Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio has warned students to be on high alert after someone threatened to shoot Haitians on campus, according to officials. All events and activities scheduled for Sunday have been canceled.
An alert sent to students on Saturday night said the college was taking “extreme precautions” after an email threatened a shooting on campus on Sunday, targeting Haitian members of the community.
“All students, faculty and staff should exercise extreme precaution and be alert to all your surroundings,” the university said in the alert. “If you see anything suspicious or have information about the threat, contact Wittenberg Police Division immediately at the emergency line.”
The alert added: “The Springfield Police Division will increase patrols on-campus tomorrow. If you are on or near campus, prepare for additional instructions or a lockdown if we learn more from the ongoing investigation. All activities are canceled on Sunday, Sept. 15.”
It is really disheartening that some people are eager to believe egregious lies, and wishing that such lies were true, rather than understanding and having compassion for their fellow humans. The video which I’ve seen being circulated around as “evidence of cat-eating Haitians” involved an individual who was not Haitian and was not even from Springfield.
It’s saddening that so many people devote their short lives on spreading hatred and violence when they could be putting efforts into furthering the human race and helping us to advance as a species.
It’s saddening that so many people devote their short lives on spreading hatred and violence when they could be putting efforts into furthering the human race
I think it’s that these people actually really like inequality.
Furthering the human race involves helping other people, so a lot of effort is diluted into everyone, and ‘me and people like me might not benefit more than others’. Scapegoating an outgroup means reducing the status of others, so that ‘me and people like me will end up being elevated over that group’.
This preference for harming others is then turned into a potent political weapon, because hatred is still a legitimate political position. And, as long as it is so, I expect humans to hate themselves into irrelevance.
If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you. — Lyndon Johnson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)
This is all thanks to Donald J Trump. His platform legitimized these actions of terror.
What the heck America. Let’s be better than this.
Most of us are. All it takes is a handful of shitstains to ruin it for the rest of us. And said shitstains LOVE it.
If it were only a handful of people this wouldn’t be happening. It usually takes an appreciative audience for people to feel emboldened to leap from rhetoric to calling in a threat or actually committing racist violence.
Given trump’s persistent support, it could be that 40% of the country see this and think, like Lucille Bluth, good on her. Or that’s what I worry about anyway.
When people actually start dying, will the Trump campaign continue to fan these flames?
