Maeve Bidonde, Staff Writer
On Sunday, Nov. 10, racist text messages referencing slavery were sent to men, women, and students across the country. The messages were sent anonymously across several states including Alabama, California, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. Some of the students who received the text messages were as young as eleven. Since then, the text messages have prompted inquiries by the FBI.
The text messages also contained instructions to an address with one’s belongings and other references to the incoming presidency. The FBI has been in contact with the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission, who confirmed that they’re looking into the text messages alongside several law enforcement agencies.
The Office of Equity and Inclusion at SUNY Oneonta sent an email informing staff and students of the text messages. The email informs people about what the text messages are and what’s currently being done about them. SUNY Oneonta promotes support available for students at the Counseling Center and for staff at The Employee Assistance Program. The email encourages anyone with information about the text messages to call University Police.
The AP News interviewed people who were sent the racist text messages in California. ‘‘It was very disturbing,” Tasha Dunham said, the mother of one of the recipients of those messages. “Everybody’s just trying to figure out what this all means for me. So, I definitely had a lot of fear and concern.’’ Dunham says her daughter showed her the text messages one evening after basketball practice. In Pennsylvania, six middle school students in Montgomery County received the same text messages, sharing the same reaction as Dunham’s.
According to CNN, Karoline Leavitt, President-elect Donald Trump’s spokesperson, released a statement regarding the messages saying Trump had nothing to do with them. A texting app called TextNow is said to have been used to send some of the text messages. Since then, The TextNow company has claimed to have no involvement and believes it to be some kind of an attack. “As soon as we became aware, our Trust & Safety team acted quickly, rapidly disabling the related accounts in less than an hour working alongside our industry partners to uncover more details and continue to monitor patterns to actively block any new accounts attempting to send these messages,” The company addressed to CNN. “We do not tolerate or condone the use of our service to send harassing or spam messages and will work with the authorities to prevent these individuals from doing so in the future.”
Another texting app called TextSpot was also used to send the text messages. As of now the sender has yet to be found and the investigation is ongoing. If you receive a text message or know something about the messages, you’re encouraged to make a report.
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