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Tulsa U. student possibly linked to racist texts sent to Penn freshmen

The FBI has contacted the University of Tulsa about a student's possible involvement in sending racist messages to black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania last week.

Penn students protest by signing a Wall of Solidarity or "Unity Wall" Friday.
Penn students protest by signing a Wall of Solidarity or "Unity Wall" Friday.Read moreSTEVEN M. FALK / Staff Photographer

The FBI has contacted the University of Tulsa about a student's possible involvement in sending racist messages to black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania last week.

But the university, which also opened its own investigation, so far has found no evidence of wrongdoing at the school, a spokeswoman said Wednesday. The University of Tulsa student appears to have been "unwittingly" added to the GroupMe app group named "N- Lynching," a source close to the investigation in Oklahoma said.

"That said, The University of Tulsa takes these sorts of incidents very seriously and will move swiftly to discipline any individuals found in violation of TU's Student Code of Conduct," said Mona Chamberlin, director of marketing & communications.

Chamberlin said the university is assisting external authorities in the probe.

On Tuesday, Tulsa Community College put a student on "interim academic suspension" while the matter is investigated. Another student attended the University of Oklahoma, which suspended him shortly after the incident became public last Friday and on Tuesday announced he was no longer enrolled.

Penn has said that three college students in Oklahoma were under investigation for potential involvement in the case. The FBI has contacted all three, Maureen Rush, Penn's vice president for public safety, said this week.

Whether the students will be charged depends on whether the investigation finds they intended to inflict fear on the Penn students who were joined to the cellphone text-messaging app group, she said.

Six black freshmen at Penn, four female and two male, received the original racist messages and then began sharing them with friends, horrified by what they saw, Rush said.

The messages, violent and racist, came from people calling themselves "Daddy Trump" and another who wrote "Heil Trump" in the app GroupMe, popular with college students and others. The Penn students, Rush said, were joined on to the group without their knowledge or permission.

A calendar function in the GroupMe app scheduled several "N- Lynchings," including a "daily lynching" for last Friday. One posting displayed an old image of a lynching with the note "I love America."

The racist messages roiled the Ivy League campus last week, just days after Donald Trump was elected president.

ssnyder@phillynews.com

215-854-4693 @ssnyderinq

www.philly.com/campusinq