A group of Utah high school students were disciplined after video of them shouting and giggling while saying, “Fuck niggers,” blew up on social media.
The Weber School District in Ogden, Utah, declined to detail how the five girls were punished, according to BuzzFeed, only stating that “appropriate actions” were taken.
The controversial video—which showed the teens all wide-eyed and grinning—went viral after a high school football player posted it on Twitter. The school district attempted to explain whitesplain it away, saying that the girls were yelling, “Serggin cuff,” but that when they uploaded it to Instagram and used the “rewind” feature, it came out sounding like the slur.
I mean, it’s not like the girls didn’t know, when they uploaded and rewound the video, that what they said would sound like “Fuck niggers” ... except they probably did, so ...
Anyway, as BuzzFeed notes, although the video was done off campus, which typically restricts school officials’ ability to punish students, a spokesperson for the Weber School District, Lane Findlay, said that there were exceptions when students’ behavior “creates substantial disruption.”
“In this particular case, the video that was made created a substantial disruption at Weber High School and adversely affected many students, including some of our minority students,” the district said in a lengthy statement.
In addition, three of the five girls were members of the Weber High School cheerleading squad and were consequently “held to a higher standard” because they had signed a “constitution (code of conduct) that applies on and off campus.”
Four Weber students told BuzzFeed that the teens had been expelled from the school, but that has not been confirmed. Another student said that he had heard the girls had been expelled but that it’s possible they could also have just been suspended.
The girls told school officials that they were just “playing around” when they recorded the video, adding that the slur wasn’t directed at any person in particular. Findlay said that the students “expressed sincere regret” and apologized.
However, Findlay acknowledged that the students did know what they were doing when they recorded the video.
“Hatred only breeds more hatred,” the district added in its statement. “These are teenagers who made a big mistake, and they will be held accountable.”
Read more at BuzzFeed.