“I don’t feel too safe walking by the woods,” said Allen Edwards, a 19-year-old Black student from Canton. “There’s woods everywhere. And somebody could be out in them, and I don’t know.”
In the town of Nelsonville, Ohio within the confines of Hocking College, Black students have been on high alert since warnings of death threats began to appear stating that those particular students would be killed.
Investigations went underway after the FBI began investigating a threat that was etched across a bathroom wall last week saying that Black students would be killed on February 2.
Last Friday is when the first threat was discovered and the school has bulked up security with more surveillance cameras along with patrol guards. There has also been a reward offered in the amount of $5,000.
The warning was confirmed Tuesday by the school who went on to state that one note read “kill the n—–.”
Since then, students have been taking the warning very seriously and are taking the necessary precautions to ensure that they are not placing their lives in imminent danger. At least two Black students have withdrawn from the community college fearing for their safety with another dozen relocating from the dormitories. There has been temporary housing offered to students who are afraid to stay on campus.
As most would assume, the threat has only served as a platform to create or build upon racial tensions within the school’s community.
Hocking College has had a history of racially motivated actions as students have admitted to seeing racial comments. Coincidentally, it was in the same bathroom. Some students have also been victim to verbal comments from fellow students.
“We’d be sitting at a lunch table and some guys would be sitting across the room, and they’d be screamin, like ‘n—- lover’ across the table,” said Amelinda Marengo, a student who is half Puerto Rican. “I had enough of it one day and I got up and I just started yelling at them and telling them, like, ‘Threre is no reason for you to treat someone like that.”
Let’s hope some actions are taken and these threats aren’t looked at lightly. Nobody ever wants to have to hear about something similar to Columbine or Virginia Tech.
