Wittenberg University in Springfield cancels football game amid threats in city over Haitian immigration

Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, has canceled all sporting events this week, including a home game for its football team on Saturday, due to ongoing threats to the campus, school police and the athletic department said.

The canceled games and practices are part of a broader freeze on campus activities at the university, including in-person classes through Sunday. The city of Springfield has been the subject of widespread threats after false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets were made by presidential candidate Donald Trump — most notably in his debate last week with Vice President Kamala Harris — and his vice presidential running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance.

After receiving new threats on Monday, campus police warned that “Wittenberg will be operating completely remote for the remainder of the week.”

Wittenberg’s athletic department issued a separate statement Tuesday saying that “all home and away games through Sunday have been canceled.” This includes a home football game scheduled for Saturday against fellow Division III program Hiram. Wittenberg’s football schedule lists Saturday’s game as “cancelled due to a threat to campus safety.”

Trump has made immigration a central theme of his campaign against Harris. Springfield, a city of 60,000, has received an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Haitian immigrants in recent years, according to NPR.

Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, said Monday that at least 33 bomb threats had been made in the city in recent days and that they were all hoaxes. DeWine said some of the threats came from overseas and declined to say where.

“There’s a lot of nonsense on the Internet and this is nonsense that’s just not true. There’s no evidence for it at all,” DeWine said of the claims about eating pets.

The threats have led to closures across the city. Like Wittenberg, Clark State College in Springfield canceled on-site classes this week because of the threats. Public schools were evacuated Friday because of the threats and closed Monday. They reopened Tuesday amid heightened security, including state troopers and bomb-sniffing dogs.

Springfield also canceled its CultureFest, an annual celebration of diversity and the arts that was scheduled to begin Sept. 27.

Andy Wilson, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, condemned the threats and disruption to daily life in Springfield.

“The people who are doing this are doing this to divide our community,” Wilson said, according to the Associated Press. “We just can’t let them do it. We can’t let them do it. We have to continue to provide the services that the citizens of Springfield and Clark County expect.”