Anonymous death threat galvanizes MSU’s queer community

Update: On July 9, 2025, former MSU student Rex Wu pled guilty to sending this threatening email, among others. He faces five years of imprisonment, a $250,000 fine, and three years of supervised release. His sentencing will take place on Nov. 6 at the Russell Smith Federal Courthouse in Missoula.

Trigger warning: This article contains violent anti-queer rhetoric, including slurs. 

“RE: Killing all the groomers and f*ggots”

That’s the subject line of a death threat sent to the Queer-Straight Alliance (QSA) on Feb. 16, just hours before a queer-friendly dance party took place at the Rialto theater. Although they did not organize the 18+ event, the QSA helped promote it on Instagram, and some of its members attended.

“This rhetoric does us harm,” said Tierney Hula, a cell biology and neuroscience student who serves as Drag Chair for the QSA. “It can be very distracting from our ability to engage as students, to engage as equals with our peers and to feel safe on campus.”

The email originally attributed itself to MSU’s student chapter of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a national conservative organization that has drawn controversy for its anti-queer rhetoric. However, the email was sent using an encrypted email service called Proton, allowing its sender to remain anonymous. TPUSA at MSU has denied sending the email.

Upon receiving the email, the QSA leadership sprang into action to ensure the safety of its members. The Rialto’s building manager and the Bozeman Police Department (PD) were immediately notified, the latter of which increased patrols in the vicinity.

Several attendees who felt unsafe remaining at the event were personally driven home by members of the QSA. Otherwise, the event proceeded safely and without interruption. Once its members were safe and accounted for, the QSA began alerting its allies in the community, both institutional and grassroots.

“One of the biggest things that might not seem like a security measure is making it clear that we have a network of support and solidarity within this community,” Hula said, explaining that the QSA has existed at MSU for almost five decades. “We have huge strength in numbers.”

Included in that network is the Associated Students of Montana State University (ASMSU), which was adjourning its weekly senate meeting as the dance party kicked off.

Marquayvion Hughes, a political science student, is the student government’s liaison to the Diversity and Inclusion Student Commons (DISC). He was in the middle of writing an essay and missing his ice scraper when the QSA contacted him.

“I’m scraping ice off my windshield with a debit card so I can get to the SUB, inform people and get to doing things,” Hughes said as he recalled the long and chaotic night.

Hughes said the student senate was disturbed upon learning of the threats and had one thing on its mind: “Students are in danger and we need to do something to protect them,” he said.

ASMSU was able to provide emergency housing to several individuals who felt unsafe in their university housing due to the threat, according to Hughes. At the request of the QSA, the names and emails of its members were removed from CatsConnect to protect their identities. ASMSU also took several symbolic actions, including writing a draft of a resolution to condemn the threats. Hughes said some senators worked until 2:00 a.m. that night.

According to multiple accounts of the night, MSU President Waded Cruzado was immediately informed of the situation. However, the silence from the university’s upper administration since then has frustrated some students, including Hughes and members of the QSA.

“It is noticeable that there hasn’t been a statement from the university on this,” Hula said. “I think it can be very clearly stated, without any controversy, that this is inappropriate.”

MSU Vice President of Communications Tracy Ellig said that, by releasing a public statement, the university could inadvertently magnify the message of the sender.

Instead, he said, the university makes its statement through resources on campus for students.

“We speak to it with the many offices and programs we have to support students, especially those in minority groups,” Ellig said, pointing to the recent creation of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and the Diversity and Inclusion Student Commons. “These are all actions of President Cruzado to dedicate time, staff and resources to speak for the university about our values.”

Hughes said situations like the threats sent to the QSA have complicated his work at the DISC. He said a prospective student came in to ask about how safe MSU is for diverse students the day after the threats were sent.

“This [had] just happened less than 12 hours ago. I didn’t know what to say. It broke my heart because I really do love this university,” Hughes said. “But the fact that there are so many cogs that are unchanging, it really makes a lot of situations harder.”

Marianne Brough, the Director of the Office of Student Engagement, explained TPUSA MSU’s current status on campus. “They’re not a student club right now. Turning Point is having a really difficult time finding an advisor,” she said. “But they have been in the past. And they have been very vocal and influential on campus in the past.”

Her office oversees all of MSU’s recognized student organizations, including ASMSU, the QSA, and, at times, TPUSA MSU. Although they are currently unrecognized, TPUSA MSU president Andrew Blickensderfer, a civil engineering student, said the group still meets every other week.

Brough said the Office of Student Engagement contacted TPUSA MSU and offered them a chance to explain themselves. “If that’s your version of the story, let us know and we’ll tell it,” she said.

According to Ellig, ASMSU President Lucas Oelkers acted as a “diplomat” between the QSA and TPUSA MSU. Blickensderfer said sending a memo directly to the QSA was Oelkers's recommendation and that overall he found ASMSU to be helpful in responding to “this hideous email.”

In response, TPUSA MSU sent a memorandum to the QSA, writing that the email was “falsely attributed” to them “in an effort to defame our club.”

