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Posted on October 09, 2019
Concern spread across UIC’s campus late Tuesday night and into Wednesday as anonymous posts on the Facebook page “UIC’s Confessions & Crushes,” believed to reference school shootings, began to circulate among the student body.
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The original Facebook post that caused concern
The first post made October 8th, 2019 stated: “When you can’t get out of the friendzone, make it a war-zone. Go ER.”
This message was followed by another on October 9th that stated, “I will be a hERo.”
Currently, it is unknown if both messages were from the same individual.
Students theorized that the messages, specifically the letters “E.R.” references Elliot Rodger who murdered six people and injured 14 more before killing himself near the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014. Rodger’s committed these murders to punish women who did not show interest in him and to punish the sexually active men he envied. Echoes of this sentiment can be found in the two anonymous Facebook posts.
As this theory and related posts spread through campus, it led to fear and uncertainty resulting in many students staying home, some professors canceling their classes, and some student meetings and activities canceled for the day.
But some students still made the journey to campus Wednesday in the wake of the online threats.
“I was so scared, but I couldn’t miss class,” Maray Anderson, Architecture fourth-year, said. Anderson felt she had to attend class because she would have been marked absent which she said was “not an option” for her.
“I feel like UIC should have called off classes today,” Anderson said.
An email from UIC Alert was sent to students earlier this afternoon stating “UIC Police take all threats to the campus community very seriously and will continue to work with Federal and State partners to maintain the safety and security of the university.”
A spokesman for UIC Police could not comment on the story at presstime. This story will be updated once more information is provided.
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