Family Files Complaint Over Former Princeton Student's Suspension

PRINCETON, NJ — A former Princeton High School student and her father have reportedly filed a complaint with the municipal civil rights commission concerning a one-day suspension that took place toward the end of the 2016-17 school year. Jamaica Ponder was suspended after a racial slur appeared in a collage she submitted for the school’s yearbook. Ponder submitted the collage, in which the N word is visible in the background. She said she didn't realize it was in the background when she submitted the collage. The suspension was later rescinded.

In the complaint, filed in December, Ponder and her father, Rhinold, contend that she was suspended because of her race, as well as her gender and her fight for equal rights, Planet Princeton reports. They also claim that during the suspension process, the family was denied their due process rights.

In filing the complaint, the Ponders are hoping to abolish practices and policies that unfairly impact students of color and students with special needs, according to the report. They are asking the commission to investigate the district’s out-of-school suspension policy.

Former Princeton Township Mayor Michele Tuck-Ponder is a member of the Princeton Public School District Board of Education. She is Jamaica’s mother and Rhinold’s wife, according to the Princeton Packet. She said she will recuse herself from any discussions of the complaint by the board.

In the incident that lead to her suspension, Ponder accidentally included a photo depicting the use of the N word in the background of her collage. It is part of a piece of art that is in her house and made it into the background of the collage.

At the time, her father believed she was being suspended because she exposed incidents of racism in the school district, but Principal Gary Snyder wrote in an email to parents that there were "a few seniors" who were suspended because of the collage they submitted to the yearbook. Ponder echoed her father's stance on the suspension in her blog post on Multi Magazine.

"Your secret is out, PHS," she wrote. "Everyone knows that Princeton Public Schools has constantly and consistently failed people of color and there is energy wasted in trying to mask the inconvenient truth in arbitrary suspensions. Just because you maim the messenger doesn't mean the truth dies with them.”

Ponder first made headlines when she exposed a game of "Jews vs. Nazis" beer pong being played by high school students. She then tackled a Snapchat post in which a white student used a racial slur in reference to the black students she was with on a school bus.

She then wrote about a black student who was blamed for giving a brownie laced with marijuana to another student.

"Why would u tell your mom I gave you pot brownies when I didn't?" the unnamed student asks another in a text message posted by Ponder on her blog.

The student responded that someone told him to and that no one would ask any questions "Bc ur black."

Patch file photo