A handful of recent threats against Washington Court House High School had been posted to Yik Yak, a cellphone app that allows users to post comments anonymously. There’s no requirement to register to use the app, though posts can be seen only by other Yik Yak users within a 10-mile radius, according to the app’s website.
The posts have prompted school officials to ban student cellphone use, as well as the use of book bags, backpacks and gym bags. And they brought police, bomb-sniffing dogs and the FBI to this normally quiet community.
It all started last Tuesday, said Matt McCorkle, superintendent of Washington C.H. City Schools, when someone made Yik Yak posts that he described as bullying a student.
That prompted McCorkle to send out a phone message to district homes banning cellphones in the schools and telling parents that their children shouldn’t have the Yik Yak app on their phones, as it’s intended for users 18 and older, he said.
More threatening posts followed on Wednesday, with one saying there was a threat to burn down the school (the district’s high school and middle school are located at one site) followed later by a post that someone had a gun at school.
Two students, ages 14 and 16, were charged on Friday with delinquency counts of inducing panic; they are accused of posting on Facebook that a bomb had exploded at the high school. Fayette County Juvenile Court declined to release the names of the two juveniles, in violation of Ohio’s open-records law.
By the weekend, police, parents and students all were monitoring Yik Yak. A police dispatcher alerted Chief Brian Hottinger on Sunday that another threatening post had appeared. This one, amid a string of profanity, stated that “a bomb would blow up and the school and everyone would die,” McCorkle said.
The post, like the others, was removed from the site within the hour.
The district’s administration met with police on Sunday afternoon to determine a course of action. Another district-wide phone message was sent announcing the ban on all backpacks and gym bags, and that access to the school was restricted to two entrances.
McCorkle said the bans are not necessarily permanent but will continue until “we feel like everything’s safe.”
Yesterday, beginning at 4 a.m., bomb-sniffing dogs from the Columbus Division of Fire and the State Highway Patrol walked through the building, while a heavy police presence was maintained throughout the day, which passed without incident.
Attendance yesterday was about 75 percent, McCorkle said.
The FBI is assisting Washington C.H. police in the forensic and technological investigation as law-enforcement agencies attempt to track the source of the threatening posts.
“People are upset. They’re concerned,” Hottinger said. “They don’t like to think this could happen here. But the Internet is everywhere. We’re not isolated. We’re not insulated.”
A handful of schools nationwide have banned cellphone use because of problems associated with Yik Yak. Threats and bullying have occurred at college campuses as well, including Kenyon College in Knox County. Last month, the student government association at Emory University in Atlanta introduced a resolution to ban the app from the campus wireless network, prompting a Huffington Post editorial urging other schools to follow suit.
©2014 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)
