Students accused of neo-Nazi posts are ‘no longer enrolled’ at Davidson, college says

Two Davidson College students accused of making racist and anti-Semitic posts on social media are no longer enrolled at Davidson, college President Carol Quillen told students in an email Sunday.

Asked whether the students left voluntarily or were expelled, college spokesman Jay Pfeifer said federal student privacy laws prevent him from elaborating.

An activist group said it had linked the students to the posts on Nov. 7, and Quillen wrote that she and other administrators immediately began investigating.

The night of Nov. 7, the college’s police chief located the students named by the activist group and “ensur(ed) they would not be on campus,” Quillen wrote in Sunday’s email.

In the 1,100-word email, Quillen addressed other recent incidents at Davidson that have concerned students.

“The anxiety level on campus that many now feel is heightened because past incidents are now seen in light of (the) social media revelations,” she wrote.

The college is still investigating “hateful, anti-Semitic words” found on a whiteboard on Oct. 29, Quillen said. Investigators have not yet figured out who was responsible, but police are working on it, she said.

In a separate incident, a student found some writing about a school shooting on a library whiteboard on Oct. 15, Quillen said. That was schoolwork for a digital studies course, Quillen wrote.

“The police rightly recognized this writing for what it was — notes on a class project,” Quillen wrote.

In an email posted publicly by The Davidsonian, the campus newspaper, the professor of that class wrote that rumors distorted the contents of the whiteboard so much that, weeks later, his students did not immediately realize the connection between the rumors and their project.

Quillen’s email also reminded students that all typical campus safety procedures are in place.

At least one student named by the activist group was also identified as a Davidson ROTC cadet. A national ROTC spokesman did not immediately reply to an email Monday asking for an update on that student’s status as a cadet.

This story was originally published November 19, 2018 at 7:58 PM.