Student Who Wrote 'Hoax' Column at Princeton May Get Expelled

By: A Princeton University student who admitted e-mailing threats to himself and some friends, then faking an attack of himself, expects to be expelled, a friend said Tuesday.

Francisco Nava, a 23-year-old junior from Bedford, Texas, who spoke out for socially conservative causes, created a stir on Friday when he claimed that two men roughed him up off campus.

On Monday, authorities said that the attack -- and the threats that preceded it -- were hoaxes. A university official said the student would be disciplined, but it was not clear how.

He has not been charged with any crimes.

Nava, a junior politics major, found himself at the center of one campus controversy recently when he wrote a column for the student newspaper criticizing the school for giving out free condoms, which he said encouraged a dangerous "hook-up culture."

A short time later, Nava made his first report to the university public safety office that he was receiving threatening messages in his campus mailbox. A friend says Nava told him one message read, in capital letters: "ONE MORE ARTICLE AND YOU WON'T LIVE TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY."

Other members of the Anscombe Society, a conservative student organization, who have spoken out against premarital sex and same-sex marriage, said they received similar threats.

Princeton senior Sherif Girgis, one of the students who received the threats, said an apologetic Nava told him and the others in an awkward meeting Monday that he wanted to get more attention for the Anscombe Society.

"It seemed to be like a really twisted attempt to draw attention to the club," said Girgis, a senior philosophy major from Delaware who had served as Anscombe president. "He said victims are more effective than advocates today."

Girgis said that the Anscombe members who had been threatened realized Friday night that parts of their friend's story didn't add up. He said that's why group members declined most interview requests and didn't hold protests or take other action in the immediate aftermath of the alleged attack.

Girgis said Nava explained that he roughed himself up in almost exactly the way he claimed that others hurt him: breaking a juice bottle over his head and hitting bricks against his head.

Nava did not respond to an e-mail from The Associated Press on Tuesday. A telephone number for him could not be found.

Girgis said Nava had either left campus, or was soon to leave.

"I join many people in still maintaining a deep, abiding concern for him," Girgis said.