Students appearing to make Nazi salute won’t be punished

The Wisconsin students who appeared to make a Nazi salute in a widely criticized photo will not be punished, a school official said this week in a letter to parents.

Superintendent Lori Mueller of the Baraboo School District said in the letter that the district was “not in a position to punish the students for their actions” because of their First Amendment rights.

“As previously stated, we cannot know the intentions in the hearts of those who were involved,” Mueller wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Baraboo News Republic.

The district investigated the episode for about 10 days with help from police.

“Despite our efforts, we are still unclear about some key details,” the superintendent wrote Wednesday.

The photograph was taken by a parent in May before the Baraboo High School junior prom and was not commissioned by the school, the letter said. The boys in the photograph, who were standing outside the Sauk County Courthouse in downtown Baraboo, were current and former students at the high school.

In the photo, many of the students stand with one arm raised, palms down and elbows locked straight, in a gesture that looks identical to a Nazi salute. One student in the front row is making the OK sign with his right forefinger and thumb, a hand gesture that has been adopted by white nationalists and is often used to troll liberals.

The image drew outrage after it was posted on Twitter on Nov. 11 by an anonymous Twitter account. The post said, “We even got the black kid to throw it up.” (The photograph appears to show one black student, who is partly obscured.)

The parent who took the photo, Peter Gust, posted the image on his website, Wheel Memories, where it was visible until Nov. 12, when it was deleted.

Gust insisted it was not meant to be a Nazi salute.

“I’d said to them, ‘OK, boys, you’re going to say goodbye to your parents, so wave,’” he told TV station WISC, adding that interpreting it as a hateful gesture was “dead wrong.”