Education

Black Activist Made Death Threats To Black Students, Faculty

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A 24-year-old racial activist has been charged with creating a false public alarm after reportedly making death threats to black students and faculty at her alma mater Kean University in New Jersey.

Kayla-Simone McKelvey, a self-described race activist, reportedly used a university computer to make death threats to the black students and faculty at Kean University from a fake Twitter account.

Authorities say McKelvey was on campus for a rally against racial intolerance, which she briefly left in order to post the threats online. She then returned to the rally to spread “awareness” of the threats being made against black students.

According to her Linkedin profile, McKelvey was the president of the Pan African Student Union and the 2014 Homecoming Queen during her time as a student at Kean University.

McKelvey reportedly chose the Twitter handle @keanuagainstblk (Kean University against black) to make the threats, which included a promise to “shoot every black woman and male” on campus and claiming there was a bomb on campus. McKelvey also tweeted the claim that “kean university twitter against blacks is for everyone who hates blacks people.”

The death threats generated alarm across campus, and student body president Nigel Donald — himself a black student — advised “students that live on campus to stay in their residence hall, and not travel through the campus.”

The death threats even led a coalition of black ministers to demand the resignation of Kean University President Dawood Farahi, who has served the university community for the past thirteen years.

Farahi has since called the tweets a “heinous crime” and told students, “We are saddened the person allegedly responsible was an active participant (of the demonstration) and a former student. No cause, no cause, can give anybody the right to threaten others.”

Kean isn’t the first university to be hit with a hoax regarding racial violence. Payton Head, the student body president at the University of Missouri, generated panic in early November after telling students that the Ku Klux Klan was on campus and instructing students to remain indoors and away from windows. That claim was later proven to be false.