Trump’s Pet-Eating Claim Meant Crisis for This Campus Leader

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During his September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump amplified a debunked rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating people’s pet cats and dogs. Soon, Wittenberg University, a private institution in Springfield, began receiving violent threats. Michael Frandsen, the university’s president, feared the worst — and got an education in the viral power of misinformation.

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Guest: Michael Frandsen, president of Wittenberg University

Transcript

This transcript was produced using a speech recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.

Jack Stripling This is College Matters from the Chronicle.

Michael Frandsen When they became more specific, that got really troubling. When they mentioned a student by name, that’s when it really, really got real for everybody.

Jack Stripling For a few days in September, it seemed like all anyone could talk about were the domesticated cats and dogs of Springfield, Ohio. During his September 10th debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump repeated and amplified a baseless rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were stealing people’s pets and eating them. This pernicious claim wreaked havoc on Springfield, where government offices and schools became the target of threats. This was also true of Wittenberg University, a private college in Springfield, where officials were so concerned about safety that they shifted to online instruction for a week and canceled athletic events. But that’s only part of the story unfolding today at Wittenberg, a Lutheran college with about 1,300 students. Like a lot of small private colleges nationally, Wittenberg faces big challenges that go beyond the politics of the moment. Budget shortfalls and enrollment declines have forced the university to lay off faculty and cut programs. In an unlikely turn of events, Wittenberg University has found itself at the center of some of the most vexing issues facing the country today: Political polarization. Misinformation. Immigration. Economic uncertainty and demographic change. Somehow, in a flash, it all came together at a small private college in a midwestern town of about 60,000 people. I wanted to know what this strangely potent moment has been like for a man at the center of it all: Michael Frandsen, the president of Wittenberg University. And I’m pleased to report that after a little bit of arm twisting, he agreed to talk with me about all of this on College Matters. Dr. Frandsen, thank you so much for being here.

Michael Frandsen Thanks, Jack. I’m glad to be here. Glad to share my story. And more importantly, Wittenberg and Springfield’s story.

Jack Stripling Thank you so much for doing that. So I want to tell listeners right out of the gate that we’re recording this conversation a couple of weeks before the presidential election. But that’s okay because I’m not going to ask you to predict the future. In fact, the first thing I want to do is to go back in time. And so it’s September 10th at 9 p.m. Eastern, and Kamala Harris is facing off with Donald Trump in a much anticipated televised presidential debate. What were you doing that night?

Michael Frandsen You know, I was interested to hear what both of the candidates had to say. I was watching the debate. I certainly did not imagine that Springfield, Ohio, was going to be part of the conversation. In hindsight, maybe I should have, but did not imagine that that was going to be part of the conversation. And, you know, heard former President Trump make those comments. And, you know, just so different from my lived experience here in Springfield. And, you know, I probably scoffed because, again, you know, just not at all my lived experience with our new neighbors here in Springfield, Ohio. And political rhetoric on both sides is prone to exaggeration. And, uh, there it was again.

Jack Stripling By now, most people will have heard what Donald Trump said at the debate. But let’s hear a clip.

Donald Trump In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.

Michael Frandsen My experience with the population growth we’ve had is that I have a lot of good new neighbors that I hear from my friends who are running manufacturing companies in town or other entities in town that they have good new employees, much needed employees. And that while those accusations had been made that our city leadership, the city police, had refuted those as nothing but baseless rumors.

Jack Stripling Did you immediately recognize that this might affect your university in some way?

Michael Frandsen No idea. No idea that it would escalate to what, what it did. It had been something of an issue in Springfield. And certainly, you know, we’ve grown by 15 to 20,000 people, the estimates. Predominantly Haitian immigrants here on temporary protected status legally in this country and filling jobs that were going unfilled. Then this blows up. This gets national attention. But did I think it would impact Wittenberg University and our 1,300 students and 300 faculty and staff? No, I didn’t imagine that it would come to us.

