NELSONVILLE, Ohio— An attacker could find many places to hide at Hocking College, a campus carved into a forest in the Appalachian foothills. And with the threat of a mass killing looming over Black students at the community college, Allen Edwards is steering clear of the trees.
“I don’t feel too safe walking by the woods,” said Edwards, a 19-year-old Black student from Canton. “There’s woods everywhere. And somebody could be out in them, and I don’t know.”
The FBI is investigating a threat scrawled last week on a bathroom wall warning that Black students would be killed Feb. 2. It bore the trademarks of just another casual though chilling threat of violence on a college campus, but students here aren’t taking any chances.
At least two Black students have withdrawn permanently from school out of fear for their safety, and another dozen have moved out of the dorm where the threat was found, officials at the two-year technical college said. Some students seem unperturbed, but others say the threat has brought simmering racial tensions to the surface.
The school confirmed Tuesday that the threat said Black students would be killed Feb. 2. At least one subsequent note reading “kill the n——” was reported.
Hocking covers hundreds of densely treed acres in the Wayne National Forest about 60 miles southeast of Columbus. The campus overwhelms Nelsonville, an economically depressed rural town plagued with heroin addiction and unemployment. About 400 of the school’s 6,300 students are Black, many of whom are foreign exchange students from the Caribbean.
The college has provided temporary housing for students who are too scared to stay in Hocking Heights, the dorm where the threats were found. And for those wary of venturing outside until after Feb. 2, teachers are making allowances for missed classwork.
