Jubilee Hall at historically Black Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. The school reported Thursday students have been receiving concerning text messages. (Photo: John Partipilo)
This story has been updated with additional information from a Fisk University spokesperson.
Fisk University campus safety officials are on “high alert” following “disturbing and offensive” messages targeting members of its community, a spokesperson said Thursday.
The messages “suggest threats of violence and intimidation, and are deeply unsettling,” a campus-wide alert issued late Wednesday said.
The alert said that university officials believe the messages are “likely the work of an automated bot or malicious actors with no real intentions or credibility.”
Fisk is a historically Black campus located near downtown Nashville.
Maya Brown, executive director of Fisk’s Office of Marketing and Communications, described the messages as similar to those multiple news outlets have reported are circulating at campuses across the country: racist messages that appear to target Black students that tell them to report to vans or other transportation that will deliver them to plantations to pick cotton.