N.J. college probes origin of email critical of black students

The email sent to students, faculty and administrators may have been sent by someone who hacked the administrator's email account, campus officials said.

An administrator at Felician University was still on the job Wednesday as school officials investigate how an email critical of black students was sent from her campus account.

The investigation into the email sent Monday to students, faculty and staff has not turned up anything yet and is continuing, said Felician President Anne Prisco.

Laura Pierotti, the university's director of residence life, will remain in her post on the Lodi campus while school officials determine whether her email account was "compromised" by someone who sent the racist message under her name, the president said.

Though some on campus have called for Pierotti to be placed on leave during the investigation, Prisco said the administrator is "innocent until proven guilty."

"There's plenty of work to be done, so we've got her working and that's where we are right now," Prisco said.

Neither Pierotti nor other officials in the Catholic university's residence life office responded to requests for comment.

The email, sent from Pierotti's account late Monday, referred to black students in the university's residence halls. The email, which was first reported by NorthJersey.com, contained numerous spelling mistakes and little punctuation, leading to speculation that it was unlikely to come from a senior college administrator who had worked at Felician for nine years.

There is no evidence other university accounts were hacked, the president said.

Felician is a 2,200-student, private Roman Catholic college with campuses in Lodi and Rutherford. About 38 to 40 percent of students are white, 25 percent are Hispanic, 20 percent are black and eight percent are Asian, according to campus statistics. Other students didn't identify as one race or selected more than one race.

Taylor Plummer, a Felician senior from Plainfield, said he received the email from Pierotti and had to re-read it several times to understand the message beyond the grammatical mistakes.

"After reading it a couple of times, she couldn't have sent that. She doesn't come off as someone who would say something racist like that," said Plummer, who is black.

Plummer said he, along with other students at Felician, have interacted many times with Pierotti and the email seemed out of character for the administrator. But the email spread rapidly over students' social media accounts earlier this week.