Jack Stripling Was there any communication with members of your cabinet, members of your board? Do you remember having any back and forth that night?

Michael Frandsen No, none at all. None at all.

Jack Stripling So you really don’t see much coming here? You think this is kind of a one off?

Michael Frandsen Yeah. Yeah. And again, you know, Wittenberg wasn’t mentioned specifically, so I didn’t have any clue that this would escalate to a problem and a significant problem for us.

Jack Stripling Yeah. In the days after the debate, the debate was held on a Tuesday, the political rhetoric around this issue really starts heating up. There’s all kinds of vitriol online about the immigrant population in Springfield. There’s intense media coverage. And by the weekend, things seemed to reach a critical point, both for the city and for the university in particular. Tell me what happened.

Michael Frandsen You know, threats started coming into the city a couple of days before we got any threats. And so that was the point at which I maybe started to think a little bit that it could have an impact on us. Initially, again, threats came in to the city, to the public schools, to the hospital, to other entities in town, but not to us. And then we received a threat. And all of a sudden, it’s crisis mode, right? Is this real? Is it not real? How do we respond to this? We have a campus police force. We have sworn officers on our campus, so activating them, getting them connected with the Springfield Police Department, with the Ohio State Highway Patrol, Ohio Department of Homeland Security, just to kind of coordinate our efforts, make sure we really know as best we can know what’s going on and figure out how to respond. You know, we do have a campus police force, but it’s stretched already. You know, we don’t have extra resources to address this sort of thing. We’re fortunate, again, to have great partnerships in the city and in the state to help support us. But there was a big demand on everybody’s resources as these threats were coming in to us now and to different entities around town.

Jack Stripling Talk to me about the first threat that you received. What was the nature of it?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, you know, the first threat we received was a threat that someone was coming to shoot people on our campus. And in particularly coming to seek out Haitian immigrants who were on our campus. That was the first threat. It was pretty vile. And we do not currently have any students from Haiti enrolled at Wittenberg. We do not have employees who are here as part of the Temporary Protected Status program. Not that we wouldn’t welcome them, but we don’t have any at this point in time. But, you know, this was a very real, real threat. And given the threats going on to other entities in the city one we knew we needed to take seriously.

Jack Stripling Who did it go to? How did you learn of it?

Michael Frandsen It came in through our Visit Wittenberg email address. So email we have set up for prospective students to reach out and contact us to get more information and to come and visit campus and learn more about what it would be like to be a student at Wittenberg. And that is how it came in initially. As threats continued to come in, they often were coming in through those sorts of office email addresses. There were some sent to individuals.

Jack Stripling And I think around probably Saturday, just a few days after the debate, is when I, when I think that first threat came in. Does that jibe with your memory?

Michael Frandsen: Yeah.

Jack Stripling: So I think some people would be interested in knowing a little bit more about the crisis management piece for somebody in college leadership at that point. So what do you do? Who brings this to you? Try to tell me specifically how you respond.

Michael Frandsen So I was out of town, actually, and I got initially an email from the associate VP who oversees our campus police force, then gathered my senior staff to talk about what we were seeing, what we were hearing, just make sure everyone was aware, got our our head of public safety, our chief of police involved in the conversation so that he could let us know what he was hearing from his sources in the city, the county sheriff, things like that. You know, worked with our communications folks about getting a message out about this threat and how we were responding to it, what our sense of the safety and security of students really was given the threat we’d received.

Jack Stripling How would you describe the mood of that meeting?

Michael Frandsen You know, I have a really good team that works really well together. So I think, matter of fact. We’ve got a problem we need to address, we’re going to address it. Covid taught us a lot about how to do this and how to work together. And a lot of the players are the same as they were back in 2020. So, you know, fortunate that we’ve... fortunate or unfortunate that we’ve had some experience around this sort of thing.

