Racial slur at school not an isolated incident
The father of the 15-year-old Collierville High School student who discovered a racial slur on a desk this week spoke out Wednesday night at the town school board meeting. Report: UT’s health schools give state $4 billion boost to economy.
A girl found the N-word written on a desk during her fourth-period class Monday morning. The slur had been written during the previous class, according to the school district, and two students were disciplined.
“The anger and the issues at hand that we have now is not just about this one incident, but our children have experienced
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Firing squad included in new execution lawsuit. and have been victims of racial slurs and offensive activity over the years since they have been students in the school system,” said the student’s father, Linwood Dillard, a pastor and third-generation resident of Collierville who is black.
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He said his son, now 13 years old, was called the N-word and his daughter was placed on a “kill list” by another student. Dillard said it was not clear what action was taken.
Stacy Spencer, pastor at New Direction Collierville who has a son at Collierville High School, said as an AfricanAmerican parent of a student in a predominantly white school, the incident this week is “alarming.”
The slur was found a week after the first day of classes at the new multimillion-dollar Collierville High School.
“What good is a school that has nice technology, nice brick and mortar, but the culture doesn’t support every student?” Spencer said.
He said he hopes that diversity and racial sensitivity training can be incorporated into the curriculum and an effort to eradicate racism can be launched letting people know there is “zero tolerance for racism in Collierville and Collierville High School.”
School board member Mark Hansen said the board condemns racism “in all its forms and manifestations.”
“We also condemn the use of racist language and are committed to removing such language from use in all of our schools,” he said.
He said all students should be treated “fairly, equally and with dignity” and work will continue to “create a culture in our school system that reflects those values.”
The two students who were disciplined for graffiti on the desk that included the slur are 10th-graders. The district did not specify the punishment, but said the incident fell under a section of the disciplinary code that calls for inschool or out-of-school suspension.
In a statement, the district said one of the students was white and the other was African-American.
“Each student wrote something on the desk,” the district said in an email. “One of the students wrote the racial slur. Both students thought it was funny and — rather than erase it before leaving the classroom — chose to leave it to be seen by another student.”
The district declined to identify the race of the student who wrote the slur.
Two juveniles were charged in 2017 after a pastor found a racial slur painted on his car while it was parked in the old Collierville High School parking lot. The suspects were 13- and 14-year-old white males enrolled in a Collierville middle school and the high school.
The board meeting Wednesday was attended by about 50 people, including friends and relatives of the Dillards, the high school principal and several students who came to speak about the positive impact of the high school’s program that mentors and supports freshmen.
Another parent, LatDoir Gasper, who is black, told the board he bought a house 18 years ago in Collierville, but eventually moved to Olive Branch after his daughters’ experience at school.
“We loved Collierville,” Gasper said. “But then our daughters entered Tara Oaks and some other schools. And they began to be offended and hear nasty words, and negative things were happening to them. And as we expressed our concerns we got a response that did not equate to the pain that we were experiencing.”
“How many more people will leave?” Gasper asked the board.
Dillard plans to convene a town hall meeting “with parents, students, pastors and other organizations to further explore ways to encourage racial unity and relations in our schools and community.”