Campus Security & Public Safety

Turns out social media, romantic relationships, and mortuary science don’t mix.

A student at the University of Minnesota, smarting from recently getting dumped, wrote on Facebook that she wanted to stab her former man in the throat with a trocar, a tool used to drain dead bodies. When she showed up at mortuary-science class on December 14, according to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, campus police officers questioned her about the post and banned her from campus while they investigated. The police had heard about the posting from an instructor in the mortuary-science class. The student, Amanda Tatro, was allowed to return later that week, after missing two finals.

Ms. Tatro wrote on Facebook that she was “looking forward to Monday’s embalming therapy. … Give me room, lots of aggression to be taken out with a trocar,” and “I still want to stab a certain someone in the throat with a trocar.”

Tracy Mitrano, director of information-technology policy and the computer-policy and -law program at Cornell University, said it was appropriate for the university to investigate

“It doesn’t surprise me that school officials, at the very least, wanted to talk with her about that posting,” she said. “If people in this day and age do not understand they are making their private thoughts and feelings public [on the Internet], I suppose we need cases like this to remind us of that fact.”