Jack Stripling When you get a firehose of threats like this, which it sounds like you eventually did, it’s got to be difficult to know how seriously to take them. You have to take them seriously. But as president, were you legit concerned that somebody was going to come on your campus and hurt people?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, I was, you know, I knew the possibility was remote. You know, most often these sorts of threats don’t materialize into any action. But I was definitely worried that it could happen here. We had had, you know, prior to that, prior to the debate even, we had had some hate groups in town in Springfield around this issue with immigration. And so because of that, probably more concerned that something could happen. As we received more and more threats, they started to have information that was pretty specific: a car of a certain color and certain type parked on a certain street with a bomb in it. And in fact, there was a car of that type and color parked on that street.

Jack Stripling This is a red Honda Civic, I believe.

Michael Frandsen This is a red Honda Civic. That’s it, you got it. And our police city police checked it out. Not a bomb. But you know, the first one where were you were coming to to your campus to shoot Haitians? Okay. That’s troubling. When they became more specific, that got really troubling. When they mentioned a student by name, that’s when it really, really got real for everybody. And that student had been quoted in a piece that Newsweek did about the situation in Springfield. I suspect that whoever was making these threats picked that up and picked up that student’s name through that outlet. But, you know, you have a threat come in that says, you know, I know what dormitory this student lives in. I know what this student’s hometown is and where they live in their hometown. And yeah, it, it gets your attention if it didn’t have your attention already.

Jack Stripling Well, that’s got to be frightening and disturbing for all parties involved. You know, you mentioned that first meeting being kind of all business and maybe Covid being a little bit of a dry run for this; people coming together. I’ve got to imagine, though, that there’s any number of emotions that go through your head during this period of time. Talk to me about how you were feeling personally, particularly as this got personal as a particular student was named.

Michael Frandsen As things got more and more specific, it obviously became more of a concern, right? Is this real, when they can name people, name locations pretty specifically? Now, there are lots of red Honda Civics in the world. Could it have been somebody throwing that out and hoping that there was one there, or did somebody know?

Jack Stripling I guess you could look at that one of two ways. I mean, you’re probably running suspects through your head. It would be natural to.

Michael Frandsen: I was.

Jack Stripling: You’re thinking either this is somebody who lives in town and knows this or this is somebody who’s done a lot of, you know, surveillance, which is probably more disturbing in its own way.

Michael Frandsen: Disturbing. Yes. Yes.

Jack Stripling: Were those the sort of options you’re thinking about and talking with your law enforcement about?

Michael Frandsen The fact that there was a lag between the threats that came to the city and the threats that came to us, for me, kind of fueled that: Is this a copycat who’s targeting Wittenberg with these same sorts of threats relative to this issue? But is it really not as connected as it appears, given the specificity to Wittenberg?

Jack Stripling Did you reach out to the student and or their parents?

Michael Frandsen I did. I reached out to the student and that’s a good lesson, right? So, we had told students we were going to have remote instruction. Most of our students live within three hours of campus. Many, many of them went home. And this student had gone home. Our dean of students had reached out to the student. Our chief of police had reached out to the student. Our chief of police had made a contact with the county sheriff in the student’s home county to provide support if necessary. And then I reached out and I called the student and the student answers the phone and I said, ‘Is this Students name?’ And long pause on the other end. And I quickly — not quickly enough — said, ‘This is President Frandsen,’ right? And I realize after the fact if I knew someone had threatened me personally and I get a phone call from a voice I don’t probably recognize, and the question that voice asks is, ‘Is this, my name,’ I’m actually kind of surprised the student didn’t hang up. I must have been quick enough to identify myself. I surely hope I never find myself in that situation again. But if I do, you can be sure I will introduce myself before I say anything else.

Jack Stripling I mean, I think that just tells you everything about just how ominous the situation must have felt for people on your campus.

Michael Frandsen Absolutely. And again, particularly for this individual whose name was in one of the threats. And people around town received death threats, right? I did not. But the mayor did. Some of the heads of some of the manufacturing firms that have employed a number of the Haitian immigrants received death threats. You know, we had young children in these families who had state police protection because of these threats against, you know, their parents and their families. The impact on us was significant, but minimal compared to what some other people in town experienced.

