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Winchester Thurston students angered by school administration’s response to racist Snapchat post

Tim Tai / Philadelphia Inquirer

Winchester Thurston students angered by school administration’s response to racist Snapchat post

Students at Winchester Thurston are demanding action from the school following what they believe to be a lackluster response from administrators after several of their classmates made a video that was posted on social media mocking the death of George Floyd. 

The video, posted last week to Snapchat, was filmed inside Winchester Thurston’s upper school campus in Shadyside and showed a white student kneeling on another white student’s neck as other students looked on laughing. A caption included with the video says “Abuse.”

Javier Drahnak, a 16-year-old junior at the school, said he and many of his friends were immediately appalled by the video, but they were further disheartened by how the school handled the situation. 

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“When it comes to big events like this, they care more about their image than their students,” Javier said of the school administration. “That’s not what a place of learning should look like, and that’s made a lot of people really angry and really sad.”

A day after the video began circulating, Head of School Scott Fech sent a letter to parents and guardians that said the school was “investigating a student disciplinary issue in the upper school involving an alleged serious violation of our commitment to the work of diversity, equity and inclusion.”

“We are scheduling time with our students of color in both the middle and upper schools to acknowledge the incident and to offer our support to them,” Mr. Fech said. “Please know that WT is deeply committed to creating a safe and equitable environment for all community members and we condemn any actions in our community which violate that.”

But Javier said that statement was not enough. 

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“They did not do a good job making a statement that it wasn’t condoned,” Javier said. “In the letter itself, you had to infer that a racist act happened, they never even said it explicitly.”

Javier also said he and his fellow students felt the school lacked transparency in the matter because it only sent a letter to parents and guardians and did not provide students and faculty members with information.   

While most students quickly rebuffed the Snapchat video, others merely brushed it aside as poor judgement, which reveals that some in the Winchester Thurston community still have lessons to learn, Javier said.

“A lot of people were saying ‘These are good kids, I don’t know why they did this, that was stupid,’” he said. “It was kind of annoying to me because I get that they’re good kids, I know them, I’ve never had a problem with them before, but there was something wrong for them to actually do that and do it in school.”

In an emailed statement, Mr. Fech said he was not at liberty to share details of the incident but that the school remained deeply committed to creating a safe and equitable environment for all community members and condemn any actions in our community which violate that.

He added that the school has created spaces and utilized its advisory programs to offer students and employees of color support.

“We recognize that individuals have been impacted differently and our team of counselors are working closely with our director of equity, inclusion and wellness to address individual student concerns in developmentally appropriate ways,” Mr. Fech said.

In the week since the video came out, Javier said school administrators have held meetings with students via Zoom to talk about the situation. He said he was concerned, however, that those gatherings, which did not have much of a back-and-forth, will not lead to any real change.

The school’s Black Student Union, which Javier is a part of, has created a list of demands that it plans to hand to the administration on Friday.

The organization is calling for the school administration to apologize to Black students for the way it handled the situation, to create a plan of action that includes tangible goals, such as educational workshops or changing school curriculum or policies, and for more transparency.

In addition, the Black Student Union asked the school community to wear black on Friday to show support for the list of demands. 

If the administration’s response is deemed inadequate, Javier said, the students could hold a walkout in the near future.

He said the students feel the need to take these steps to hold the school accountable because otherwise the situation might be “swept under the rug.”  

“I feel like that fact that they’re responding to us now is not because it’s in the students’ best interest, but because it would be bad for them if they didn’t,” he said.

Andrew Goldstein: agoldstein@post-gazette.com .

First Published: February 11, 2022, 2:17 a.m.

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 (Tim Tai / Philadelphia Inquirer)
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