Black students in Pa. school district got racist emails

One mother says the school should have done more in response

It was distressing, the mother said, when her son, a senior at Harriton High School, got the emails: three, one-line messages, sent over the span of 34 minutes late Jan. 18 and early Jan. 19.

“You stupid N—-‘s … need to be my slaves,” the first read, in part, under the subject line “Long Gone.” The next read, “You can ask my girlfriend out, and I’m fine … as long as I keep dropping N word bomb.” The final email: “I will rule against race without intention.”

The messages, sent to eight Black students at Harriton, came from a fellow student, who was removed from school. Lower Merion School District officials said they met with the targeted students on Jan. 19 to offer support and assure their safety.

There was no broader announcement to the school community of what had happened — a reflection, a district spokesperson said, of the fact that this was “an isolated incident involving only a relatively small number of students.”

With the perpetrator quickly identified and removed from school, “a recurrence was deemed unlikely,” said the spokesperson, Amy Buckman.

To the mother, the lack of public notification felt like an attempt to cover up racism.

“This should not be swept under the rug,” said the mother, who asked to not be named out of concern her son would experience further harassment. She said the episode, already frustrating because “I couldn’t protect my child . . . hurt even more when the school didn’t care.”

Schools legally can’t disclose information about disciplinary action taken against a student. But experts said Lower Merion could have communicated with the school community — whether by sharing that an incident occurred, or notifying families that racial harassment would not be tolerated.

Whether they should have is a different question. While slurs written in a locker room or shouted at an opposing team during a sports game would likely force a school district to acknowledge such events, emails aren’t necessarily visible to people beyond the recipients, and therefore, making their disclosure is more of a judgment call.

Andrea Kane, a professor of practice in educational leadership at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education who previously served as a superintendent in Maryland, said a school’s response depends on the specifics of the incident — how much disruption it caused and whether threats of violence were made, for instance.

And “if this is something happening again and again,” it would make sense for administrators to notify the community and share how they intend to respond, Kane said. A larger pattern of racial harassment can also be grounds for legal action or a federal discrimination complaint.

“Nobody wants to tolerate any form of racism. It is completely unfortunate, but these things happen. Just like they happen in society, they happen in schools,” Kane said.

Some suggested the Harriton incident warranted notification.

“There is absolutely no such thing as an isolated incident of racism,” said Paige Joki, a staff attorney at the Education Law Center who leads the center’s Black Girls Education Justice Initiative. She said that racist behaviors “don’t occur in a vacuum” and that schools should view such incidents as part of a broader climate.

“The school can be a force for social transformation,” said Marc Brasof, an associate professor of education at Arcadia University and codirector of the school’s Social Action and Justice Education Fellowship, which aims to diversify the teaching force. “The more we recognize that, the more we realize there’s a responsibility for school leaders to ensure the community they’re doing everything they possibly can” to address not just a particular issue, but “deeper systemic behavior that would engender such actions in the first place.”

Lower Merion says administrators acted quickly when the emails — sent to the Black students’ school email addresses — were brought to their attention the morning of Jan. 19, alerting the police and conducting their own investigation.

They identified the responsible student, who had created a fake Gmail address using the name of another student.

“The motive was to get the student whose account was spoofed in trouble (in the hopes of attracting the attention of that student’s girlfriend),” Buckman said.

Administrators also met with the students who received the emails “to help them process the incident, offer them supports, and reassure them that racism, such as that expressed in the messages they received, is not tolerated at Harriton High School or in the Lower Merion School District,” Buckman said. They also shared “some information about the motive and identity of the sender.”

“The targeted students indicated that information was helpful to them in processing the incident and ensuring their feelings of safety and belonging at Harriton,” Buckman said.

The mother said she did not feel assured her son was safe, including because she said school officials wouldn’t disclose any information to her about the student who had sent the emails.

“For the safety of my child, I need to know if that child is on school grounds or not,” she said, adding that she first heard about the incident from the police, only getting a call from the school a day later.

Buckman — who said the student who sent the emails faced “appropriate consequences” — said that after talking with the students who received the emails, an assistant principal spent the rest of the day Jan. 19 reaching out to their families. Buckman said one of the targeted students was over 18 and, unfortunately, his parent ended up being the last to be called by the school.

The message from school administrators was “pretty much, racism isn’t going anywhere” and that they had acted quickly, the mother said. But she felt they should have said something to the community.

Joki said students are “watching what the adults in charge are going to do to respond.” Not publicly acknowledging the incident “is really impactful. It says to students they will not be fully seen at school.”

The student whose mother was critical of the district’s response said he “would like them to step up” with a public announcement and “treating everyone fairly as far as punishments.” White students seem to evade discipline for actions that get Black students punished, he said. (Harriton’s enrollment is 71% white and 6.5% Black.)

Lower Merion bills itself as a leader in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, including by offering racial affinity groups and cultural competency lessons that have recently come under fire from a national conservative group.

“Unfortunately, there’s not a no-fly zone for racism in schools,” Joki said. She noted that even if schools have programs in place to promote equity, “a school’s perception of what they are doing and the perception of families can be very different.”