Jack Stripling And we should say that probably at this point in the timeline, you’ve moved to remote instruction, you’ve canceled athletic events and so forth. I mean, the college is kind of closing down. You’re still operating classes online, right?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, we operated classes online. We had, initially we had about 200 students who stayed on campus. Ultimately, it dropped down to less than 100. We still had to feed them. So our dining hall was open limited hours with more security. But we still were operating. We were still having classes just by remote delivery. But our resources, combined with the resources that the state and others could provide to us, weren’t enough for us to keep all of our activities happening on campus. And one of the things that we did was, again, canceled the sporting events because we couldn’t protect practices here on campus. We just didn’t have the bandwidth to cover that.

Jack Stripling So I should probably say there is another two year college in the area, Clark State College, that also moved online during this period. You weren’t the only institution going through this. But when you talk about the escalation of threats, the rising level of specificity about them, I’m sure that creates tension. I’m sure there’s fear. It sounds like you had concerns about whether you had the bandwidth to secure the campus. I can’t imagine, though, that you didn’t also feel some frustration, if not even anger, that you were put in this position.

Michael Frandsen Yeah, absolutely. We had enough on our plate, right? Like so many small residential colleges were struggling with challenges, with enrollment, challenges with our finances. We’d just been through making some tough decisions. The last thing that I or we needed was another kerfuffle of any sort. And to have this come up completely out of our control, completely driven by false narrative, debunked set of assertions. Yeah, it was frustrating. It made me angry. It made me angry for our students that they were disrupted. That things they wanted to do were disrupted, that I didn’t have the ability to control and make it better for them. I often say that I try to manage the things that I can control and that I’ve reached a point in life where I’ve gotten a lot better at distinguishing between what I can control and what I can’t. And this was a situation where a lot of it was out of my control. And that’s frustrating. That’s angering. But I, you know, I trusted our local law enforcement, I trusted our on-campus police to help me make the best decisions for everybody going forward. And I think we did, given the information we had.

Jack Stripling Stick around. We’ll be back in a minute.

[BREAK]

Jack Stripling I know that you’re in a delicate position as a college president when it relates to national politics, and I respect and understand that. But I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you if you were specifically angry at Donald Trump.

Michael Frandsen Sure. But, you know, it’s bigger than any one person, right? You know, Senator Vance has certainly contributed to the amplification of this. But it also, it started in our community, right? It’s not that Donald Trump or J.D. Vance started this story. The story started in our community. It started in our community by a person who has since indicated that they made it up, right? And so, yeah. Was I angry that it was even part of the political discourse? Certainly. But again, we’d had hate groups encamp in town. We’d seen protests at city council meetings or citizen complaints at city council meetings just kind of piling on at that point.

Jack Stripling But did you feel that you were in any way constrained in how you could talk about this because you didn’t want to steer right into a political firestorm?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, probably a little bit. Really focused on what’s the impact on us? And how are we going to deal with it for us and for our students, for our faculty and staff. How we got there, less important in the moment than what we were going to do about it.

Jack Stripling Are you hearing demands from students, faculty who might lean left? We want you to say more? We want you to be more aggressive about this?

Michael Frandsen I did. I also heard from the other side saying, leave that out of this. So.

Jack Stripling Well, I really want to drill into something you said a few moments ago about how this story got legs to begin with, and it predates Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, as you say. It’s a story that, you know, the nation has kind of come to learn about in an interesting way. You know, with respect to Springfield, I think a lot of people didn’t know a ton about it or what was happening. And in recent weeks and months, people have learned that the city estimates, I think there are between 12 and 15,000 immigrants in Clark County is what, what I’ve seen. Many Haitian immigrants in Springfield and elsewhere in the United States under Temporary Protected Status, which is offered to people from countries in crisis. And the city has acknowledged that this demographic change has put some strain on local resources, including public safety, health care and schools. What do you say to a prospective student or parent who’s concerned about this?

