Student wearing hijab at Stanford football game receives hateful remarks

STANFORD, Calif. - A Stanford student is speaking out against threats and hateful remarks targeted at her after she appeared in a Stanford University football ad wearing her hijab.

The online ad was to attract football fans to Stanford University games. 

In the photo, Tesay Yusuf, a junior,  is seen cheering in the stands with her friends at a game last fall.

“I just thought it was really cool. My friends were like, ‘oh look guys, we’re famous.’ It was cool and we were just kind of joking about it.”

But shortly after posting the ad on Facebook, the comments that came in were not funny. 

“The worst one I saw was this lady who posted I hope someone puts bullets in your head on campus."

The hateful and sometimes threatening comments specifically targeted Yusuf for wearing a hijab.

“People are racist, but when someone is literally asking for an attack on my life, I’m like ‘what the heck is going on?’ this is beyond ridiculous," Yusuf said speaking to us from Washington DC where she spent the summer with her family.

The Stanford University Facebook administrator deleted many of the threats and hateful remarks targeted at Yusuf.

Yusuf returns to campus next week and says she’s 99 percent sure the people leaving hateful comments are outsiders and not connected to the Stanford community. In a statement, Stanford University said, 

“The outpouring of support that this courageous student has received from within the Stanford community and around the world has been affirming. Stanford university supports freedom of expression, but will not tolerate hate.”

Yusuf says she told the school to keep running the ad. “I mean, the picture is great! Me and my friends having fun at a football game. I didn’t want them to take down the ad.”