Yesterday we learned about the strange saga of University of Wyoming student Meghan Lanker-Simons, who claimed to have been the victim of a “rape threat” posted on Facebook:
“I want to hatef*** Meg Lanker Simons so hard. That chick runs her liberal mouth all the time and doesn’t care who knows it. I think its so hot and makes me angry. One night with me and shes gonna be a good Republican bitch.”
Now campus police believe she posted this threat herself. But they didn’t come to that conclusion before she was able to use the “rape threat” to organize an “End Rape Culture” rally on campus:
Since this news broke yesterday, Lanker-Simons has taken down her award-winning Tumblr page, Cognitive Dissonance, taking with it all her posts regarding the “rape threat” and the ensuing fallout.
I had a feeling Lanker-Simons might do that, so I took the liberty of saving a few of the pages from her Tumblr for the purposes of historical preservation. I thought the following post in particular was notable.
Note that I’m not able to re-create the original Tumblr layout, but all the content is there:
What are the chances that it was one of the Admins of the page that posted that?On campus, that’s the rumor I’ve heard. That it’s possible they chose to target me, provoke a massive response, and get more likes and shares for the page. What they didn’t count on is that people were already pissed, had apparently already reported the page prior to this multiple times to Dr. Dave Cozzens, who heads up student affairs, and that there would be a shitstorm kicked off.
Basically, instead of this:
They got this:
Again, that’s more rumor than anything else, but the police asked me if I thought they could have done it. It doesn’t look good that they aren’t coming forward to say they didn’t write it or any of the other content.
So again, if you admins (or the original poster) are reading this, I’ll remind you — if you didn’t mean it and thought it was a sick joke or whatever, it’s probably best to come forward and state that, because I bet the UWPD and UW Administration would be happy to know that. I would be relieved. They’re treating this like there’s someone harboring violent sexual fantasies towards fellow students, and has stated a desire to act upon them. Now, I know having the fantasies is not a crime — voicing them to threaten and intimidate, well, possibly a different story there.
I wish I could say for sure one way or another. I’d sleep a hell of a lot better.
Cheers,
Meg
That certainly sounds like an accusation of wrongdoing, or at least negligence, against specific individuals. This Dr. Dave Cozzens is named, and the administrators of the Facebook page in question, UW Crushes, are implicated.
If Lanker-Simons posted this “rape threat” herself, as the UW campus police are saying, what does that mean for the people she tried to blame for it? What did they do to deserve such treatment?