Grosse Pointe South Students Suspended Over Racial Slur

GROSSE POINTE, MI – Four Grosse Pointe South High School students were this week after a picture taken at a party showing them with racial slurs scrawled across their stomachs popped up on social media platforms.

In a letter shared on the school’s website, Principal Moussa Hamka and other administrators said they became aware of the objectionable photo on Sunday afternoon.

“While the school cannot regulate off campus activities, we will not be silent in the face of racially intolerant language,” Hamka wrote, citing the district’s Code of Conduct, which gives administrators the authority to monitor students’ off-campus behavior.

The photo showed two girls and one boy lifting their shirts to reveal the N-word written on their stomachs, and a fourth girl with a pro-marijuana message on her leg, the Detroit Free Press and The Detroit News reported.

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Besides the four students, all white, who were shown in the picture, two other students were suspended for making threats against their classmates, Grosse Pointe Schools Superintendent Gary Niehaus said.

He told The Detroit News the situation was “a very rare occurrence” at Grosse Pointe South High School.

“We don’t tolerate it. We don’t condone it. ... Hopefully we’ve all learned a lesson out of this process,” he said.

The five-day suspension of the students “do not fully address the underlying issue,” Hamka said, and efforts will continue to “create a safe environment for all students.”

School leaders arranged for a conversation between several of the students involved and leaders of South’s Black Awareness Society for Education (BASE) student group that Hamka characterized as a “starting point for our healing process as we move forward.”

The group issued the following statement:

“We have come together and are committed to a unified response that leads to awareness, acceptance and education. We want to send a clear message that hateful language and violence are never acceptable. This meeting left us optimistic that we can come together in unity. We will work to collectively move our school community forward.”

The letter, also signed by Assistant Principals Terry Flint and Steven Wolf and Assistant Principal and Athletic Director Jeremy Hawkins, can be read in its entirety here.

Miracle Bailey, a senior at Grosse Pointe South and president of the BASE group, told the Free Press she encouraged one of the students involved to remove the photo from her Instagram and Snapchat accounts, “but she was resistant and … thought it was a joke.”

She shared it on Twitter instead, where it “blew up … and went on to be posted on Facebook.”

One of the other students apologized on Instagram and took responsibility, the Free Press reported.

"I'm wrong in every sense and that word shouldn't be thrown around like we did," the student wrote. "I'm not a racist, I just made a poor decision, but that doesn't reflect on who I actually am. ... If I could take it all back I would, but I can't and now I'm taking the consequences."

Bailey told the Free Press she believes the incident was isolated.

“The entire Grosse Pointe community isn't racist,” she said. “This is just one incident that occurred."

» Photo via Wikimedia / Creative Commons