That manifesto talk scared the heck out of some students also and many didn’t go to classes and students were seen openly crying.
Some of you may remember me, some may not. I tend to pop in from time to time during conference play, the tourney and the early offseason. This, obviously, drew me in. I graduated from 'Cuse in '08, and I consider myself very lucky to have been done with my education before mass shootings became so widepsread and prevalent. I rarely worried about them as a student. Now, as an adult (33 years old), I worry about them quite a bit. I thought I'd provide some commentary on why students are so scared over the manifesto. I know that for people who are older or who don't follow the news closely, it may not be apparent why people are so scared.
I follow the news very closely most of the time, so I know that when a manifesto like that is released, there is a significantly elevated risk of a mass shooting. How many times have we heard of one of these monsters releasing a manifesto, then going on to carry out a mass shooting minutes/hours/days later? It's extremely common in these cases.
If I was a student at Syracuse University right now, I would not be messing around with that threat just to go to class. I would like to think I'd be participating in the sit-in, and as a 33-year-old I currently consider that a worthwhile risk to take. But for a random 2-3 days of class in November? that.
If I had a child who was a student there, I'd be begging them to come home for a few days.
If I was the chancellor there, I would have cancelled classes until the FBI investigated the release of the manifesto. It's just not worth the risk, whether the chances of a mass shooting are elevated to 1% or 10%, it's just way too high of a cost to take that risk.
To my knowledge, there have been no threats of violence.
The release of the manifesto is an inherent threat. Being a news junkie and politically active, I have read some of the content of some of these manifestos in order to educate myself on the threat these people pose to our society. I don't wish to repeat too much of the ideas or words here, so I'll just say that they are as vile, repulsive, violent, dangerous and disgusting as it gets. Their goals are usually centered around creating white ethno-states and their methods obviously include mass murder.
So the fact that someone decided to release that to a bunch of people on the Syracuse campus was an inherent threat. If I was a student in that library that night who received that manifesto, I would have feared for my life - and I'm a white male. I would have either run or taken shelter.
It these are anti-black or Asian writings, how are the white kids feeling threatened.
Once a mass shooting starts, the bullets tend to be indiscriminate. Hatred threatens all of us.