I find it positive and heart-warming that the entire campus community decided to support a student who was threatened, how swiftly the incident was discussed officially, how the administration responded. All universities experience instances of racism. What matters is how the problem is tackled. If anything, this reaction makes me think more highly of the university.
In addition, it sounds like the college said they thought they were being supportive and inclusive but realized they weren’t and will work on it; and that the racist incidents may have targeted real students and created real fear and distrust, but not have originated with a racist student/adult from the community/town.
So, either there’s someone who makes such notes as jokes (but doesn’t mean the threats) and is racist if not dangerous - as such they should be expelled since St Olaf has an honor code and this doesn’t sound honorable at all. Or, there’s someone who fabricated one or several threatening notes (the said one note was fake BUT that the handwriting looked similar).
However, if I understand the article correctly, there isn’t someone who deliberately threatened people and meant it.