COLUMBIA, MO– Authorities in Missouri have apprehended a second person suspected of making threats on social media.
The Northwest Missouri State University student was taken into custody around midday Wednesday at his residence hall, campus police said.
“University Police had received a report that the suspect made threats on Yik Yak, a social media application, to harm others,” a university statement said.
The developments came in the wake of protests at the University of Missouri that brought down two school officials.
Reports of racially charged threats have permeated social media. There was also a rumor the Ku Klux Klan had arrived on the Columbia campus, which turned out to be baseless.
Yik Yak is a social media app that allows users to share anonymous messages, or Yaks, with others in a 5-mile radius.
No. 1
The first arrest was logged by campus police at the University of Missouri in Columbia, some 200 miles from Northwest Missouri State in Maryville. They said Hunter M. Park, 19, was arrested early Wednesday for also posting threats on Yik Yak and other social media.
Park, who is from Lake St. Louis and is not a Mizzou student, was transferred to the campus police department, charged with making a terrorist threat and transferred to Boone County Jail where he was held on a $4,500 bond, police said. He was “contacted” by police 90 miles away in Rolla.
It was unclear how police homed in on the suspect. One of the app’s developers, Brooks Buffington, told CNNMoney earlier this year that while federal law prohibited the sharing of personal information, “in cases of imminent threat or harm or something like that, we work with law enforcement to do what we can.”
Even before the arrest was announced, campus police had said there was no imminent danger.
“Students need to be aware of what is going on, but right now there is no active threat on campus,” police spokesman Maj. Brian Weimer said.
“The campus is not on lockdown. There is heightened awareness due to the national attention we are getting, but again the reports you are seeing on social media are largely inaccurate.”
University officials toppled
African-American students at Missouri have long complained of an inadequate response by university leaders in dealing with racism on the overwhelmingly white Columbia campus.
Protesters clamored for change and for University System President Tim Wolfe to step down.
The protests got two major jolts when student leader Jonathan Butler launched a hunger strike and the Missouri Tigers football team said it would not play until Wolfe stepped down.
The pressure worked. Wolfe resigned Monday, followed hours later by Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin.
“Our campus has experienced significant turbulence, and many within our community have suffered threats against their lives and humanity. These threats are reprehensible,” the school’s leadership said Wednesday.
“The process of making our campus as inclusive as it must be will not be easy. We have difficult conversations ahead, and we must all dedicate ourselves to learning together,” it read.
Marshall Allen, a member of the protest group Concerned Student 1950, said the change is just starting.
“This is just a beginning in dismantling systems of oppression in higher education, specifically the UM system,” Allen said.
How we got here
Protesters say racism at Mizzou — sometimes blatant, sometimes subtle — has simmered on campus for decades.
In 2010, white students scattered cotton balls outside the Black Culture Center.
In September, Head — the student body president — vented on Facebook about bigotry and anti-homosexual and anti-transgender attitudes after people riding in the back of a pickup truck screamed racial slurs at him.
In October, someone used feces to draw a swastika on the wall of a residence hall.
Even on Tuesday night, some reported incidents of threats or intimidation on campus.
“Im shaking and crying these white guys are in a monster blue pick up truck no license plate circling our car we almost couldnt get out,” one student tweeted.
The University of Missouri’s Columbia campus has a population of 35,000 students. The undergraduate student body is about 79% white, and 8% African-American. The school’s faculty is also more than 70% white, with black representation of just over 3%, according to the university.