“Your organization and the people you represent do not deserve to be mistreated, harassed, or harmed. We are sincerely sympathetic to all those who were distressed by the hateful message,” reads the memo, which TPUSA MSU sent the day after the threats were received.

Brough says her office will not discipline TPUSA MSU as long as there is doubt over who sent the threat. However, her office would take action if necessary.

“If Turning Point is actually responsible for this, they will be prohibited from participating on campus,” Brough said.

Determining the email's true sender is the responsibility of MSU PD Lieutenant Ken Perry. He said MSU PD began investigating as soon as “everyone was safe at that moment.” Unfortunately, the anonymous messaging service Proton has stifled attempts to trace the email back to its sender.

“Proton is based out of Switzerland. It is very, very private and that’s what it advertises. It’s also, to my knowledge, accessed via the dark web,” Perry said. “Being that Proton is in another country, has no need to respect our legal processes, and has basically sworn to secrecy, we have received very little information from them.”

Perry hopes the FBI will be able to extract more information from the Swiss company. “What the FBI has is clout through the state department overseas that we simply don’t have,” he said.

For now, Perry’s investigation will rely on word of mouth. He has already interviewed members of TPUSA, who he said were fully cooperative. “Whoever sent this, my hope is that they’re bragging about it, and that information leeches back to me,” he said.

Unfortunately, the QSA has already received a second hateful email on Feb. 23. The second email was also attributed to TPUSA MSU and sent using Proton mail. Perry said the two emails were “connected in a sense.”

“Do I think it’s the same person or group? As an investigator, I have to keep an open mind about that,” he said.

Although the second email does not directly threaten violence, it has similar rhetoric to the first. “Sinners, you may have been able to coerce some of us into silence, but a majority of Montanan’s, along with our founder Charlie Kirk, will always be against your satanic ways,” it reads.

Charlie Kirk, the co-founder and CEO of Turning Point USA, has drawn both scorn and support for his increasingly open calls for violence against queer youth. On Saturday, Feb. 20, just two days after the threat was sent, Charlie Kirk called for the listeners of his podcast, The Charlie Kirk Show, to “take care of” transgender student athletes “like we used to in the 50s and 60s.”

The 29-year-old commentator has made a high-profile career drumming up support for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation on college campuses nationwide. Particularly, Kirk has protested the normalization and visibility of transgender students and athletes in public schools.

Brough says Kirk’s rhetoric clearly violates the student code of conduct, which specifically protects queer identities from discrimination and hate speech. However, she said the Office of Student Engagement cannot hold the MSU chapter of the organization responsible for the words of its CEO, who actually visited the MSU campus in 2019 as part of his Campus Clash tour.

“I find that personally reprehensible and a hateful piece of speech. [But] it has not been consistent with the behaviors of that club within the matrix of MSU,” Brough said. “It’s really difficult to say, are you a true believer in this ideology? And then say, now you are cut off.”

Blickensderfer said he isn’t completely aware of all the opinions of the TPUSA founder. “I do not know all the opinions of Charlie Kirk. Our club supports free markets, limited government, and civil liberties,” he said.

Unfortunately, the QSA is all too familiar with hearing bigoted views.

“A lot of the rhetoric that was included in this email, especially in the last several years, has been incredibly prevalent in our legislative and government processes,” said Kole Burdick, a human development student and treasurer for the QSA. Four days after the threats were sent, members of the QSA traveled to Helena to hear testimony regarding anti-queer legislation.

One piece of legislation, SB 315, would require school districts to provide reports on comprehensive sex education to Montana’s Office of Public Instruction. Hula attended the bill’s committee hearing and said that opponents of the bill used rhetoric similar to that contained in the threatening email.

“We heard groomer rhetoric being used very often by the individuals and organizations coming up to testify in opposition to this bill. We [also] heard a lot of anti-trans and anti-LGBT rhetoric being used as official testimony against this bill,” Hula said.

The QSA is also concerned with HB 359, which would ban minors from attending drag shows and exclude them from occurring in public spaces like libraries and universities. Not only would this impinge upon the QSA’s ability to host drag shows, Hula said, but the broad language of the bill could potentially affect other queer-focused events on campus such as educational workshops.

HB 361 would classify misgendering or dead-naming as not discriminatory under law. Opponents of the bill say it would protect students bullying others based on their gender identity from discipline. “There has been an increase in the visibility of queer and trans joy. That is the thing that scares these people. It scares them that we are able to be out and be proud of ourselves,” Burdick said.

The QSA was adamant about continuing its work in spite of anti-queer individuals and organizations.

“While they might have big powerful voices and nasty little voices hiding behind anonymous emails, we have such strength and love and support from ourselves and our allies,” Hula said.

Correction: A segment of the original version of this story with comments from MSU Vice President of Communications Tracy Ellig has been corrected to clarify that MSU does not believe threats of violence, such as the one sent to the QSA, are protected under the First Amendment.