said in an email to The Times Record Monday afternoon that “the safety and security of our students, faculty, staff, and visitors will always be the college’s top priority.”

“We are grateful for the partnership of our law enforcement agencies,” he added.

Zak Asplin, president of the Bowdoin College Conservatives, the group that organized the event, said he was not informed of the external threat before the school decided to cancel the event.

“We’ve heard nothing, the school didn’t check up on us, they just informed us that they were going to cancel the event,” Asplin said, adding that club members were shaken by the report of a threat.

He said Bowdoin Conservatives had forwarded messages from other students related to the event to the college’s safety and security office, though he believes those were not particularly threatening.

Asplin believes the college was looking to shut down the event because “Bowdoin almost never cancels student events.”

“Other schools have hosted perfectly peaceful vigils,” said Asplin, who is also the chair of the statewide Maine College Republicans.

He is also concerned that people will be scared to attend an upcoming event organized by the Bowdoin Conservatives marking the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel. The group has been in contact with campus safety and local police ahead of the Sept. 18 performance, Asplin said last week.

Vigils for Kirk have been held around the county following his death, including a Portland gathering that drew more than 100 supporters to Monument Square Friday evening.

The right-wing activist and ally of President Donald Trump was killed by a single shot in what police said was a targeted attack and Utah’s governor called a political assassination. Kirk co-founded the nonprofit political organization Turning Point USA, based in Arizona. Tyler Robinson, 22, was arrested Friday and accused of the fatal shooting.

Kirk’s killing comes as politicians in both parties wrestle with acute security concerns. In one recent act of political violence, Minnesota lawmakers were targeted by a gunman in a series of shootings that took the lives of the state’s top democrat and her husband in June.

And on Thursday, Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau was the subject of a bomb threat at his house in Biddeford.

Following Kirk’s death, some public officials — like Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. — have postponed public appearances due to security concerns, the AP reported.

Correction: An earlier version of this story stated that Bowdoin had cancelled the vigil, rather than postponing it.