Black Student Activist Receives 90 Days in Jail and $82,000 Fine for Fake Hate Tweets

Charlie McKenna | June 30, 2016
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A Kean University student who issued fake threats against black students was sentence to 90-day jail sentence, five years probation, and an $82,000 fine after pleading guilty to causing a false public alarm.

In April, Kayla-Simone McKelvey, a black student activist in New Jersey, pleaded guilty to causing a false public alarm after she sent out tweets targeting black students during a racial awareness rally she organized. She warned the students attending about the threats she had written in order to drum up support for her cause. One of the tweets allegedly stated, “I will kill all the blacks tonight, tomorrow and any other day.”

Although she apologized in court, McKelvey tried to excuse herself by saying that she had heard students shouting “white power” and calling black people “monkeys.” Her lawyer argued that Mckelvey had already suffered enough from her actions, as she had lost all professional credibility, and therefore, the sentence should be mild.

However, she could not excuse herself from the University’s lost money: in response to the threats, Kean University had spent over $80,000 on extra security measures.

The presiding Judge, Robert Mega, did not believe that McKelvey showed sufficient remorse for a plea agreement, and gave her the maximum possible sentence. He called her tweets "a selfish plan of hate."

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