Ohio University students demand police investigation after peers mock safe-spaces

The College Republicans (CR) at Ohio University (OU) wrote a message on their school’s “Graffiti Wall” that mocked the idea of safe spaces, causing some students to demand a police investigation into the matter.

“Trigger Warning: There are no safe spaces in real life. You can’t wall off the First Amendment,” CR members painted on the wall, later claiming responsibility for the messages.

In response, one student demanded a “mandatory investigation” and another vowed to “beat the shit” out of the CR members.

“We can start w/ a mandatory investigation because trigger warning is literally a threat,” one student tweeted at her campus police department.

“lmao trigger warning i’m [sic] going to beat the shit outta [sic] whoever wrote that bullshit on the wall,” another said.

OU’s police department then hosted an open discussion with the school’s LGBT Center after the graffiti appeared on the wall.

The graffiti wall has become an object of controversy at OU over the past week, beginning with a pro-Trump message that was painted on the wall followed by several back and forth efforts between competing campus organizations to occupy its space.

Last week, a group of anonymous students painted the slogans “Build the Wall” and “Trump 2016” on the free speech wall, rendering the involvement of OU’s president, who apologized to students who were “hurt” by the messages.

[RELATED: OU president sympathizes with students offended by pro-Trump messages on free speech wall]

“Indeed, this wall is a place of free speech and expression; however, the words painted were troubling because they had a very different meaning to some than they may have to others viewing the message or even those who painted the message,” President Roderick McDavis wrote in a campus-wide email.

[RELATED: Greek Week events cancelled after members painted pro-Trump messages on free speech wall]

Prior to his response, OU’s LGBT center tweeted a photo depicting an updated version of the free speech wall, showing that the Trump graffiti had been painted over with messages such as “Build Bridges Not Walls” and “Latino Pride.”

After CR members occupied the wall with their latest message, their peers painted over it in under two hours with a new message.

“Bobcats stick together,” it read.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski