Utah’s Nuclear Football

Picture of Cerenkov radiation surrounding the core of the UMass Lowell Research Reactor, UMass Lowell, MA, USA. Photo by University of Massachusetts, Lowell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

In case you missed it, a Utah University student was charged with making terroristic threats for posting on Yik Yak, a social media platform that has improbably been popular on college campuses for about the last ten years considering the number of media sites reporting on this story that feel it necessary to inform you, the reader, that Yik Yak is a social media platform.

Per multiple sources, a 21-year-old student tentatively identified as Meredith Miller, a woman who was carelessly given knowledge of engineering by a too-trusting university, posted that should the Utah Utes football team lose their game that weekend to the San Diego State University Aztecs she would “detonate the nuclear reactor that is located in the University of Utah causing a mass destruction.”

Before you ask, no. It is not all that odd to have a nuclear reactor on a college campus. Upwards of some two dozen schools have them. The one at the University of Utah, the only nuclear reactor in the state, is a research-only reactor. It doesn’t provide power or serve any vital purpose other than as a teaching tool. Still, you don’t want people going around blowing up your teaching tools.

Miller claims that her post was meant as a joke. There has, at least to my knowledge, been no video released of any interview she may have given, but I imagine she made that “it was a joke” claim with a straight face because it was obviously a joke.

Hyperbole is part and parcel of internet football talk. “I swear if that sumbitch misses this kick, I’m gonna kill him,” is not an indication of actual danger to the kicker unless the person saying this is his highly ambitious back-up. “Burn it down! Burn down the whole m-f-ing athletic department!” is not an actual call to burn down even a bit of the athletic department, no matter what its relationship with its mother. Calling a particular contest a Meteor Game (a game where the speaker hates both teams so much that the only satisfactory outcome is that a meteor strike midfield killing not only the teams but all of their fans as well) is not a genuine hope for fiery death from the sky. Sports fans say silly things all the time.

University of Utah Police Chief Jason Hinojosa is quoted in an ABC News report as saying, “We have a zero-tolerance policy for these kinds of threats.” Every time I hear someone invoke a zero-tolerance policy I want to ask if maybe there is someone else there we could talk to – someone who can make a decision?

I’m trying to think of a time when I’ve ever heard a zero-tolerance policy invoked with pride by an organization acting by its directives. No criminal has ever said “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for that pesky zero-tolerance policy!” There are no “Orphans Saved by Prudently Worded Zero-Tolerance Policy” headlines. It always falls out of someone’s mouth as a justification in the face of circumstances that have come to some point beyond a reasonable head or spoken with the same tones one might say “We know how stupid this is, but they made us do it.”

There will always be the that’s-the-world-we-live-in-now chorus when officials overreact to a situation. The implication is that even though we all know something is being blown way out of proportion we should nod sagely at the actions of people subject to a preset immutable course by people who made that course immutable because they obviously have no faith in the judgement of their hires. We have to pretend that a reasonable person would have done what was prescribed. It makes fools of us all.

So, given the situation – a college football fan claims she will cause mass destruction if her team loses – what should a reasonable person have considered before acting? Assuming the reasonable person knows that sports fans say all manner of insane things, probably nothing.

Again, per ABC News, “The university said in a statement on Thursday that the reactor was secured and campus law enforcement had protocols in place to ensure no breaches are made.” This had to have been well known to Chief Hinojosa.

From the University’s student paper The Daily Utah Chronicle:

“There are also safety mechanisms directly tied to the reactor, including a feature that turns off the equipment if the power levels become higher than 100 thermal kilowatts.

In addition to these safety features, there are various alarms connected to the reactor. Police response times to the alarm are tested monthly and FBI and bomb squad drills have also been held.”

Further, the Utes came in as the SP+ ranked #11 team in the nation with the Aztecs as #77. We are talking about a game pitting Utah’s #8 ranked offense against SDSU’s #48 ranked defense, Utah’s #35 ranked defense against SDNU’s #105 ranked offense. Again, from the pre-game SP+ rankings Utah was projected as an 18.2-point favorite over the average college team, while SDNU was projected as a -1.4-point dog against the same. That’s a quick-look 19.6-point spread. The “if” was never going to result in a “then.”

Sure. San Diego beat Utah last year in an upset, but that was largely due to the spectacular play of defender Cameron Thomas, who’s plying his trade with the Cardinals in the NFL now and some shaky quarterback play by a subsequently replaced Ute and despite all that the Aztecs still needed three overtimes to pull it off. Given the Utes play since that game, it would take a significantly more perfect storm to reproduce last year’s nonsense.

In the end the Utes did win 35 – 7 and all was safe in the Beehive State.

What will come of this investigation? I suspect nothing more than that for the rest of her life some poor woman is going to have to explain to every prospective employer why she was arrested for supposedly making terroristic threats over the fortunes of a college football team that doesn’t even play in the SEC.