Kerby Anderson

Anna Ayers is an LGBT student at Ohio University who serves in the Student Senate. She reported receiving hateful notes including one that threatened her life. The Student Senate president assumed that at least one of the notes must have been written by someone in the Senate who would know which desk belonged to Ayers. Because of the turmoil, the Student Senate postponed all scheduled events. Instead, the students listened to Ayers speak and express her anger, frustration, and disappointment. She called the person who did that weak, cowardly, and worthless. Also, the university changed the locks on the Student Senate doors and established new office hours. Now before you get too angry about what happened to Ayers, you also need to know that she was arrested for making false claims. The Ohio University Police Department found that she placed the messages in the student Senate office (along with one at her residence) by herself prior to reporting them. Sadly these false threats are becoming all too common on college campuses. Just a few months ago, my commentary was on the rash of fake hate crimes. There are websites dedicated to documentingthese fake crimes. Many of them are perpetrated by black activists in order to convince us that racism is alive and well on campus. Others are done by Muslims, perhaps to gain sympathy for their religion and to promote the idea that Islamophobia can be found in America’s universities. This latest fake story perhaps was done to promote the LGBT agenda or merely to draw attention to her and her sexual orientation. I applaud the school for arresting her and for the university to follow up with a story explaining that these were false claims. We need some deterrent in order to prevent future hoaxes like this.