Emory University bans law student after threatening messages

Amid the criticism, Emory issued a statement Thursday morning saying the student had been barred from campus since January. Following a thorough review, according to the school, the individual “is no longer associated with the university.” It added that Emory “will continue to provide heightened security for the remainder of the semester,” including more police and security guards.

Law student Greear Webb said there was more security at the building Thursday than he’d ever seen before. But he and classmates remain critical of the school’s response, claiming it did not address many of their concerns for months.

“Students would like the university, including the law school, to be more proactive and to address these issues as they’re bubbling up, not waiting until they boil over,” said Webb.

The banned student had been under investigation since at least January. According to a Jan. 10 email sent by Dean Richard Freer to students, one of whom shared it with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the school found the LinkedIn posts concerning enough that it heightened security measures and briefly permitted professors to hold classes online.

But in the days and months that followed, students said the school did not deliver on its safety promises. And their concerns only deepened earlier this month when a March email began circulating at the law school. The email, shared with the AJC by a law student, contained a racial slur 13 times and included a violent threat.

The Black Law Students Association sent a letter to the administration last week, claiming the student had been “emboldened by a lack of institutional accountability.” His language, they wrote in the letter sent to the AJC by a student, had turned “from insidious statements to violent ideations.”

The banned student has not been identified by the private university, which declined to comment when asked by the AJC if he’d been expelled. Federal privacy laws limit what universities can share about individual students, a point Freer noted in an email to students last week. He assured them that the matter was “being addressed with the seriousness that conduct of this nature requires.” He added that the law school had increased security through the end of the school year.

Days after receiving Freer’s Jan. 10 email, the Emory Law Student Bar Association accused administrators “of glaring oversights and unfulfilled guarantees.” Students said they were frustrated to find the promised security measures, such as an increased police presence, were not in place. “Several students reported less security on campus than there had been before the campus safety concerns,” wrote the SBA. The letter was shared with the AJC by a student.

Credit: Jason Armesto

Credit: Jason Armesto

Freer wrote in January that to get into the law school, students and faculty would need to carry their Emory identification cards. He also said there would be an enhanced police presence, including officers on patrol. But according to the SBA letter, people were able to enter the building without identification and students reported seeing no security guards at main entry points, even after complaining to administrators.

Similarly, the Black Law Students Association said last week the main doors through which students enter the school “are now often unguarded during the day” and that heightened security measures the school employed before spring break “no longer exist.”

“There are now multiple opportunities for unidentified individuals to enter the law school building undetected,” wrote the BLSA.

The school did not specify which of the student’s social media posts originally prompted the investigation. But posts reviewed by the AJC repeatedly included the phrase “#DontBelieveWomen” and said campus police had visited his apartment “for speech that some reported to the police as ‘concerning.’”

The AJC messaged the student whose name is listed on the social media posts. The student did not respond.

The January letter from the Emory Law Student Bar Association said that the Emory law community includes survivors of mass shootings at other universities. Emory also experienced a shelter-in-place alert last August when a shooter opened fire on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention adjacent to campus, killing a police officer.

“Regardless of whether the alleged ‘threat’ was mere speculation and rumor, students’ fear and anxiety is real,” reads the SBA letter.

Kylie Doyle, who was president of the SBA when the letter was written, said Thursday the school will need to earn back the trust of students.

“I hate to use the word ‘gaslit’, but they gaslit us,” Doyle said. “They told us there was no security threat, that there was no danger to campus safety. But if there was no danger to campus safety, why was he banned from campus?”