Springfield, Ohio’s Wittenberg University has canceled all athletic events this week, including a football home game scheduled for Saturday, due to ongoing threats to the campus.
The canceled games and practices are part of a wider halt of on-campus activities at the university, including in-person classes through Sunday. The city of Springfield has been the subject of widespread threats amid false claims about Haitian immigrants from Donald Trump’s campaign for U.S. president.
After receiving new threats on Monday, campus police issued an alert that “Wittenberg will go fully remote for the rest of the week.”
“Wittenberg is continuing to take precautions due to ongoing threats the University has received in recent days. As the threats continue to be assessed by Wittenberg police, local law enforcement, and the FBI, all classes and most operations will be delivered remotely until at least Sunday, Sept. 22, and on-campus activities and events are canceled.”
Wittenberg’s athletic department issued a separate statement Tuesday that “all home and away contests are canceled through Sunday.” This includes a home football game scheduled for Saturday against fellow Division III program Hiram. Wittenberg’s football schedule lists Saturday’s game as “canceled due to campus security threat.”
Wittenberg, like greater Springfield, has been the subject of threats amid baseless claims by Trump and his campaign that Haitian immigrants in the city have been stealing and eating people’s pets.
Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance spread a debunked social media claim that immigrants were abducting and eating Springfield residents’ cats and dogs. Trump repeated the claim during his debate last week with U.S. Vice President and Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris.
There is no veracity to the claim. It has been widely spread on social media and has sparked numerous memes of AI-generated images of Trump surrounded by cats, dogs and other animals.
Trump has made immigration a central theme of his campaign against Harris. Springfield, a city of 60,000, has received an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants in the last several years, according to NPR, creating tension in the community.
In this instance, the false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield have resulted in the vilification of Haitian residents and threats to the city’s institutions, including schools and municipal operations. Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said Monday that at least 33 bomb threats have been called in across the city in recent days and that all of them were hoaxes. DeWine also denounced the false claims while speaking with ABC’s “This Week.”
“There’s a lot of garbage on the internet and this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true, there’s no evidence of this at all,” DeWine said.
The threats have resulted in closures across the city. Like Wittenberg, Clark State College has canceled in-person classes this week because of threats. Public schools were evacuated on Friday amid threats and closed on Monday. They reopened Tuesday amid heightened security, including the presence of state troopers and bomb-sniffing dogs.
Springfield also canceled its CultureFest, an annual celebration of diversity and arts. It was scheduled to start on Sept. 27.
Ohio Department of Public Safety director Andy Wilson denounced the threats and the disruption to daily life in Springfield.
“The people who are doing this are doing this to sow discord in our community,” Wilson said, per the Associated Press. “We just can’t let them do that. We can’t let them do that. We have to keep providing the services that the citizens of Springfield and Clark County expect.”
