African-American freshmen at University of Pennsylvania Friday were targeted with racist hate messages in a cellphone text-messaging app under the group name "Nigger Lynching."
The first message in the GroupMe app, popular among college students, was sent at 10 a.m. with the question "Sup Niggers," from someone using the alias "Daddy Trump."
A calendar function in the app scheduled several "Nigger Lynchings." Subsequent messages named 161 people, including those who created the group and the students who were targeted.
A second message, from someone who posted under the name GORT, said "message Heil Trump."
President-elect Donald Trump is an alumnus of Penn's Wharton School of Business. His daughter Tiffany Trump graduated from Penn in May.
University officials said it called on police and information security officials to identify who posted the messages.
"I spent my morning running to the vice provost office of my university in the middle of class because my freshmen brothers and sisters got added to a group called "N----- Lynching," African-American male student's post on his Facebook page said. The student was granted anonymity for fear of his safety.
"Literally, every single black freshman was added. I stared an administrator in the eye and literally lost it. And quite honestly I just can't stop crying. I feel sick to my stomach. I don't feel safe."
The account appeared to have been started by college students from Oklahoma. One image displayed an old image of a lynching, with the note "I love America."
Tunmise Fawole, a Penn student and co-chair of Umoja, a student group for members of the African diaspora at Penn, thinks that whoever targeted the Penn students had to have access to the Penn Class of 2020 Facebook group, to which only admitted and current students have access.
"This is not an isolated incident, this is a reaction to the candidate that won," she said, referring to Trump. Fawole added that "top-level administrators" from the university had been very cooperative, and that they are trying to work with the GroupMe messaging service to see what legal action can be taken.
Brittany Brown, 22, an African-American Penn student who also identifies as LGBT, said: "The currents of (Trump's) messages are rippling through the country. That's the problem. I don't have a problem with Republicans, or conservatives. And I have a lot of friends who are much more liberal than me. This isn't about that. This about being a decent human being."
University spokesman Ron Ozio issued a statement at midafternoon decrying the hatred.
"Earlier today a number of black freshman students at Penn were added to a racist GroupMe account that appears to be based in Oklahoma. The account contains violent, racist and thoroughly repugnant images and messages," Ozio said.
The University is taking every step possible to address both the source of the racist material and the impact it has had on black students on campus," he said.
Chad Dion Lassiter, president of the Black Men at Penn School of Social Work, said he was not surprised by the online assaults on black students because he believes it is part of a continuing pattern of racism that has been prevalent nationally since President Barack Obama took office and is likely to get worse with the election of Trump.
"We really have to find out what is the challenge that white people _ to the core _ fundamentally have with black people in America. Racism and white supremacist behavior continues to go unchecked," Lassiter said.
"Over the last eight years we have seen attacks on black humanity and black intelligence, from what has been done to the president to what has been done to black students on college campus to what has happened in Baltimore and Ferguson. So, college campuses are not exempt. We need white students who are racially aware to denounce this type of racial hatred," Lassiter said.
