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District spokeswoman Liz Margolis said school proceeded as usual at Pioneer High School on Tuesday after an online shooting threat.

(Patrick Record | The Ann Arbor News)

The two Pioneer High School seniors who acted as administrators of the Pioneer HS Confessions Facebook page have been suspended for three days after posting an anonymous threat that was submitted to the page Monday evening.

The threat was posted to the Pioneer HS Confessions page at approximately 8 p.m. Monday evening.

The post, "I'm going to shoot up the school," triggered a response from Ann Arbor Public Schools administrators and the Ann Arbor Police Department. A male Pioneer High School student was arrested before school hours Tuesday morning and, according to a statement from the district, he admitted to having submitted the threat.

The Pioneer HS Confessions page has been in operation since March and is one of a number of pages that offer high school students the opportunity to make statements by using a third-party anonymous submission form. Anyone can submit anonymous “confessions” through a Google Drive form, and the submissions are then posted on the page by the administrators.

According to the student behavior referral form filled out by the Pioneer High School administration, the students were suspended for “Disruptive conduct” and “Inappropriate use of Internet.”

A Facebook search showed that there are similar “confession” pages for Skyline and Huron high schools. The description of Skyline group says that “Similar to Pioneer Confessions, this page is completely anonymous and no names/personal details will be revealed unless otherwise requested.”

District spokeswoman Liz Margolis said that the central administration and the school administrations are aware of the pages and monitor them.

“We’ve known about the Pioneer page for a while because the administration has had frequent complaints from students about other postings that have been allowed on the page,” she said.

The Pioneer Confessions page is no longer searchable on Facebook, and Margolis said it was her understanding that the students took down the page voluntarily upon the school’s request.

Margolis said that the school district does not comment on student discipline but she did say that at least one of the students is appealing the suspension and that assistant superintendent for secondary education Robin Thompson will handle the appeal.

In an interview, the suspended students expressed remorse that their posting had disrupted the school day but insisted that they believe they did the right thing by alerting the community to the existence of a threat.

Margolis said that the district cannot control the student-run Facebook pages but will continue to monitor them for potentially disruptive activity or safety threats.

“I think that after this incident it would send a pretty hard message to other similar pages about what can happen when you decide to be an administrator of one of these sites,” Margolis said.

“Whether you decide to post something or not can go a long way and can impact individuals, groups and entire schools.”

Ben Freed is a business and general assignments reporter for The Ann Arbor News. Email him at benfreed@mlive.com and follow him on twitter at @BFreedinA2