A bomb threat interrupted the opening session of the third National Student Conference Against Racism held at Boston University last night.

The 500 attendants at the conference evacuated the lecture hall for 20 minutes while security guards checked the building for signs of any explosives.

The guards found no signs of a bomb that an anonymous phone caller said was planted in the building, and the meeting resumed after the brief interruption.

"We shouldn't be surprised at what happened tonight," Robert Allen, chairman of the symposium, said last night.

"The speakers here represent struggles for equality on a world-wide scale, and there are people who don't want to admit the truth about their plights," he said.

The speakers at the rally included Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, an Irish revolutionary and Tsietsi Machinini, president of the Student Representative Council in South Africa.

The conference, sponsored by the National Student Coalition Against Racism, will continue through tomorrow and will include panel discussions and workshops.

Opposition to racism in South Africa, segregation in Boston, the death penalty, and other instances of "people taking charge of their own destiny and struggling for all the rights they deserve" will be the focus of the conference, Allen said.