A student who faked a threat of rape against herself has now deleted her award-winning left-wing website.
Meg Lanker-Simons is a University of Wyoming student andaward-winning left-wing blogger. Last week an anonymous individualposted a politically-tinged threat of rape against Lanker-Simons on anindependent Facebook page called UW crushes.
Lanker-Simons responded to the apparent threat with an outragedcomment calling it “disgusting” and “misogynistic.” She described theauthor as a “creeper” and added “Even if it’s taken down, I’m left towonder if there’s someone out there with a violent fantasy about me–andlikely other women.” This was followed by a recommendation that theauthor of the hateful threat “get some help” from the “UW counselingcenter.”
The UW Crushes Facebook page, where students had anonymously vented their crushes on other UW students, was taken down.The creators of the site apologized and indicated that, because of theclass workload of the students who set it up, not every post was readbefore publication. In all, the offensive threat was up for about 8hours.
Despite the post being taken down, anger on campus continued tobuild. Over the weekend a rally against “rape culture” was organized inwhich Lanker-Simons took part. Event organizer Amy Paulie told localnews station KOWB that the goal was tocampus because there are so many people who say that it doesn’t exist,it’s not a problem.”
A police investigation of the incident led to an examination (under search warrant) of Lanker-Simons computer. At that point policepost came from Lanker-Simons’ computer.” Lanker-Simons denied theaccusation but was given a citation for making a “false statement” to police. She has now retained an attorney who says she will plead not guilty at her arraignment.
Prior to the current incident, Lanker-Simons was honored by Think Progress for her work “liveblogging the entire GOP primaries.”
Her site, Cognitive Dissonance, has apparently been deleted. A link redirects to another site with no information on it.