University in Washington state cancels classes after hate speech
By Eric M. Johnson
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Classes were canceled on Tuesday at a university in Washington state after officials found hate-filled online messages targeting minority students amid heightened racial tensions on U.S. college campuses.
Police have opened an investigation into the messages, which campus officials saw turning up during the last two days on the social-media mobile application Yik Yak, Western Washington University President Bruce Shepard wrote on the school's website. The university itself remained open.
The move comes as college students across the country have launched protests in recent weeks over what they view as racial insensitivity by campus administrators and a lack of minority faculty.
The demonstrations, many linked with the Black Lives Matter civil rights movement, have gained momentum since student rallies led to the ouster of the president of the University of Missouri earlier this month.
While police said they have found no evidence of an imminent public safety threat on Western Washington's campus, Shepard canceled classes on Tuesday as a precaution after disturbing, racially charged Yik Yak content continued to appear in the morning, raising concerns among students, he said.
"We are not talking the merely insulting, rude, offensive commentary that trolls and various other low-lifes seem free to spew, willy-nilly, although there has been plenty of that, too," Shepard wrote. "No, this was hate speech."
Shepard said he did not know if the perpetrators were among the 15,300 students attending the school in Bellingham, 90 miles (154 km) north of Seattle.
The comments surfaced shortly after a campus debate about the school's Euro-centric Viking mascot, which some students have criticized as outdated and racist, university spokesman Paul Cocke said.
The situation emerged as police in Oregon were investigating an unrelated assault on a black student at Lewis & Clark College by three white men on Friday. Online threats have also targeted students in Michigan, Missouri and Washington, D.C.
Adding to racial tensions, more than 30 Facebook pages have sprung up in recent days supposedly affiliated with "white student union" groups at U.S. college campuses, though student leaders have said the postings are likely linked to, and spread by, outside white supremacists.
Those Facebook posts, some with virtually identical text, purport to seek an online forum to celebrate the cultural identity of "European-American students."
The University of Illinois, Pennsylvania State University and other schools have asked Facebook to remove such pages bearing their university names, calling them a violation of campus values and their trademarks.
(Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Scott Malone and Alan Crosby)