Michael Frandsen Yeah. You know, they’ve asked. They have expressed concern. What I’ve said is that what you’ve heard in the news has some truth in it, that our population has grown significantly, that that has placed some stress on city services. But my lived experience is that these are our good neighbors who are contributing to our community, who are filling jobs that needed to be filled. And part of our ethos here on campus is community service and outreach to the community. Our motto is, ‘Having light, we pass it on to others.’ And so our students have gotten engaged with the community on many, many levels over many, many years. And this is another opportunity in that regard. Our Hagen Center for Civic and Urban Engagement leads those efforts. The director of that center is involved in the Haitian Coalition that’s developed in the city to help the whole city — not just the Haitian immigrants, but the whole city — adapt to the growth that we’ve experienced, adapt to the need for translators in the schools and at the health care facilities. And so, you know, in some ways, it presents a learning opportunity and a learning opportunity that our students can actually have an impact in, right?. Springfield is still a small enough place that the students can go out and have an impact through the work they do.

Jack Stripling How worried are you that there’s been reputational damage to the university that you’re going to have trouble undoing? I’m wondering if you’re thinking there’s a student out there who might otherwise have looked at Wittenberg who says, ‘That’s the place where they ate pets,’ regardless of that story being false?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, it’s a concern, without a doubt. There are lots of things that go through the minds of 18 year olds in their families as they’re selecting colleges, right? And we don’t want to have negative things out there about Wittenberg, whatever they might be. And certainly this was a period of time where we had some negative things for us, specific to us, with the programs we had to cut, positions we had to eliminate, and then to get piled on with the Springfield national media, the international media, you know, those things certainly were negative, may continue to be perceived as negative. I’m hoping the counterbalance to that is that more people know about us, and more people might take a look and they might find that there’s something here for them. I’m really glad that this didn’t happen in March, right? As we’re approaching May 1 — less and less meaningful, but official college decision date — you know, if we were six weeks out from that, this probably would have had a very real and very immediate impact.

Jack Stripling Have you heard from specific, I know we’re kind of, as you say, not in the season but I mean, have you heard from specific people who say I’m, I was thinking about Wittenberg, now I’m not?

Michael Frandsen I have not heard that from anyone. I have heard ‘I’m thinking about Wittenberg, tell me more about what’s happening.’ But I have not heard anybody say, ‘I’m out. Given these things that have happened, I’m not not interested.’

Jack Stripling The flipside of this being a pretty divided country is that for every person who is calling in a bomb threat on a red Honda Civic, there are probably hundreds of people who have a great deal of sympathy for your town. In an odd way, does that present an opportunity for the university?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, yeah, I absolutely think so. And I actually think even with our division, there are probably more people who feel sympathy for our town. And long term, that may be helpful to Wittenberg and to Springfield and to Clark County and to our new neighbors. Yeah, In the short run, it certainly wasn’t helpful. But, you know, maybe in the long run, the attention is a good thing. We did lose a couple of students after we went to remote instruction for a week, students who were concerned about the situation. You know, we always lose students in the first week of a new semester. And we had two who pointed to this particular thing. We might have lost two others for some other thing in another year. So, yes, I’m troubled by losing any student. But if you’d asked me on Sunday or Monday after that first threat came in on Saturday what the impact might be, I probably would have guessed it would be more immediately impactful than it was.

Jack Stripling Even before the presidential debate, Wittenberg was going through a tough time. There have been a lot of concerns about finances. Tell me about that.

Michael Frandsen Yeah. So, you know, we’ve been struggling like so many institutions of our size and type for a while. Our enrollment has actually stabilized and been stable over the last four years. But stable is not what we were looking for. We were looking to grow. And we knew we weren’t going to grow to the levels of 30 years ago or even ten years ago. But we had belief that we were going to be able to grow our enrollment some. It became clear that at least in the near term, that’s not likely and we needed to right size, to make some choices to adjust to that reality. And, you know, in July, the board directed me to make some pretty significant reductions.

