I’m a student at a large public university. One of my classmates in my degree program is very obviously a dangerous asshole. He’s a misogynistic, racist, Bible-humping, gun-toting, wealthy white boy. Wears a Hawaiian shirt to Zoom classes and calls me a “climate Nazi” in front the the professor. Spending five seconds around him is enough to see he has serious brainworms. Last year, he attempted to physically assault myself and a classmate because we’re openly atheist. I alerted the university and filled a report with campus authorities. Unsurprisingly, they did nothing.
A good friend of mine alerted me today that’s he bought a semiautomatic weapon. I’m really uncomfortable with this. He has a major problem with me (to the point of posting to his alt-right friends that he’s going to “get” me). I am the president of a small student org on campus. He knows that. I’m concerned that he may show up to one of our meetings. Obviously, I can’t get the university to do anything, and the cops would probably pin a fucking medal on him.
TL; DR- There’s a pyscho alt-righter who has threatened me in the past, and I just found out he bought a semiautomatic weapon. Is there anything I can do to keep myself and the members of my club safe?
Probably unpopular opinion: Tell the cops anyway.
This sounds like a death threat. If you get killed, people will be like “wHy DiDn’T sHe TeLl ThE pOlIcE???”.
Worst case, the police don’t care and they think that the boogaloo boy is cool. Best case, they do something about it and maybe keep you from dying. I don’t think that the police will actually do anything, but they might, and this is life or death, so it’s worth trying.
If you tell the police and they don’t do anything, you’ll have a good story about how useless the police are.
Everyone else’s advice still applies, but you can still tell the police about this.
Use his social media as evidence too. Document all of his postings and vague threats. Lay low on zoom meetings and any other social media.
The cops suck and are generally unhelpful, but I agree that it’s the best course of action right now. At least you will have a complaint on the record should anything involving this guy happen again. It might not prevent anything from happening, but it would leave a trail for a prosecutor looking to put him away.
Stay around friends whenever possible. Fascists are at the end of the day cowards, and he might not feel as powerful with a gun if he’s outnumbered. Other people have suggested arming yourself, but that’s a worst case scenario. I guess as long as you’re only around him in public he will hopefully be too scared to do anything. As others said, unless he explicitly threatens you, it’s not likely that staff or police will interfere.
God this is such an awful situation. I can’t believe I’m sitting here typing up some advice about how to not get killed by a fascist like it’s nothing. Stay strong comrade
While self defence ect. Is absolutely worth considering, you ideally don’t want it to get to that stage.
From the sounds of it, your university is doing the standard beurocratic arse covering bullshit of hoping it’ll all go away. That’s because dealing with the problem is going to be a pain in the arse for them.
One thing, as well as the other suggestions here of course, to try is making yourself a bigger pain in the arse to them than dealing with the problem will be. Document and report everything. Keep on complaining until they are in the position where if (god forbid) the worst would happen there’d be massive a pile of reports about him and they would definately lose their jobs. Then they might step in.
Trust your instincts, don’t let them make you feel stupid and document/report everything.
Definitely agree with this. I’d be reporting every single little thing you can find, get to the point where there’s several severe reports and the University will likely step in because of how bad it would look if something did happen.