A new trend featuring threatening posts by anonymous social media accounts posing as killer clowns has swept the nation in recent weeks with Akins being no exception.

An Akins student was arrested on Oct. 5 after posting threatening messages on Twitter, posing as a clown that targeted students at Akins. Principal Brandi Hosack sat down with The Eagle’s Eye to answer questions on how the administration is handling the social media trend.

Eagle’s Eye: Where in the nation was the first time that you heard about the clown scandal?

Brandi Hosack: I guess I heard about it maybe a month ago. I read online about clowns on the side of the road, I wanna say somewhere in South Carolina (or) something like that. Anyways, I read about something crazy like that going on.

EE: Was it something that you have ever heard about before?

Hosack: No, nothing I just thought it was some crazy person or someone just getting kicks out of scaring people and a lot of people have an aversion to clowns. I am actually one of them. It’s just kind of a weird (and) scary thing to see in the middle of nowhere. It was again someone who I don’t know has some sort of issue or they are just trying to scare folks just for their own entertainment purposes.

EE: How did you feel when you found out that it was traveling around the nation and it ended up landing in Texas?

Hosack: It all kind of happened pretty quickly from that point. I continued to read that there was something (happening) on the side of the roads or another state and then all of a sudden the next thing I know there was some sort of issue in AISD. They issued, on a Thursday or a Friday, a couple of weeks ago, a statement saying that (certain) schools have been singled out by this crazy clown person. When I read it I was like ‘Great’ because Akins actually wasn’t on there, but any good principal will tell you that it’s not if, but when.

EE: Did you ever think that it would possibly be affecting Akins?

Hosack: I mean that was my fear when I saw the list of schools. When I read the original article again I just thought it was weird, but then when it landed in Austin I was afraid that it would affect Akins because what happens in one school spreads to another school and another.

EE: What is Akins doing to prevent it from spreading further into our school?

Hosack: That’s the hard part. Social media is boundless (and) there is not a thing in the world that I can do to stop people from saying anything on social media.  It’s not just ours, there are others. There is nothing that I can do to prevent this other than just try be really honest and educate why it’s not a cool thing to do — why it’s not funny. 

EE: Some people do take this threat as a joke, but do you believe that it should be taken more seriously?

Hosack: We did take it very seriously. You can never just talk anything up to and then say it’s a prank. Some day it may not be just a prank and you never want to blow anything off that even has the smallest potential of bringing harm to anybody. I think that Akins in particular took it very seriously, obviously. As much as it frustrates me because it’s time consuming. You work every single scenario just in case. We were working with the police officers who were working like a ton of issues every time someone got tagged or whatever. We have to go investigate that and so the man hours alone are just enormous. But I will always go to the side of caution, so I don’t think we could of possibly taken it more seriously and if anything continues to occur we will take that seriously, too.