Words matter and elections tend to have consequences. As a result, thanks to last week’s Presidential Debate, there has been an uptick in violent threats in the town of Springfield, Ohio. Wittenberg University is an Ohio D-III located in the recently spotlighted city in south-central Ohio.
The school announced that it canceled all athletic events through September 22, both home and away.
Ohio D-III College Cancels Football Games Due to Last Week of Threats
— Wittenberg Athletics (@WittAthletics) September 17, 2024
In a statement, the school announced, “After receiving new threats on Monday, Sept. 16, and in the context of ongoing threats of violence on our campus and in the Springfield community, Wittenberg will go fully remote for the rest of the week (Monday, Sept. 16-Sunday, Sept. 22). The University is taking each threat seriously, and Wittenberg Police are working closely with other law enforcement agencies to thoroughly investigate any and all threats made toward our campus, employees, and students.”
Wittenberg University is a small, private college in Springfield. The Wittenburg Tigers play in the North Coast Athletic Conference and face off against the likes of Wooster, Denison, and Oberlin College, the last Ohio-based program to beat Ohio State in football (1921)
When it comes to football, the Tigers have five claimed national titles and have won 34 conference titles in program history. They started off this year with a 24-14 loss to former Ohio Athletic Conference rival, Baldwin Wallace.
Why?
Lies.
Racist lies.
So, last week, we had our second Presidential Debate of the 2024 election cycle and the first between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President, Kamala Harris. In response to a question posed to him regarding why he directed legislators of his party to kill a bipartisan border security bill, Mr. Trump went on a tangent “And look at what’s happening to the towns all over the United States. And a lot of towns don’t want to talk — not going to be Aurora or Springfield. A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”
Naturally, closing the Southern border between the United States and Mexico will no nothing to stymie illegal immigration, let alone legal immigrants from Haiti.
The moderators pushed back with, “ABC News did reach out to the city manager there. He told us there have been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.”
The lie came from a false report from August. A Springfield woman accused her Haitian immigrant neighbors of stealing her cat and eating it. The cat was in her basement, safe, and, oddly enough, not eaten.
The Vance campaign provided the Wall Street Journal with a police report to prove their claims about cat-eating Haitians in Springfield.
The WSJ spoke to the woman who filed it, who said she later found her cat alive and well in her basement. She also apologized to her Haitian… pic.twitter.com/1ZgFUhWduf
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) September 18, 2024
Despite her retracting her accusation and apologizing, the rumor was run with and has since turned into the mess that it is today.
After the unsubstantiated claim spouted by a major Presidential candidate, threats of violence increased.
During a news conference on Monday, DeWine said that at least 33 separate bomb threats had been received at Springfield schools, adding that “each one of which has been responded to, and each one of whom has been found as a hoax”.
Now, a small city in Ohio that has continuously and overwhelmingly voted in favor of Mr. Trump and his party, is being terrorized by Mr. Trump, his running mate, and his fanbase.
Words matter. And now innocent people are being harrassed and lives are being disrupted based on baseless lies.
