A court hearing has been set for a lawsuit filed last September against Michigan Technological University and 11 key administrators. In a recent case brief, Tech claims that Matthew Schultz, who is suing on the grounds of wrongful expulsion, has engaged in “wild and unsubstantiated conspiracy theories” by accusing campus police and a number of college administrators of taking advantage of a public relations opportunity to “curry favor with the African-American community.”
Schultz was expelled in January 2016 after he made an anonymous Yik Yak post that read: “Gonna shoot all black people… A smile tomorrow,” followed by a “cheesy” emoji. Schultz says that his post was meant to be a peaceful and humorous message that would point out the ridiculous nature of the racial threats that hate groups were posting on Yik Yak at the University of Missouri. The post was flagged and removed by another user approximately five minutes after it was first published.
Michigan Tech, however, motioned to dismiss Schultz’s charges on the grounds that his post could have reasonably been interpreted as a threat. According to their motion to dismiss, the authorities who received the post viewed Schultz’s message as two distinct statements. Perhaps the anonymous poster would have smiled after shooting black people on campus, Tech argues. Additionally, their defense says that “the post created such alarm largely because it used the word ‘shoot’ while referring to African-Americans.”
Another factor that likely contributed to Schultz’s message being interpreted as two separate statements was the fact that an altered version of Schultz’s post had been sent to Tech police that read: “Gonna shoot all black people…” The phrase “A smile tomorrow” and the “cheesy” emoji were absent. On Jan. 23, nearly a month after Schultz’s expulsion, police would identify Ryan Grainger as the owner of the Twitter account Nunya Bizness, which was the source of the altered post. Tech finally admitted that there were two versions of the Yik Yak after student Brent Halonen issued a Freedom of Information Act request on Feb. 15, 2016 for a police report submitted by Officer Reid Devoge.
The Houghton County prosecutor eventually dropped all charges against Schultz after police searched his computer and his apartment and found no evidence of any crime or threat. Additionally, during his police interrogation Schultz confessed that he made a mistake and that he had no intention of harming anyone. Despite these revelations, Tech Vice President Les Cook helped to organize a march on the Houghton County Courthouse to “protest the lack of stringent charges.” Moreover, Dr. John Lehman made an inaccurate statement to ABC News that the Yik Yak post indicated that the poster wanted “to shoot all black people.” He omitted “…A smile tomorrow.” Schultz is accusing Tech of actively encouraging the public to believe that his post simply said that he was “Gonna shoot” or “kill” “all black people.”
The dean of students, Dr. Bonnie Gorman, expelled Schultz on Jan. 5, 2016 after Schultz appealed the decision of the University Conduct Board, which found him responsible for violations of disruptive behavior. In his expulsion letter, Gorman acknowledges Schultz’s concern about the altered post, which the news media attributed to him. However, Gorman said that Tech’s response would have been the same regardless of the altered post. “Ultimately, your actions have hurt the integrity of the University and caused significant concerns from other students, parents, prospective students, faculty, and staff,” she wrote.
Gorman escalated Schultz’s violations of the University conduct code to include Assault, Endangerment, and Threats, which has the following description: “Intentionally or recklessly endangering, threatening or causing harm to any person (including self); or intentionally or recklessly causing reasonable apprehension of such harm; or communicating to any person (including communicating by any communication device, anonymously or otherwise), with intent to cause alarm or threaten another person for no legitimate purpose.”
In her letter, Gorman suggests that if the post had been punctuated differently – without the ellipsis – then it might not have been perceived as threatening. Alternatively, Schultz could have made a corrected post to avoid any misinterpretation. Ultimately, Gorman’s verdict seems to rest on the assumption that Schultz’s post caused a serious disruption to University activities. “Your decision to post was reckless and caused undue alarm for no reason,” she wrote.
Interestingly, Tech never pursued disciplinary action against any of the individual(s) that may have been involved in altering Schultz’s post. While Schultz’s original post might have been subject to alternative interpretations, the cropped post could not have been interpreted as anything other than a threat. Furthermore, it was the only version of the post that was portrayed in the media before the FOIA request by Halonen.
Sam Casey, the president of Tech’s Undergraduate Student Government, acknowledged that there may be some concern in the student population regarding the circumstances of Schultz’s expulsion. “I think that students are always concerned about the welfare of other students. I’ve definitely heard opinions from students that felt very strongly that the University was in the wrong, and I’ve also heard heard opinions from people that felt very strongly that his expulsion [Schultz’s] was justified,” he said. Casey added that he doesn’t think it is the responsibility of USG to form an opinion on the case, however, he said that USG does have a “responsibility to advocate for students, and if there is student concern over the University’s judicial process, I think it’s something we would investigate.”
