On December 15, 2015, two Edmonds/Woodway High School students were expelled due to online threats made towards the African-American students at their school. The two boys, ages 15 and 16, were allegedly believed to have started an online chat group where they would make threats about the African-American students at their school.

According to King 5 News reporter, Natalie Swaby, “Police say the comments included detailed descriptions about how they intended to kill one of the victims, including ‘lynching’.”

At this point, one of the members of the chat group decided to take it to the school on December 7th. The school notified both  the intended victims as well as the Edmonds Police Department. The two students were then charged for the crime of Malicious Harassment.

On November 24th, classes at Western Washington University were suspended because a sophomore  posted similar remarks on a social media site by the name of “Yik Yak”. He made remarks such as, “Let’s lynch her” when talking about an African American student leader.

Though he claimed to have deleted the comment, he was soon after charged with first-degree malicious harassment.  

As stated in an article by The Seattle Times staff reporter, Sara Jean Green, “According to state law, malicious harassment is an attack motivated by a perception of someone’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, sexual orientation, gender or disability, and results in physical injury, property damage or threats that would place a reasonable person in fear of harm. The felony carries a term of up to five years in prison.”

In a school overrun my hand-held internet devices, has this happened at Bishop Blanchet?  How would we know?

“We rely mostly on the students to report these situations to us themselves,” said  Laura Meaux, the Director of Educational Technology. 

Though in previously mentioned situations there was never any intent to carry through with the actions of the young men, the threats are more than unsettling. True or false, the assumption of an outsider is that it is a legitimate threat that is planned to be carried out.

At WWU, the direct victim of the comments was said to be “petrified to even leave the police station”, according to The Seattle Times Staff Reporter, Sara Jean Green.

Nobody knows when, nobody knows why, but the reality is that it can happen anywhere.

“If you see something, say something”, says Meaux.