Leader of black protest group admits tweeting fake threats to black students

Leader of black protest group admits tweeting fake threats to black students

If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad…

For social justice warriors, “progress” (if that is the correct word) sometimes can’t come fast enough. The flesh is willing, but the narrative is weak. So you help it along a little by staging a make-believe hate crime against the group or demographic you advocate for.

For 25-year-old Kayla McKelvey, an activist and alumna of Kean University, in Union, N.J., the hoax didn’t end well. According to the Associated Press via Yahoo News, McKelvey “pleaded guilty Monday to creating a false public alarm by tweeting anonymous threats against fellow black college students last fall.”

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State prosecutors will recommend that … McKelvey be sentenced to 90 days in jail and that she pay restitution of about $82,000 to cover the costs of the police response and heightened security at Kean … after the threats.

According to prosecutors, … McKelvey tweeted threats from a campus library because she wanted more people to attend the November 17, 2015, rally on racial issues. She then returned to the rally to tell people about the threats.

The tweets that McKelvey sent via the Twitter handle “keanuagainstblk” included a bomb threat and a threat to “kill all the blacks tonight, tomorrow and any other day if they go to Kean University.” (The Twitter account has since been suspended.)

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The school responded by stepping up campus security. In addition, law enforcement agencies were alerted, including the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. If the Obama administration chose to make an example of McKelvey (fat chance!), the Justice Department could opt to try her in federal court on terrorism charges.

While McKelvey deserves full responsibility for the hoax, community leaders were only too happy to take the bait, calling for Kean President Dawood Farahi to resign, saying the threats showed that he hadn’t done enough to address racial tension on campus. A Google search for the keyword “racism on Kean University campus” returns links that relate solely to this story and to no past incidents.

McKelvey’s sentencing is scheduled for June 17.

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles

Ben Bowles is a freelance writer and regular contributor to "Liberty Unyielding."

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