Ithaca High School Student Threatens Mass Shooting in Facebook Post

Jacob M. Rollins-Young, 17, a student at Ithaca High School, was arrested and charged with a felony Tuesday after threatening a mass shooting at his school via Facebook, according to a press release from the Ithaca Police Department. Police charged Rollins-Young with originating a terroristic threat — a Class D felony — Saturday night, and he was arrested Monday night, according to The Ithaca Journal. The police responded to an alert at approximately 3:28 p.m. Saturday, after concerned students who had seen Rollins-Young’s Facebook comments notified Ithaca High School principal Jason Trumble, according to the release. The Facebook posts included the narrative of an imagined shooting — “Local Teen Opens Fire at Ithaca High” — in which Rollins-Young describes a “Caucasian male” opening fire with an assault rifle “in a cafeteria nearby.” He also repeatedly suggested that he was not joking, according to the felony complaint. In a Facebook conversation between several IHS students, “one student became upset and made a direct threat to another student followed by a threat of violence to the entire IHS community,” according to an email sent by school administrators to students’ parents.

Faculty Call For Increased Input At College of Business Open Forum

Faculty and staff emphasized the need for increased involvement in administrative decisions when discussing the College of Business initiative at an open forum Wednesday. Provost Michael Kotlikoff moderated deliberations about the administrative rationale for the decision at the forum. Although many have characterized the decision as sudden and surprising, Kotlikoff said discussion of the College of Business actually began in 2008. The provost called the creation of the College of Business a politically difficult initiative, explaining that this made the administration choose to bypass the faculty senate when making the decision to merge the colleges. “If we had entered an extended debate with faculty and alumni, it would have been tremendously resisted,” he said.