Several white teenage girls who filmed themselves yelling racial slurs have been disciplined by their Utah high school, but the district has refused to reveal what their punishment was.
School officials from Weber High School in Pleasant View, near Salt Lake City, said on Tuesday that they had taken ‘appropriate action’ against the female students.
The white students, three of whom are cheerleaders, made the video about a year ago of them saying ‘f*****g n*****s’ into the camera.
School officials from Weber High School in Pleasant View, near Salt Lake City, said on Tuesday that they had taken ‘appropriate action’ against the female students for the racist video
One of them posted the footage on Instagram last week and it was quickly shared across social media and drew widespread attention.
The girls had recorded themselves saying a nonsensical phrase and a Snapchat filter played the video backward to produce the expletive and slur.
They in fact uttered ‘surgeon cuff’ and watched in amusement as the technology transformed their words into offensive racial slurs. Staff said there was still ‘no excuse’ for the footage.
Following the fallout from the video, the Weber School District issued a statement saying the footage had affected many of the students.
‘Weber School District has taken this matter very seriously. The investigation has now concluded and the school has taken appropriate action against the students,’ it read.
The girls had recorded themselves saying a nonsensical phrase and a Snapchat filter played the video backward to produce the expletive and slur – ‘f*****g n*****s’
The white students, three of whom are cheerleaders, made the video about a year ago. One of them posted the footage on Instagram last week and it was quickly shared across social media
Spokesman Lane Findlay added that due to state and federal privacy laws, the punishment handed down to the students couldn’t be released publicly.
Though the video was made while the school was on vacation and the girls were not on school property, administrators had to investigate because of the disruption the video caused, Findlay said.
Students who are involved in extracurricular activities like cheerleading are also held to a high standard and required to abide by a code of conduct that applies to their actions away from school.
NAACP president Jeanetta Williams called the video appalling, particularly the girls’ laughter. Williams, who oversees the tri-state conference area of Idaho-Utah-Nevada, said she talked with the school principal and suggested anti-discrimination education for the girls in the video and the school as a whole.
Officials from Weber High School refused to elaborate on the punishment handed down to the teen girls saying privacy laws prohibited them from making it public
The school district is also now considering launching a community anti-discrimination education program run by the Department of Justice.
‘Obliviously when you have something like this, this inappropriate, this shocking, you have to question, ‘Why did this happen, how can we prevent this from ever happening again?” Findlay said.
On an earlier statement released by the school last week, Findley said: ‘We are shocked by the conduct of these students and the contents of the video.
‘Racism, whether intentional or not, has no place in our schools or society.’
The school district also took administrative action against a history teacher in 2016 after he used the same racial slur in a junior-high history class.
Teacher Douglas Barker said he used it for historical context, but a parent said her son no longer felt safe in class.