Over winter break the Ashland University Facebook page was virtually attacked by people who made several claims about an Ashland student who attended Steubenville High School.

The posters made claims about the student with regard to the highly publicized Steubenville rape case. As more and more people began posting to the university’s Facebook page, on January 6 the university began to take notice.

Many of the Facebook posters called on the university to expel the student. AU Provost Dr. Frank Pettigrew said that the student has not been charged with any crimes. The university is continuing to monitor the official investigation.

“We are firm believers that no one is guilty until they are proven that way,” Pettigrew said. “This student has not been charged with anything and they are not on the witness list. I’m very concerned that the student is given every opportunity to continue to take his classes and not to be harassed. So far our students have been very good but I am more concerned about these external groups and the impact they are trying to have.”

Scott Van Loo, vice president for enrollment management and marketing, said the university became aware of the situation that was developing and decided a response was needed.

“Everything [on the university Facebook page] was being attacked by this online group,” Van Loo said. “They were putting everything related to this situation onto every post that wasn’t even relevant and many of those comments were very disturbing in terms of what they were alluding to and implying. We saw how serious the nature of these comments were and we were moved to respond and remove those posts.”

Sue Heimann, vice president of student affairs, said taking down the Facebook posts was the right thing to do.

“We did it because we felt it was fair and ethical,” she said. “A reputation is a precious thing. For any student, or any member of the university community, if there is a charge [against them], we would certainly investigate it … we will do everything to protect your honor and your character.”

The posts tried to call the university to action regarding the student, but the sources the posters were drawing their information from were not credible in the university’s eyes.

“Most of the articles that they were linking to were just blogs, not news sources,” said Jan Bond, director of communications and marketing, said. “We don’t want to delete posts on Facebook but in this case we wanted to take down things that were libelous to the university and the student.”

In addition to the lack of credible sources, the university discovered that many of the accounts attacking the Facebook pages were fake and created by the attackers to hide their identities.

They also found that an identical attack had occurred on the Ohio State University Facebook page under the same pretense.

After removing the comments, the university sent an email to the Ashland community assuring them that the situation was being handled.

The marketing department then began monitoring the Facebook page more closely to prevent further attacks.

While the social media department was removing the libelous posts, student affairs was contacting the student in question and their family to make sure the student would be able to safely continue their education without being harassed.

“With anything that implicates a student there is a certain set of criteria that student affairs follows and if the student hasn’t been brought up on any legal charges then we have a right as a community to make that no negative things are associated with that student,” Van Loo said.

Heimann agreed. She said that along with contacting local police and sheriff departments, she also met with the student and the student’s family personally.

“I called their home and have spoken with and met with [the student] personally and offered different services in terms of things,” she said. “There’s nothing too little; nothing too big. We will help him with anything. You know, the goal here is that he can focus on his academics. And be successful; be a successful Ashland University student.”

Heimann said the university did look into whether law enforcement authorities had connected the student to the case and found that no charges had been filed.

They also looked at the Ashland University code of conduct and found no violations. She said that because AU is a private institution, this situation may be handled in a slightly different way than a public institution.

“Because we’re a private institution, and we are church affiliated, our standards are higher,” Heimann said. “There are certain things that we can do, that are above and beyond any criminal charges. So we look at those kinds of things with the student conduct. And we did that. Based on the information we have at this time, and just based on a broad array of investigation, we could find nothing.”

The university is continuing to watch for more libelous attacks on Facebook and is working to ensure the education of the student in question remains unhindered.