Students at the University of Miami who support Republican nominee Donald Trump were surprised and disappointed last weekend to discover that his website had been blocked by the school’s Wi-Fi, while Hillary Clinton’s website was not.
According to the Miami Herald, those who tried to visit donaldjtrump.com late Friday and early Saturday received an alert message from the university that said, “The site you are attempting to visit was found to be unsafe or pose harm to your system and/or device.” During this time, hillaryclinton.com was still accessible.
The UM College Republicans called attention to the problem.
REALLY @univmiami? BLOCKING @realDonaldTrump website while using campus wifi??!! So sad! @FoxNews @foxandfriends pic.twitter.com/68BV7xs9tZ
— UM Republicans (@um_republicans) September 10, 2016
“The issue was addressed immediately and we whitelisted the site as soon as this was brought to our attention,” UM spokeswoman Megan Ondrizek said. “We are still investigating the main cause, but it appears that there was malicious activity on the website which caused it to be blocked automatically.”
Ondrizek later said there was a problem with the host server, not Trump’s website itself.
While the website was only down temporarily, the College Republicans claimed the incident “reinforced the stereotypical liberal bias we struggle with on a daily basis.”
“The University of Miami has wildly overstepped censoring the website of the Republican candidate for President of the United States,” said Cade Marsh, Chairman of the Florida Federation of College Republicans. “This imposition of political bias by the University is both unethical and unreasonable. UM has shown its complicity in attempting to silence and disenfranchise the views of millions of Americans, and in particular those of the millennial generation.”
