|| The Arizona Republic
An opinion writer for the University of Arizona’s student newspaper, the Daily Wildcat, said she’s faced weeks of intense harassment and inaction from the university after a fellow student, who was the subject of one of her articles, released her phone number to his social media followers.
Olivia Krupp said she’s gotten “hundreds and hundreds” of mean, obscene and threatening messages after the Sept. 19 piece she wrote about Lukas Pakter, a UA senior who’s amassed a following of more than 100,000 people on TikTok.
“I was really, really scared in the beginning and really genuinely frightened for my well-being, and it only got worse,” Krupp, a UA sophomore, said in an interview.
The article featured Pakter talking about his platform, content and following on TikTok, which he framed as giving advice and serving as a role model for other men. Krupp took a critical eye to his statements, and noted in the article that some of his followers have compared him to Andrew Tate, an online influencer who has courted controversy and faced accusations of misogyny.
Pakter declined to comment to The Arizona Republic when reached by phone, but sent a written statement.
“I have never promoted nor do I condone harassment, threats of violence, or any form of intimidation against a journalist — or anyone else. As soon as I became aware of the abhorrent communications sent to the student journalist, I made a TikTok post condemning the attacks and calling for them to stop immediately,” Pakter wrote.
The barrage of harassment began flooding her phone screen after Pakter, who was apparently disappointed with how the piece turned out, posted Krupp’s phone number and Instagram page in a TikTok video, according to Krupp and Daily Wildcat editors. That video appears to have been taken down, and Krupp said it was up for just a short time.
The Tik Tok app is one of the most popular apps in the world, and is dominated by Generation Z users.
Krupp said the phone calls, texts and Instagram messages were gross, humiliating and scary.
“Less of them were about the article as much as they were calling me fat, calling me ugly, that they hope I get raped, they hope Lukas rapes me,” she said. “I was getting calls saying, ‘I know where you live, I’m going to come kill you b—-.’ I was getting text after text, ‘You journalists should be lined up and shot.’”
