This story doesn’t appear to have been as widely publicized outside Chicago as it has here. Yesterday the University of Chicago shut down in a panic. An online threat had been received to murder white students and police respondents in retaliation for the police execution of Laquan McDonald. Here’s the AP’s description:
“I think the university erred on the side of caution after putting the whole picture together,” said Michael Fagel, who teaches national security and emergency management at several schools, including the Illinois Institute of Technology. “They had to think: If we don’t react appropriately and something happens, there’ll be an outcry.”
Jabari R. Dean, 21, of Chicago, was arrested Monday on a federal charge of transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. According to a criminal complaint, Dean, who is black, posted the threat online Saturday, days after prosecutors charged Van Dyke with first-degree murder and after the city released video of the shooting.
Dean, an electrical engineering student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, wrote that he would “execute approximately … 16 white male students and or staff, which is the same number of time (sic) McDonald was killed” and “will die killing any number of white policemen that I can in the process,” the complaint says.
I don’t think that Mr. Fagel has described the actual reason for the university’s decision: liability. If the university had ignored the threat and the threat had been carried out, I guarantee you that the university would have been faced costly law suits.
What astonishes me about this particular story is the extraordinary level of rationalization that’s going on associated with it. Here’s an example, from the AP story:
The online threat allegedly read: “This is not a joke. I am to do my part and rid the world of white devils.” Phillip Rutherford, Dean’s uncle, told reporters that his nephew was never serious about an attack and had done something “silly” and “stupid” because he’d had too much time on his hands.
“He’s run out of things to do,” Rutherford said.
Go back to the basic facts of the story. Everything beyond that is a rationalization. We can’t avoid them completely—as noted in The Big Chill you can’t go a whole day without a two or three juicy rationalizations. But we should try to keep them down to reasonable levels and there are many, many things that should not simply be excused away.
Should be whole day there at the end instead of while day.
[Not really a spelling Nazi, BTW. I try to just point them out when they either make the intent unclear or, as in this case, are just a bit jarring to read.]
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And I’m sure I’ll see about this the next time the papers need a story about how the real terrorist threat in America is white people. Those awful white people, threatening to deform Jabari R. Dean’s bullets like that with their hideous white bodies … is there anything we white folk won’t stoop to?
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On another matter, we’ve got a group down here I call the Crazy Black Santas. They’re a religious group of some variety composed of black people, and they sometimes show up in force at local intersections dressed in red and white outfits that resemble Santa Claus suits. That explains the “Black” and the “Santas”. The “Crazy” comes from the proselytizing.
The leader of the group will get on a bull horn and exhort the locals on whatever religious point of view they’ve got. I still haven’t figured out who they are (note that my only attempts to do so are by driving by and looking and listening – I haven’t and don’t plan on doing anything further than that), but the other day I got a better listen. They were exhorting the crowds about the white devil and how Jesus and Mohamed commanded them to cleanse the earth of whites and white blood and so on and so forth. So mainstream Democrats, basically.
But I was amused because the guy on the ‘mic’ that day was a fairly light-skinned brother himself. And I don’t mean he had a skin condition either, I mean he had a good deal of white ancestors hisownhonkieself. I’m guessing he probably had no understanding of genetics, and certainly no conception that he had a cracker in the woodpile somewhere.
It’s the little moments like that that make living in the ghetto so much fun!
Thanks. Fixed.
I find it hard to blame the school. The liability issue is a killer. They criticized Missouri for closing when they also got death threats against black students. The losses would be huge for a school if anything happened. On the guy’s uncle not really sure I would call it rationalization (guess you could) but seems like trying to make up even a semi-plausible defense for family.
I actually find the lawsuit thing more interesting and more of a problem. Schools are placed in the position of having to respond to almost any threat, no matter how unlikely they think something is likely to happen. If some punk kid wants to shut down school for a day it is pretty easy to do. Do we need some sort of safe harbor rule so that school’s can respond rationally w/o so much worry of a suit?
Steve
I think there are two interesting legal issues:
Was a crime committed? In both Chicago and Mizzou, students made online threats, but the Supreme Court has ruled that threatening speech is protected by the First Amendment unless it entails imminent lawless action, and not some generalized statement to do something in the future. (Brandenburg v. Ohio) That case involved a KKK cross-burning with armed men shouting about the need for revengence against N*****s and Jews. I would not be surprised if the students are kicked out of school and receive minor, presumably agreed, convictions at most.
Would the schools really have liability if there was a shooting? In the Virginia Tech shooting, a jury found that the school had violated a law that required timely reporting of a crime to students by not e-mailing students once the first shooting had occurred. The Virginia S.Ct. reversed holding there was no duty to warn of potential criminal acts by third parties. However, the school had settled with large payments to most of the students’ families and was assessed a fine by the feds for non-timely disclosure.
I think the liability concern here is primarily from the risk of costly, time-consuming and embarrassing discovery. When the school makes the call, they have to be comfortable that the exit doors have been properly maintained, that no member of the faculty has failed to report suspicious behavior as required by school policy, etc.