Many parents first heard about a threat written on a bathroom wall at Collingwood Collegiate Institute through social media and a text chain between their kids on Wednesday night.
On Thursday, police attended the Collingwood high school regarding the message. According to an emailed letter sent to parents at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, principal Charlene Scime said an inappropriate message was written on a bathroom wall inside the school.
In the letter, Scime did not elaborate on the contents of the inappropriate message, however Collingwood OPP described the message as "graffiti involving a threat.”
“I’m pretty pissed off. With all the other stuff going on, I get it. But this is a pretty big thing if what the kids were saying was true,” said Dave, a parent who asked his real name not be used.
“When we heard about it (Wednesday) night, my first comment was, 'let’s wait and see. You know how social media works... things get inflamed really fast. Let’s see if we can get to the bottom of it.' But we couldn’t.”
“For Collingwood, this is pretty out there. But to see this email almost two hours after school had already started kind of took the decision out of everybody’s hands. If we had sent our kid to school and got that (email), I would have been furious,” he said.
Dave has a son in Grade 12 at CCI.
On Wednesday night at about 10 p.m., Dave’s son told him rumours had been circulating about a possible threat of violence at the school, with a date of Oct. 1.
“My son had got some texts from various friends at school, that there was a threat of some sort that had been posted in the bathroom,” said Dave.
A Snapchat message and Facebook posts have been obtained by CollingwoodToday which verify that many CCI parents and students shared this information with each other on Wednesday night, and into Thursday morning.
“We didn’t hear specifics, but we did hear ‘gun’ mentioned,” said Dave. “We contacted other parents to see if they had heard anything and it seemed to be circulating among the kids at that point.”
As no information was sent by the school to parents by the time the bus was planned to arrive on Thursday morning, Dave's son decided to stay home.
When he initially got the school email calling it an ‘inappropriate message,’ Dave said he thought it was most likely a bigoted message, and was appalled to find out later it was a threat.
“Nobody’s actually saying what it was, so we’re still going off what we were told from the kids,” said Dave.
Marilla Bull’s stepdaughter is in Grade 9 at CCI. She also stayed home on Thursday.
“I heard about it at 8:40 a.m. One of my friends shared a post on Facebook,” said Bull. “I was concerned it wasn’t real, so I called the school. I got lucky and got through and was told there was a threat against the school.”
“I told them I’d be keeping my kid at home,” she said.
When Bull received the email from the school, she was disappointed.
“I feel it was very vague and non-informative,” said Bull, adding she has not been given any further official information from the school since the initial email went out.
“I found out today there were people aware of this situation (Wednesday) night and I feel the school should have taken more action. There were many parents upset to find out about this after they had already dropped their children off,” said Bull.
When contacted with follow up questions late Thursday, OPP Const. Katy Viccary said the investigation was not yet complete and would continue over the next few days. She was unable to provide further information at that time, and OPP did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday morning.
CCI Principal Charlene Scime also did not return requests for comment by Friday morning.
“It makes me worry about the school (my stepdaughter is) in and whether she’ll be safe. We already have a pandemic on our hands. Mental health has just been completely overlooked,” said Bull.
“I wish they would have been more proactive and pay attention to their students. I know (the school) has lock-down procedures, but are they talking to the children and getting to know them? Whoever wrote that (message) has some pretty interesting thoughts going on in their head," she said.
“I don’t want this just getting swept under the rug,” she added.
