AutoAdmit Threat Shuts Down Hastings Law

In the wake of the horrific mass murders at Virginia Tech on April 16th, school officials are vigilant in preventing a copycat attack. UC Hastings College of the Law, located in San Francisco, CA, was evacuated late Wednesday, just two days after the VA Tech shootings. The evacuation was prompted after a poster on the AutoAdmit message board by the name of "Trustafarian" allegedly wrote the following post:

Date: April 18th, 2007 1:35 PM

Author: Trustafarian

I went to bed all set for "Bloody Wednesday," but when I woke -- to sun, to flowers in bloom -- I just couldn't bring myself to suit up.

Maybe tomorrow; I hear rain's in the forecast."

AutoAdmit

The user deleted his post, but a copy was saved by another poster who contacted UC Hastings to report the threat. The school consequently closed for the rest of the day out of fears that a copycat mass murder would hit home. "Trustafarian" confessed shortly afterwards to the law message board's administrator, Jarret Cohen, that the post was made in jest and asked that his contact information be forwarded to the FBI. Cohen confirmed that the matter was being investigated by the authorities.

AutoAdmit, a college, graduate, and law school admissions message board, established in March 2004 by Jarret Cohen, promotes itself as "the most prestigious...message board in the world." For the past month, the website has been under scrutiny for its allegedly defamatory remarks and lack of censorship. In one particular case, two Yale Law students, namely Heide Iravani and Brittan Heller, claimed their employment prospects were in jeopardy due to allegedly defamatory comments posted on AutoAdmit. Specifically, these comments included LSAT scores, links to their personal pictures, and details on their social lives, which eventually appeared on search engines as a result. In an attempt to get the postings deleted, the girls commissioned Reputation Defender, a service that seeks to "clean up AutoAdmit" and defend people who feel their reputations are tarnished by comments on the Internet. Reputation Defender, however, failed to negotiate with AutoAdmit after Cohen posted a public challenge to the company, found here: . The postings remain undeleted.

When asked why he has adopted a largely hands-off moderation policy, Cohen explains, "I believe that people ought to have a refuge where they can say things that might be considered radical, or controversial, or socially unacceptable, just as much as they should be able to discuss the more normal things in their lives. You'll find that on my message board, people are much franker and wittier than you'll probably find anywhere else, because they know they can be honest. I generally don't make it a habit to remove content, because I know the danger of slippery slopes. One you remove one thing because it offends one person, you can expect a line of a hundred people after them."

Jarret Cohen recently authored an op-ed detailing his views on the challenges of free speech on the Internet, which was published in Harvard Law Record:

But Cohen's website has reached new levels of controversy after the latest incident involving the threats against UC Hastings. In a statement posted in response to the fallout, he writes, "I believe you deserve the chance to express yourselves openly and freely. But please, don't be stupid." Sure enough, human stupidity is one of the things that makes free speech such a challenging issue. Cohen compares the latest mishap to the famous example of someone yelling "Fire!" in a public place. For the rest of the statement, visit Here.

Says Cohen, "I think the message board has an almost hypnotic effect on its posters. Sometimes they forget the real-world consequences that can follow the ridiculous comments they make in the virtual domain."