A Princeton
University student who argued that his conservative views
were not accepted on campus confessed to fabricating an
assault and sending threatening e-mail messages to
himself and some friends who shared his views,
authorities said Monday. Princeton Township police said
that Francisco Nava was not immediately charged with any
crime but that the investigation was continuing. Nava
claimed to have been assaulted Friday by two men
off-campus, police said. But he later confessed that
scrapes and scratches on his face were self-inflicted and
that the threats were his work too, said Det. Sgt.
Ernie Silagyi.
A spokeswoman for
the Ivy League university said punishment, which could
range from a warning to expulsion, was pending Monday.
''The university
takes all matters related to the safety of its community
members very seriously,'' said spokeswoman Lauren
Robinson-Brown. ''It's particularly concerning that a
student would fabricate such matters.''
Nava did not
respond immediately to an e-mail from the Associated Press
on Monday, and a phone listing for him could not be located.
Nava, a
23-year-old junior politics major from Bedford, Texas, found
himself at the center of one campus controversy recently
when he wrote a column for the student newspaper
criticizing the school for giving out free condoms,
which he said encouraged a dangerous ''hook-up culture.''
A short time
later, Nava made his first report to the university public
safety office that he was receiving threatening messages in
his campus mailbox. A friend says Nava told him one
message read, in capital letters, ''ONE MORE ARTICLE
AND YOU WON'T LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.''
Other members of
the Anscombe Society, a conservative student
organization, who have spoken out against premarital sex and
same-sex marriage, said they received similar threats.
So did Robert George, a professor in the politics
department.
Robinson-Brown
would not say exactly how the university responded to the
threats. But she said that in general, when students are
threatened they are given access to counselors, are
assured that the campus security force will take their
calls right away, and can be moved to new dorm rooms.
Another student
wrote in the campus newspaper Friday that the threats
Nava received did not get the same forceful response as
antigay graffiti that appeared this semester outside
the dorm rooms of some gay students.
Brandon McGinley
called it a double standard, which made it seem OK to
''use intimidation tactics to silence the voices of morally
conservative students.''
But the threats,
like the attack, are apparently a hoax.
''Everyone feels
saddened, shocked, and surprised to have been dragged
along in this,'' McGinley said. ''We're all extremely
concerned for [his] mental state.''
McGinley said it
was a surprise that Nava, who was a resident assistant
in a dorm and a member of a campuswide committee on
religious life, would be involved in such a hoax.
But he said that
after the purported attack, Nava's friends began
comparing notes and found some inconsistencies he told them
about threats and the attack. He said they told
authorities about them. (Geoff Mulvihill, AP)
