SEATTLE (AP) — Bail has been set at $10,000 for the Western Washington University student arrested on campus and accused of making racial threats against black students and others on social media.
Nineteen-year-old Tysen Campbell has not been charged but the Whatcom County prosecutor’s office has scheduled an arraignment for Dec. 11.
University officials say the sophomore who was a pole vaulter on the WWU track team has been suspended and banned from campus pending the outcome of legal proceedings and the university’s student conduct process.
Administrators canceled classes last Tuesday, the day before the scheduled Thanksgiving break, after learning about racist remarks on social media that included threats of violence against the student body president, who is black.
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Ah, the joys of having grown up during a time when the wildly stupid things any of us said or did were ephemeral. Gone and forgotten in short order, as they should have been.
I have no idea how serious Campbell’s threats were, so it’s tough to say whether the reaction of law enforcement is warranted or not. At a minimum, I hope they searched his place for guns. Let’s face it - a loudmouth without an AR-15 is just a loudmouth. A loudmouth with an AR-15 is a serious threat to the community.
I do have some sympathy, however. I gather he was responding to student complaints that the college’s mascot, a Viking, was racist. Oy. That might push me over the edge, too.
Freedom of speech in the U.S. is dead. Millennials and Twitter killed it. There was a time when we did our best to distinguish between a loudmouth to be ignored and a credible threat to be addressed, or even between ill-considered phrasing and actual intent. Now we just panic over everything, absolutely everything.