Last week, two women were caught on a Ring camera making monkey noises outside an apartment shared by three black Ole Miss students. One apologized – and is no longer a student. The other one has not apologized, and instead has a GiveSendGo page about to bust through $100,000 – which its organizer says he’ll pull the moment she says sorry.
“Stand with Lauren,” launched Tuesday by Tom Hennessey for Lauren Mayfield, who has been identified online and in news reports as the second woman in the clip, stood at $98,709 Friday morning. It started with a $20,000 goal and sat at about $19,300 on Wednesday. The goal has since been bumped to $50,000, then $100,000, and donors are now about $1,300 short.
“She did nothing wrong. She did not assault anyone. She did not break any law. She made noises in a public walkway,” the page reads, calling the backlash a “campus bureaucracy and online mob treating a juvenile stunt as a hate crime because the residents were black.” It says the money will “cover lost income or opportunities, and anything else required so she does not have to fold.”
