Maple Grove Student 'Scapegoated' in Racist Graffiti Case: Attorney

The student allegedly responsible for scrawling racist graffiti in a Maple Grove Senior High School bathroom has been "scapegoated" by the Osseo School District, according to a Saint Paul-based attorney. Andrea Jepsen, an attorney with the School Law Center, told Patch in an email the district is attempting to expel the student.

School officials said earlier this month they had identified the student responsible for writing the racist and offensive messages. In a letter to parents, Osseo School District Superintendent Kate Maguire wrote that the individual received "appropriate disciplinary action, according to school board policy."

Maguire said the school is required by law to protect the privacy of the student, but said that the investigation into the incident "was one of the most comprehensive and exhaustive investigations Maple Grove Senior High staff has ever conducted."

In an email to Patch, attorney Andrea Jepsen said Maguire's statement that "the district had identified and punished the individual who defaced a bathroom stall" was false.

"Instead, the district chose a sensitive and vulnerable young person who was among the students who entered the restroom on November 9, and scapegoated him."

"In doing so, the district violated his rights under the law, and inflicted terrible emotional damage on him, while missing the opportunity to find the real culprit. We believe that the district did so because it was very difficult to isolate the actual wrongdoer with any certainty, and bringing this matter to what the district believed would be a quick end was its highest priority," Jepsen added.

Patch reached out to the Osseo Area School District for comment. In order to maintain confidentiality for students, data privacy laws prohibit the school district from providing information about student disciplinary matters.

The racist message was written during the school day on Wednesday, Nov. 9, according to police. A photo showing the racist message went viral that evening after it was uploaded to Facebook by a parent of a Maple Grove Senior High student. The photo showed a pro-Donald Trump message that included racist and vulgar language.

"This is the message that welcomed my son today at Maple Grove Senior High," wrote parent Fred Ndip. "He does not feel safe at his own school any more. I am not sure of what to tell him!"

The Facebook post is no longer available to view. However, images of the graffiti have been widely-shared on social media.

"It is so much easier for schools to sweep these matters quickly under the rug than to do the real work necessary to improve school climate and create a learning environment that is just for all," Jepsen continued.

"The district was coy about the punishment it intends to inflict on this young man in its open letter, but we will not be: The district is attempting to expel him from school on the flimsiest of bases. But even if the district ultimately identifies the real culprit, expulsion from school is almost never the right intervention."

"With expulsion, there is no teaching, no development of empathy, no opportunity to express and receive remorse, no obligation to perform restitution, no opportunity for victims to express their hurt to a perpetrator, no true resolution and restoration. There is only banishment."

"Further, schools disproportionately expel students of color and students with disabilities, and expulsion from school puts students at greater risk of dropping out of school, repeating a grade, and becoming involved in the juvenile and criminal justice system. Expulsion, it is said, is the first stop through the school-to-prison pipeline," Jepsen said.

"The most meaningful way for a school to respond to acts that harm the school community is to engage in a restorative justice practice, a process based on victim-offender mediation and indigenous teachings that can address our deepest social challenges. Restorative justice calls on us to consider how we got to where we are, and in this case, how it came to be that someone at the Maple Grove Senior High believed it was acceptable to spread a message of hate to the school community."

"Since the 1970s, victim-offender mediation has been used for the most serious crimes, and has brought real transformation. The restorative justice process can move both perpetrators and offenders of the most serious crimes to a more constructive, hopeful place, even when that seems impossible to do. Experienced facilitators believe that no matter the harm done, restorative justice can transform lives and bring healing. However, when the student the district is identifying as the wrong doer here asked the district to engage in a restorative justice process with him, even if he was not the actual perpetrator, the district not only refused to do so, it refused to even discuss the idea with a trained practitioner, citing the district’s notoriety in the media. It is the wrong reason to refuse an intervention that can bring about so much mutual good."

"We hope that the communities contained within the Osseo Area School District will stand with us, instead of against us, in insisting that the district use the proven method of restorative justice to create a more just school environment, instead of sacrificing a single student, particularly where there remains so many questions regarding the identity of the actual perpetrator. The whole community will be better for doing so."

Patch will continue to update this story

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