Jack Stripling I know at one point there was talk of maybe cutting something like 60 percent of faculty positions. Did it end up being that extreme?

Michael Frandsen No, no, we have about 100 faculty. And yes, there was an initial plan to potentially cut nearly 60 percent. We ended up cutting about 25 percent of the faculty. We have a very small number of students in major programs impacted by that.

Jack Stripling And this never makes campuses happy. So I am wondering, you have this very unexpected moment of crisis.

Michael Frandsen Yeah.

Jack Stripling At that point in time, is it fair to say you’re not the most popular guy on campus?

Michael Frandsen Yeah, probably. That’s probably fair. The leader gets all the blame sometimes, and that’s an occupational hazard that I’m fine with.

Jack Stripling I would imagine that when you reflect on your life in college leadership that this will be something you’ll remember. And I wonder if you can even say now what it is you think you will remember about this experience.

Michael Frandsen You know, I hope I’ll remember that a team of people really came together to meet the moment and, you know, dealing with bits of information and ever changing information, lots of uncertainty. But that we worked together to meet the moment.

Jack Stripling For better or worse, what did this reveal to you about the country?

Michael Frandsen Um, just how easy it is for any information, good or bad, to get amplified and spread like wildfire. And I knew that, but I never felt it before. This really brought it home. Not only in my backyard. It was in my front yard and all around me. You know, I have to go through metal detectors in Springfield in places I never had to go through metal detectors before. There are still state police officers in our elementary schools. It’s a little surreal. It’s the country we live in right now.

Jack Stripling Are you saddened by that?

Michael Frandsen I am. I am. You know, I wish... I think there are big issues in the world. And we get distracted by little issues or non-issues or falsehoods that take away people’s attention from some bigger issues. What’s happening in the Middle East, what’s happening in Ukraine, what’s happening with the climate, what’s happening with water. There are all sorts of issues that I think would deserve more attention than they seem to get when we get into falsehoods and discussions about things that aren’t big picture issues. Now, immigration is one of those big picture issues, for sure.

Jack Stripling Sure.

Michael Frandsen You know, it absolutely is.

Jack Stripling You know, I was thinking about this this morning, and I was thinking, you know, when historians look back on the 2024 election, they’re going to write about Joe Biden dropping out of the race. But I can’t help but think this might be a footnote in some future book. Do you find it a little interesting, if not bizarre, that Wittenberg University has somehow found itself in the midst of one of the bigger political stories of this campaign?

Michael Frandsen Absolutely. Absolutely. And again, you know, I watched the debate. Did I think for even a moment that Wittenberg was going to get dragged into this? I did not. I did not. There’ll be a couple paragraphs about Haitian immigrants, cats, dogs and Springfield in the historical record.

Jack Stripling Well, as you say, immigration is a big issue that people in this country care deeply about. But as somebody who has done all kinds of reporting for many years, I also know that people care deeply about pets and that that may have something to do with the resonance of this story. And I am curious, does the president of Wittenberg University have any pets?

Michael Frandsen I do. I have a golden retriever, Thea, who is a very popular creature on our campus. My wife and I live on campus. Thea gets a walk around campus at least twice a day, and the students are always eager to say hello to Thea, and she is eager to say hello to them as well.

Jack Stripling Well, I wish you and your wife and Thea all the best of luck. Thank you for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Michael Frandsen Thank you, Jack. Appreciate the opportunity.

Jack Stripling College Matters from The Chronicle is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and much more at chronicle.com/collegematters. If you like, drop us a note at collegematters@chronicle.com. We are produced by Rococo Punch. Our podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues Brock Read, Sarah Brown, Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez, Laura Krantz, Carmen Mendoza, Ron Coddington, Joshua Hatch, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible. I’m Jack Stripling. Thanks for listening.