Community schools in this small Ohio city have been disrupted just weeks into the new school year due to threats that parents, kids, teachers, and local leaders are facing in the midst of national political hostility.
Nearly 10,000 students, spanning kindergarten through university, have had their lives turned upside down by bomb threats that have closed their schools since former president Donald Trump made the false claim that the city was under siege from thousands of Haitian migrants who were eating the pets of locals.
A clear indication of how far the falsehoods about Springfield have traveled is that Republican Ohio governor Mike DeWine has deployed additional security to safeguard schools and emphasized that the majority of the threats have originated from abroad.
There appears to be no end in sight to the charges made by Trump and his running mate, Ohio senator JD Vance.
Why do they feel the need to threaten the children? It’s ridiculous. “Kids don’t care about politics or the government, and it all makes no sense,” Richard Butler remarked as he escorted his seven- and five-year-old nieces home from school.
There have been scores of threats in the past few weeks, with targets including supermarkets, schools, hospitals, and government institutions. Last week, DeWine ordered the evacuation of several public schools and the subsequent deployment of state troopers to protect them. Clark State College students were warned about a “suspicious package” on Thursday, while Wittenberg University students remained indoors in response to a different threat; both nearby universities held online sessions throughout the week.
The city has installed mobile “SkyWatch” monitoring towers—loaned by the state—at the district’s only high school, local colleges, and other strategic locations to provide police with a bird’s-eye view of any possible threat at all times. Andy Wilson, head of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, announced that bomb-sniffing dogs will be stationed here indefinitely to be “immediately deployed if needed,” and that officers from several state agencies will be stationed throughout.
According to Wilson, the threats that have originated closer to Springfield have not been well-founded. One led to the apprehension of a girl aged fourteen; another involved the recovery of an engineering class project from a trash can at Clark State, which was initially thought to be suspicious.
Wilson added, “We’ve got a ton of resources on the ground.” anyway.
When asked whether she felt comfortable dropping off her girls at school, Amy Smith said that she loved her diverse neighborhood and the school, but that she didn’t like “the neo-Nazi bombers in town.”
Speaking to AWN in Spanish, Cristino Aguilar, a Mexican immigrant who claims to have resided in Springfield for a decade, expressed his fear that someone may show up armed with a rifle and open fire as he escorted his kids, ages 9 and 6, home from primary school. “No one has been harmed by my children or me. We merely desire a life free from conflict.
Cherie Moore, director of communications for the Springfield School District, and Rob Rue, mayor of Springfield, both declined repeated requests for comment. Karen Graves, a representative for the Springfield City Commission, chose not to comment.
Wittenberg, a charming little liberal arts college, had deserted campus this week, with locked doors and covered windows. According to Rob Baker, an American politics professor who has been teaching at the institution since the 1980s, the majority of the 1,300 students had already left, even though the school had indicated on Friday that it would be open for business as usual on Monday.
“We have not felt comfortable going to campus this week with the dog and the baby. Not sure what’s going on because of the bomb threats,” Baker said, looking at his wife and his 2-year-old granddaughter. “The place is practically deserted,” she said.
Joining a nationwide trend of tiny liberal arts universities experiencing dwindling enrollments, Wittenberg has been grappling with budget challenges for quite some time. Numerous cuts to academic programs, extracurriculars, and teaching positions were revealed earlier this month by the school.
The shutdown and threats may exacerbate the situation.
Former Wittenberg Board of Directors chair Jonathan Eilert stated, “You throw in a pandemic, and now this situation on top of it, and you start to feel like it’s really hard to get a break.” Eilert held that position for three years, taking it off in 2020.
The moment is not ideal for a visitor. A lot of prospective students come to campus in the fall to take tours, and it’s also one of the most picturesque seasons to be there, he said. “Without a doubt, that will not be taking place this week.”
“Disappointing,” but an essential precaution, was what Eilert had to say about the stoppage. He mentioned that his daughter had just begun her freshman year at Wittenberg and was taken aback by “this disruption already.”
He announced that “Homecoming weekend” and “parents’ weekend” were quickly approaching. “Is it really going to take place? How many will turn out to offer their support? People can be overly scared. With each passing day, it seems like more mysteries are revealed.
Repetition of requests for comment went unanswered by Wittenberg’s communications office and the president’s office.
Wittenberg administrators denounced “false xenophobic and racist remarks made by political candidates on the national stage” and referred to local white supremacist actions and rhetoric as “vile attacks and acts of stochastic terrorism on vulnerable members of Wittenberg and the Springfield community at large” in an email distributed to campus community on Tuesday.
Following his initial assertion during the presidential debate that Haitian migrants were “eating the pets” (a claim that city officials have consistently denied), Trump and his running mate have intensified the conspiracy theory and resorted to harsher language against the migrants, accusing them of “destroying” Springfield’s “way of life.”
“If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do,” Vance told CNN earlier this week. The Wall Street Journal reported that his staff had been informed the assertions were untrue before the debate.
Approximately 15,000 Haitian migrants have arrived in Springfield during the last several years through a program that provides temporary legal immigration status to individuals from nations that the United States has identified as having a high risk of international terrorism. This includes Haiti, which is currently gripped by a political and food crisis. Ever since the tragic earthquake struck the island nation of Haiti in 2010, it has been included on that list of countries, along with Venezuela, Ukraine, and a few others.
Republican DeWine attacked Trump and Vance in an opinion piece that appeared in Friday’s New York Times. He said that their “rhetoric” “hurts the city and its people.” The inflow of Haitian migrants “has created challenges that no city could anticipate or prepare for,” DeWine admitted. The area has been economically stagnant for years, but the migrants are “there to work” and have helped bring about “a resurgence in manufacturing and job creation,” he added.
There was no response from a Trump campaign spokesman when we asked for their opinion.
A 17-year-old high school student here who attends classes at Clark State, Kalen Jablonski, expressed his discomfort with the situation, saying, “It just doesn’t feel comfortable, because it affects my lifestyle, it affects my learning.” “Wow, it’s really intense now that they have morning and after school patrols.”