The Penn Harris Madison Schools superintendent has apologized for a Penn High School student’s racist remarks during a recent basketball game. The NAACP wants the district to go further.
The racist remark was a student’s use of the N-word, as a Black Riley High School player was shooting free throws. It was clearly audible during a Penn student-run livestream of Penn’s sectional semi-final loss to Riley at Mishawaka High School.
On Tuesday PHM Superintendent Heather Short released a statement denouncing the language. Short said, “Our district remains committed to reinforcing expectations for respectful behavior and ensuring our schools are places where all students feel safe, valued, and supported. We appreciate the advocacy of community organizations, including the NAACP, and their work to strengthen our community.”
Short said the school has identified the student but federal student privacy laws prohibit her from publicly disclosing disciplinary actions, as frustrating as that might be for those who want to know how he’s being held accountable.
But rather than focusing on the punishment, NAACP President Trina Robinson says her organization will soon approach PHM with a request. They want the district to provide sensitivity or cultural competency training for staff, an attempt to counter racism that Robinson says white students have learned outside of school.
“Obviously this is a problem, it’s an ongoing problem, and this just so happened to be something that was made public,” Robinson says.
As an example of a complaint NAACP has received, Robinson says a Black student said the school had accused him of stealing a pair of earbuds. He denied it but had a hard time getting administrators to view surveillance video to prove his innocence.
“They hadn’t looked at the tape. They just accused him. He was penalized from it and it was later found out that another student had it, but the damage has already had been done. So those are the types of things that are happening there at Penn.”
And Robinson says there have been other troubling cases at Penn.
”There’s another situation that we had where a student was in the classroom, where students were making racial slurs," Robinson says. "The student attempted to talk to the teacher about it. The teacher just told them to turn it down, instead of telling them this is unacceptable or letting that be a teaching moment. There was a time where a student wore an afro and students had made comment regarding his afro, asking was his hair nappy. There’s a lack of cultural competency there at that school and it needs to be addressed.”
A PHM spokeswoman declined our interview request.
