On the morning of January 31st, a WA sophomore was taken in by administration after posting a three-student “hit list” on Facebook the night before.

The incident was brought to the attention by one of the students targeted in the post, who, upon noticing the threat, went directly to the office of Dean Betsy Murphy.

According to his social media post, the student, who declares himself an anarchist on Facebook, had targeted the three students because of their far right-winged political stances. For at least one student of the three listed, his Facebook posts involve affiliation with the Confederate flag.

“Those are the people at WA who legitimately or jokingly use Nazi rhetoric and symbolism,” the student wrote.

His post however later went on to insight violence against these individuals, urging his peers to harm the students, rather than report them.

” […] they [the students listed] deserve to be shot. If you see this going on, don’t snitch. Break their ribs,” he wrote.

Upon the discovery of his post, faculty searched the student’s backpack and locker. Westford Police searched his home for weapons or evidence of a plan to follow through with his threat. Although no weapons or suspicious items were found, in-school Detective Geoffrey Pavao says that he does not believe that the incident should be written-off as a hot-mouthed mistake.

“Any threat, to named or unnamed students is serious,” Pavao said.

“My job is to take all of that stuff seriously, and until we get to the bottom of it, and we figure out what his motivation was, there really is no joking around. Same thing when you go to a movie theater and someone yells ‘fire!’ or if you go to an airport and someone  yells ‘bomb!’ there’s no [asking] ‘what’s his intent?’ ” Pavao said.

Principal Jim Antonelli does not see the student’s act as a serious threat to the safety of our school, but rather a result of poor judgement and uncontrollable anger.

“I think it might be a student who could be calling out for help […] I do not believe it was a serious threat. I have been doing this for twenty years, and I have seen threats that have made me nervous, and then I’ve also seen threats where I say, ‘this kid is angry, upset maybe at the current state of our union and the politics within our country, and I think that some of his anger came out,” Antonelli said.

The student has not yet been expelled and is currently suspended indefinitely as an ongoing investigation being conducted by both the WA administration and the Westford Police Department. After faculty meetings surrounding this investigation, as well as a mass email informing WA parents and teachers of the incident, Antonelli hopes that the situation will be a lesson to students about responsible use of social media.

“Social media is something that does a lot of good, but it also does a lot of negative things, and it is very very easy for things to be taken out of context. It is very easy for people to sit behind a computer or on a phone and snapchat something that really can cause chaos, so I caution students to make good decisions,” Antonelli said.