Last night, a shooting took place inside of the Strozier Library at Florida State University. And while police are still trying to figure out exactly what happened, three people were shot during the incident. One is currently in critical condition at a nearby hospital, one is in good condition at the same hospital, and a third person was treated at the scene of the crime and then released. So clearly, the last thing that anyone should be doing right now is making jokes about the shooting.
But late last night, a short time after news about the shooting started to make the rounds on social media, University of Alabama student Marisa Martin—who is a campus reporter for ESPNU—made a terrible Jameis Winston joke in relation to the shooting. She deleted the tweet a short time after it went up. But several people screengrabbed her tweet and reposted it on Twitter:
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Martin then tried to explain herself by sending out another tweet about the situation.
"Since apparently I can't make a joke," she tweeted, "in all seriousness I hope everyone at FSU is safe & that the gunman is found. But I stand by my opinions."
That obviously did little to make up for her original tweet, though. And at some point, the backlash against her got so bad that she decided to delete her Twitter account altogether. She also used the @UACampusConnect Twitter account to claim that her account had been hacked, which is why the Jameis Winston tweet went out in the first place.
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It's important to note that Martin is not an ESPN employee. She is a part of ESPN's Campus Connection, which allows students like her to contribute to ESPNU's college coverage. But regardless, she picked a very bad time to make a joke on Twitter and is catching hell for what she did:
Let this be yet another reminder that you should think twice before you press send on social media.
[via AL.com]
