Originally Posted by
TofuFighter
Whether they do or don't donate millions, or anything, to the university, I'm not seeing the relevance.
Certainly it seems
Z Society likely does more than just get its jollies shoveling snow.
I do think your speculation that Warmbier included them in his confession in order to make it bizarre much less likely than his being in some way connected to them. Even getting a NK propaganda poster as a kind of hazing seems a much more likely explanation than what you're proposing.
You seem to want to find any possible way for Otto Warmbier to be completely blameless in this whole scenario. He
might be. He might not.
Almost everyone here agrees that North Korea's treatment of him - that we know about, being his sentencing and incarceration - has been unfair by our standards. I think a lot of people are totally discounting the NK perspective.
TofuFighter,
The "millions of dollars to the university" in donations came out of Warmbier's confession. These is more example of its implausibility; can anyone produce evidence of millions of dollars flowing from the Z society to the University? I did not claim that the Z society
only shoveled snow, but what exactly they do is understandably not easy to determine (thanks for the link; I had not seen that article before). I don't believe that I ever said that he couldn't have taken down the banner; only that there was no credible evidence that he did and that a different scenario seemed more likely to me. For me, it's too much of a coincidence that the British tourist went missing for several hours, a time period that roughly overlaps with the taking down (not taking) of the banner. YMMV. Also, if Warmbier really needed a banner for some kind of hazing ritual, why did he take down one that was too large for him to take with him?
EDT
It is entirely possible that someone who had been a member of the Z society as an undergraduate could make a hefty donation. IMO that is not the same thing as the society itself making such a donation.