There was some hope that with the resignation of University of Missouri's president, chancellor and then, overnight, the infamous media professor Melissa Click [5], that the campus drama would be on its way to die down. Instead, it appears it is just getting started.
According to Reuters [6], a suspect was in custody this morning for making online threats to shoot black students at the University of Missouri following the racial protests that prompted the school's president and chancellor to step down this week, campus police said. The announcement followed a post on the social media app Yik Yak on Tuesday, tagged for the college town Columbia.
The posting read: "I'm going to stand my ground tomorrow and shoot every black person I see."
Another more direct threat . via Black and white students are scared #Mizzou [7] pic.twitter.com/MS8DcPWIAr [8]
— Bradley J. Rayford (@BradleyRayford) November 11, 2015 [9]
Promptly thereafter, in a campus-wide alert early on Wednesday, police said they had apprehended the suspect who posted threats on Yik Yak and other social media.
They said the suspect "was not located on or near the MU campus at the time of the threat.”
As Reuters adds, the threats prompted stepped-up security on the University of Missouri campus, but classes were operating on a regular schedule, authorities said.
Meanwhile, the Missou wave is spreading and across U.S. campuses, peaceful marches or walkouts have been held, or are planned, over what some demonstrators say is soft handling of reports of racial abuse on campus, including Yale University, Ithaca College and Smith College.
A walkout is also planned at Ithaca College, a private school in upstate New York.
A student group called People of Color at Ithaca College announced on its Facebook page it was planning an on-campus 'Solidarity Walk Out' at 1:30 p.m. (1830 GMT) on Wednesday and demanded the resignation of Ithaca president Tom Rochon.
Students at Smith College, a women's private school in Massachusetts, plan a similar walkout for midday on Wednesday.
It is no better at Missouri where a group of University of Missouri professors walked out of classes on Tuesday even after the resignation of Wolfe. "I support the students who are still camping out and fighting for racial justice on campus," Elisa Glick, an associate professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies, told Reuters in an email.
Whether the suspect truly intended to kill, or if this was merely an attempt to stoke even further racial hatred remains to be seen, however racial tensions are quickly spiking on the one place that until recently seemed rather immune: America's college campuses.
Finally, if this is just a premeditated attempt to stoke racial war across all segments of US society in continuation of what has been observed in recent history, we expect this escalation to get far worse in the coming days and weeks, perhaps leading to very tragic consequences.
