Brookline High Students Walk Out After Racist Videos Surface

BROOKLINE, MA — Students poured out of the high school this morning just before 9 a.m. as a way of drawing more attention to two videos that made the rounds on the internet recently. The videos show a handful of current and former high school students repeatedly using the "N" word.

Outside the school Thursday morning, several students donned maroon hoodies with a Cesar Chavez quote: "You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is our." At least one student was wearing a printed out "Black Lives Matter," slogan pinned to his shirt.

Brookline High Headmaster Anthony Meyer and Bott sent out an email Wednesday to families decrying the racist videos and alerting families to an investigation and punishment.

But some Brookline seniors who said they felt targeted because they're in the school's African-American and Latino Scholars program, which was specifically mentioned in one of the videos, said that's not enough.

One of the videos shows three teens crowding around a smartphone screen. One, a person of color (students say he's not African-American) is using the N-word at least six times. The other two teens, who appear to be white, don't seem to say the entire word. The person of color graduated from Brookline last year and at least one of the other teens in the video is a current student, other Brookline High School students told Patch.

A second video shows three teens in a car with an adult driving. Two of the teens appear to use the N-word in reference to the older driver. It's unclear if that adult is a relative or a driver for a company. Neither incident takes place at the school, Bott told Patch after spending the morning on the steps hearing students voice their concerns about the atmosphere at the school.

"But it doesn't change anything. We need to respond to the students here and the many who were harmed by this action," he said.

Bott said although the initial school investigation is completed, there is a Title 6 investigation and a police investigation ongoing and punishment is still a work in progress.

"We live in a strange time where racism and antisemitism, homophobia and anti-Islamism is becoming so normal. This is a real call to action," said Bott. "This protest was so important. What we heard from the students was incredibly impactful.... We have to do something."

Many students said they were pleasantly surprised by the outcome of the walkout and felt listened to and cautiously optimistic about next steps.

"It went a lot better than I expected. Turnout was incredible. I just hope it results in a constructive learning experience rather than something that happened and we put it aside," said Lena Harris, now a senior, who remembers protests at the school her freshman and sophomore year just as the Black Lives Matter movement was getting underway. "Nothing on this scale."

She noted with the administration change at the school and in the district she felt overall there had been a lot of good effort.

"But I feel like this [conversation] keeps happening in a cycle and we haven't quite figured out how to break it yet," she said.

Although Bott said he couldn't comment on punishment for the students. Some students questioned the severity of punishment for the student involved. What had been going around the school was that one of the white students was suspended in school, but many students of color felt the punishment was out of balance and highlighted a deeper seeded inequality.

Harris said she'd looked at the suspension data in the district as part of MSAN to examine ways to bridge the achievement gap in town and was startled to find that students of color, specifically African American students seem to get disproportionately more severe discipline when it comes to suspensions.

"This is a great example of that," she said noting in an ideal world Brookline would move away from suspensions for these types of infractions and focus on restorative justice efforts. "It has to be a learning experience for everyone," she said.

METCO student Kaya Andrews, a junior, said having the conversations like this may be difficult, but she said it was important not only for students in their education at school, but as a life lesson.

"Brookline is a great town, I think too often academic success - important as it is - is too much of a focus and building character and learning to co-exist with and carry out constructive conversations with people who don't think like you is huge," said Andrews.

Previously on Patch:

Racist Videos 'Disgusting' Say Brookline Superintendent and Headmaster

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Photos, video by Jenna Fisher