Colgate U. Student’s Violent Message to a Gossip Web Site Leads to His Arrest

A joke about shooting fellow students, posted to a gossip Web site, led to the arrest of a Colgate University student this month.

The student, George So, a junior at the university, posted the following verbatim note to a Web site called Juicy Campus:

“I wonder if i could shut down the school … by saying I’m going to shoot as many people as i can in my second class tomorrow. I hope I get more than 50……….. For liability reasons and ip tracking I won’t leave it at that. But seriously, this site is rediculous, if it got big, and someone put the effort into writing a big long serious suicide note informing all readers that he would kill over 100 kids, they could shut down the school. Nice.”

One student at Colgate who saw the message, while researching an article she was writing for the student newspaper, did not find the joke funny at all.

She says she initially did not take the message literally, but after talking with her mother about it, she decided to alert authorities, just in case. “You just can’t joke about this,” says the student, who asked not to be named. “That isn’t even funny for a second.”

The campus police alerted local police, who also didn’t find the post funny. They arrested Mr. So after they traced the Internet address used to post the message, according to an article in the Utica Observer-Dispatch

“In today’s day and age, you need to take every perceived threat seriously,” says Charlie J. Melichar, vice president for public relations and communications for the university. “You can’t assume anything just because it’s written in such a way that it’s not serious.”

Mr. Melichar says that university officials sent an e-mail message to everyone with a campus address alerting them of the possible threat.

“As safety is our primary concern, we will have a significant law enforcement presence on campus tomorrow since all classes and activities will be held as normally scheduled,” the message said. “While some may perceive this to be an overreaction, we must take every precaution when the safety of our campus community has been threatened.”

Officials decided not to activate their emergency text-messaging system in this case, though, said Mr. Melichar.

The gossip Web site, which boasts that all postings are “always anonymous … always juicy,” has sparked controversy on many campuses.

This is at least the second instance of a threatening note on Juicy Campus leading to the arrest of a student. In December, Carlos Huerta, a Loyola Marymount University student, was arrested after posting a note to Juicy Campus reportedly threatening to shoot people on campus and then himself. —Jeffrey R. Young