A student union officer at Lancaster University has been temporarily suspended from their position for leaking images of students at a Snowsports society during a "white t-shirt" event who had objectionable slogans on them. The officer chose to do this because the internal student union investigation was taking too long. The slogans, for people who don't want to follow the link, were things like "I like 12 year olds" and "Sandy Hook woz bantz". While they are currently being investigated by the student union, there isn't any sort of criminal investigation. However, the t-shirts have been described as a "hate crime" by the person who leaked them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-46205164
I am...unsure why these are being taken as seriously as they are. Honestly the things in the images are odious, but odious doesn't equal illegal. The student union have every right to refuse to allow that sort of thing in their space, but I'm not sure why there seems to be some attempt to draw attention to this as though it's criminal. Thoughts?