On Feb. 2, Judge Gordon J. Quist will determine whether or not to dismiss the case against Tech. If he doesn’t rule to dismiss, then the case will go to trial at a later date.
8 Responses
Although Schultz probably shouldn’t have posted what he did, it was not a threat and didn’t cause alarm for anyone. It was only until the post was photoshopped that it became an issue. It bothers me an incredible amount that Grainger was not disciplined. I lost a lot of respect for Michigan Tech because of this and a lot of people agree. They need to take responsibility for their mistake and fix this.
Michigan Tech openly lied to us as students. When this incident occurred false information was reported and was not corrected for being false information by anyone in the university for a while. I did not learn the truth for months! If anybody should be in trouble for causing a disturbance on campus it should be Les P. Cook for inciting a mob via an email sent to the student body to protest the ruling that Schultz did nothing criminal, which is not hard to see if you know the real story. Could you imagine being someone in that protest group and then finding out what you were protesting didn’t even happen and you thought that you could trust the word of top MTU administrators? Schultz will always carry this publicity and stigma with him now. Did he do something wrong? Well, his joke was distasteful for sure, which is why Yik Yak has a downvote button. Counseling may have been sufficient. However, the propagation of false information by a university is as wrong as it gets regardless of Schultz’s actions especially when lies were being actively promoted by top administration officials. I hope Tech gets rocked for this. From a student point of view it wasn’t hard to see why Tech would choose to lie about this, we aren’t a very diverse Universtiy by any means. I just can’t believe they actually did it. They should have saw lawsuit coming. Additionally, administration and the person who photo shopped the Yik Yak are the ones guilty of disturbing the peace if anything, for this entire ordeal was unnecessary. I feel bad for the guy. What Schultz did was truly stupid, but it didn’t need to ruin his young life especially when no intent was discovered.
Pay up Tech, you knowingly went after this kid to make him a poster child of your “fight” against racism, which is virtually nonexistent here. You tried pushing forward an “image” of campus diversity and falsely went after the wrong guy instead of pursuing the individual who intentionally wanted to incite panic. Did you know all non-white students who enroll at tech are automatically put on a Culture Diversity Center for Inclusion email list? How is that supposed to bring people together if you’re purposely excluding white people? This lawsuit is needed, and will expose Tech officials hypocrisy of a problem that does not exist here.
Pay up Tech, you knowingly went after this kid to make him a poster child of your “fight” against racism, which is virtually nonexistent here. You tried pushing forward an “image” of campus diversity and falsely went after the wrong guy instead of pursuing the individual who intentionally wanted to incite panic. Did you know all non-white students who enroll at tech are automatically put on a Culture Diversity Center for Inclusion email list? How is that supposed to bring people together if you’re purposely excluding white people? This lawsuit is needed, and will expose Tech officials hypocrisy of a problem that does not exist here.
JA,
Reread the original message. There was no “joke made about killing people”. Clearly he was mocking the tools at Mizzu who were actually threatening black people. I don’t believe this kid was disguising hate with humor; he said he was going to “shoot black people a smile” for cripes sake. You, this jerk Grainger and the jackwagons in MTU administration who promoted this foolishness are all examples of why we can’t have nice things.
BELIEVABLE conspiracy.
I say this because I was there while it was happening. I was a student that was mislead by University officials to believe that the post said something it didn’t. The post by Schultz was clearly a joke. A joke in very poor taste, but a joke nonetheless. At worst, he should have gone through sensitivity counseling as a punishment. The real criminal here is this Ryan Grainger person. He’s the one that edited the post to make it appear like an actual threat, then went on to send it to University officials to intentionally cause a false campus emergency. Why this guy isn’t the one in trouble is completely beyond my understanding. And if the University wasn’t trying to cover their own bottoms, why didn’t they admit to the second post until MONTHS later? Really disappointed in my alma mater. I hope justice is served and at least one person at MTU loses their job over this. And I’m sure Grainger’s karma will catch up with him someday.
Schultz apparently still needs to realize that actions have consequences. A “joke” was made about killing people, something that is (or at least should be considered) unacceptable, in particular with respect to any certain race or culture given the turmoil of late. Disguising hate with humor is no excuse. Each and every student at Tech is a representive of the university. Had Schultz chosen to share his distasteful, rather poorly worded, musings amongst his friends in a private forum then so be it. However, he put his statement/view into the public realm. Tech absolutely did the right thing.
Great article to bring light to this situation. I personally feel this was taken way out of context and has unfortunately been blown up into something totally that it was not ever intended to be. I believe in protecting people but there never was a real threat. Good people have been hurt by this and I hope this can come to an end soon. We should spend our time and money looking at real threats instead of spending money and time on a situation that clearly was taken out of context!