N.Y. college traced online threat

Colgate University student George So was avoiding studying for two exams when he stumbled upon the popular campus gossip site, JuicyCampus.com and decided to submit a post. So’s post, which he thought was an innocent way to procrastinate, ended up costing him $5,000 and sent alarms through the Colgate community.
The verbatim post by So on Juicy Campus read:
‘I wonder if i could shut down the school ‘hellip; by saying I’m going to shoot as many people as i can in my second class tomorrow. I hope I get more than 50’hellip;’hellip;’hellip;.. For liability reasons and ip tracking I won’t leave it at that. But seriously, this site is rediculous [sic], if it got big, and someone put the effort into writing a big long serious suicide note informing all readers that he would kill over 100 kids, they could shut down the school. Nice.’
Though So, then a junior, said his message was meant to be funny, Colgate officials did not see the humor in it.
Colgate spokesman Anthony Adornato said a student surfing Juicy Campus alerted the school’s department of safety and the administration took action.
‘Because of the current climate, you have to take these things seriously,’ Adornato said.
Adornato said university administrators sent an email to students warning them that the campus was under a high-security alert due to a potential threat. Additional police forces were sent from local departments to make sure students were safe while officials investigated the perceived threat.
The university tracked So’s residence by his computer’s IP address, he said in an email.’ ‘
Boston University Police Chief Tom Robbins said that though the department does not search websites or blogs like Juicy Campus for threatening messages, it would investigate a similar situation if one was brought to their attention.
‘I don’t think you’re going to garner much information by monitoring blogs and other websites,’ Robbins said, ‘I don’t think it’s something that’s going to help public safety.’
Robbins said if the So situation happened in a classroom, BUPD would have taken actions comparable to that of the Colgate Police Department, and the incident would have been investigated.
American Civil Liberties Union attorney Aden Fine said he understood why campus officials would be alarmed, but a student’s First Amendment rights must never be compromised.
‘Speech on the Internet is just as any other kind of speech,’ Fine said.
Fine said anonymous speech or postings on the website are given equal protection under the law. Though websites such as Juicy Campus can be hurtful, Fine said the Internet provides a unique opportunity for people to instantly respond to postings they may not agree with.
‘Government shouldn’t be in the business of censoring speech,’ Fine said. ‘They can’t be determining who has the right and who doesn’t have the right of anonymous speech.’
So said his post was more of a comment of how dangerous these sites could be, not threatening plans to harm others.
‘I thought it might provoke some action against a site like Juicy Campus, which only grows in potential to do harm to universities nation wide,’ So said in an email. ‘It was the middle of the night, and I was studying for two exams, organic chemistry and biostatistics . . . I thought I had made it clear that I had no malicious intentions.’
In early September, So was ordered to pay local police forces and ambulance services $5,000 for the costs of deploying extra officers and was required to write letters of apology. He was found not guilty of posting threatening messages by the school’s judicial committee and struck a plea deal with the local town’s judicial courts.
So is now a senior at Colgate and is currently studying in Spain.