Threat that shut down Newman University found to be just a rumor

Newman University canceled classes Friday after a student was falsely accused of making a threat of violence on Twitter. And the student who was accused may not even know about it, the school’s director of campus security said.

“This poor guy is a victim of rumors,” said Mo Floyd, head of campus security at Newman.

The student never made a threat, Floyd said. But a Twitter thread that started Thursday implied the student made a serious threat of violence on campus, which ended up being “a rumor that snowballed out of control,” he said.

Around 1 a.m. on Friday, campus security caught wind of the social media rumors about a threat of violence that would happen on campus Friday. After interviewing students and “other persons with knowledge of the alleged perceived threat,” the university decided the threat was “not credible,” Newman provost Kimberly McDowall Long said in an email Friday morning.

But since the rumored threat was so serious in nature, and needed more time to be investigated, university officials canceled classes at 6 a.m. “as a precaution” while the alleged threat was investigated, Floyd said.

By 10 a.m., the alleged threats had been debunked, but the university classes remained canceled for the day.

“We didn’t know when we would be able to confirm or unsubstantiate that threat,” Floyd said.

“What raised this was the time of day that this came in, the type of threat that it was and our ability to determine whether it was credible or not. That timeline didn’t allow us, as far as a precautionary thing, to go ahead and have classes. We didn’t have the manpower out here to deal with that. Because these students are our top priority, we went ahead and decided to close it,” Floyd said.

Floyd would not say what the specific threat was or identify the falsely accused student. He said the alleged threat was “collective, towards individuals.”

Although the statement from the provost said students were contacted about the rumors, Floyd said the student who was falsely accused was not contacted by officials during the investigation and probably does not know about the rumors.

Floyd said the decision whether to tell the student he was falsely accused will be up to other university administrators.

Although Friday classes were canceled, other university activities will continue as scheduled, including the theater production of “Mamma Mia” at 8 p.m. at the De Mattias Fine Arts Center, director of public relations Clark Shafer said.

Floyd said he met with students who live in the dorms at Newman on Friday morning to tell them what happened, to prevent further rumors. He said he will meet with off-campus students during two meetings he plans to schedule on Monday.

“The main thing is the students said something and we listened,” Floyd said. “And we took action based on what they told us. So we didn’t shelf it for another day. We didn’t say ‘Oh, that’s not really what we think is going to happen.’ We listened to those students and we acted in their best interest, I believe.”