I'm sorry, but this really is not reflective of the specific threats and comments made by the persons, and it's not a matter of simply "don't look at the posts", there were pretty clear written and verbal threats made which in any other context would be grounds for a real investigation [1]. Looking though the actual document and not the think tank summary, the threats are pretty explicit:

• “Gonna tie these feminists to the radiator and [g]rape them in the mouth”;3

• “Dandy’s about to kill a bitch . . . or two”; and

• “Can we euthanize whoever caused this bullshit?”

The University certainly took the threats seriously enough to assign university security to events that the members of the plaintiff's group were attending, and the University did absolutely nothing in response to the threats by simply claiming they were powerless. Keep in mind that the context of these threats was around the time that a member of the plaintiff group had been murdered (while eventually the murder was disassociated from the events/threats, the investigation took some time). Such context lends a lot of credibility to the threats from my point of view.

The basis of the appeal and the complaint in the first place was that the University made no action to even address such threats on YikYak (it is rather important to note that this is all about YikYak [2]). This means that one of two things was true:

1. The Yaks were posted by persons within a 1.5 mile radius of the campus

2. Someone was manipulating their GPS to alter their location to make the posts.

Threatening speech has repeatedly not been protected by 1st amendment rights, and the University's refusal to even try to investigate despite having received specific complaints and requests from the plaintiffs.

This isn't about randoms on twitch going KYS after someone trash talks in a game, there were specific acts of violence repeatedly threatened after this whole affair. The University had the ability to look into the events but did not, and their response was more exculpatory than educational/investigative.

Universities in fact do have a legal requirement to investigate these things and maintain a position of neutrality and encouraging an atmosphere and culture on campus that promotes learning. When you have people openly threatening one another, that's not an atmosphere that supports learning. All this is further exacerbated by the fact that one member of the plaintiff group was killed by their roommate who was a former member of the Rugby Team which is noted in the actual opinion as having been a key element in the Yaks coming up.

Even though eventually the murder was disassociated from the rest of the events, that was not for some time -- I don't see it as unreasonable for a group of persons who are receiving death threats and rape threats to take such threats very seriously after one of their members was actually murdered.

Please just read the actual Opinions [1] top to bottom and not the think tank summary. Think Tanks are fine for finding issues, but their summaries are not to be trusted. They are always politically charged and often omit very important facts, such as the exact reasons the Court accepted the appeals (basically, the previous decision failed to meet the standards for protections under the 1st amendment and also the University did not fulfill its legal obligation in many ways)

[1] http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/Opinions/172220.P.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yik_Yak

(Edits are fixing formatting and introducing the context of the murder earlier for clarity of my second paragraph)