A pre-Halloween hoax has campus Christians in no mood to celebrate after U of T’s public affairs department posted an event listing entitled “Burning Down the Cross.”
Purportedly sponsored by “Satan worshippers,” the event was to take place at U of T’s Mississauga campus in order to “worship the devil and expel the evil jesus from our society.”
The Varsity received several complaints about the event, which fraudulently claimed to be selling tickets out of the Erindale College Students Union office.
ECSU Clubs Commissioner Jon Lee quickly dispelled any notion that ECSU was involved. “There is no such club, obviously,” noted Lee, adding that because the event was posted on a free student forum, “unfortunately, it’s untraceable.”
For Campus Crusade for Christ Team Director Uche Anizor, the prank hit a major nerve. “There’s an obvious double-standard of the idea of tolerance,” said Anizor, adding “if someone wanted to bash Islam, people would go crazy.” Not that the ruse was too hard to see through. “For someone to attack Jesus seems somewhat absurd. Plain and simply from a perspective of morality and love…there is no ‘evil’ Jesus,” said Anizor.
For U of T public affairs, the hoax was an unfortunate slip-up. “It was a joke and we don’t think it was a very funny one,” said Bruce Rolston, manager of Web and info services. The free student forum receives approximately 50 posts a week notes Rolston, and this is the first time someone has put one over on them. “What’s amazing is that this has never happened before,” he notes, adding “we’re very sorry if this hurt anyone.”
