Scituate High School Administrators Threaten To Suspend Girl For 10 Days, Go To Her House For Sending Video Of Other Student Using Racial Slur On Social Media
This is Scituate High School senior Lily Restucia.
Recently a junior student at SHS had some videos of her saying the n word as a freshman being tossed around the Interwebz by students in the school.
I’m not a fan of the practice of publicly shaming people for dumb things they said when they were 14. I also don’t think any student should ever be punished for saying the n word, so long as it’s socially acceptable for people of color to use that word and it continues to be pervasive in hip hop music. But I’m also not a fan of punishing people for talking about other kids who used the n word, which appears to be what’s happening to Lily by administration at SHS.
After seeing the video of the junior saying the n word circulating around social media, Lily sent another video she had of the girl saying the n word to a friend on Snapchat. Here it is.
Not good. Clearly this child was trying to be edgy and did something stupid, but this doesn’t mean she’s a racist. Regardless, all Lily did was send it to a friend, which is protected speech. That friend sent it to their friends and the next thing you knew the girl in the video saying the n word was alleging that she was bullied. The n word girl posted this on Snapchat, blaming a completely different student named Lily for sending the videos, and claiming to have learned her lesson.
I don’t even disagree with her. Clearly this other student was being vindictive by posting an old video of her, but n word girl is also not a victim because someone else used their free speech rights to criticize her.
But apparently the school thinks that n word girl is a victim and they’re investigating students who sent the video around, including Lily R. Principal Lisa Maguire sent this letter to Lily R’s parents threatening her with 10 days of suspension for violating rules that prohibit “racist, hateful speech.”
To be clear, this girl is being threatened with suspension for having a private conversation with a friend about a video of another girl using racial slurs. She isn’t the one who used the n word, she just sent a video of another student saying it, who apparently is not being investigated (nor she should she be). Apparently Scituate High School isn’t familiar with the First Amendment and thinks they have a right to police private conversations between students, and suspend kids for 10 days for exposing and/or discussing racist behavior. Guess they prefer sweeping these things under the rug if it gives the school a bad name.
Vice Principal Karen Hughes then called and left this voicemail, threatening to show up at their house as part of their “investigation.”
“I do need to investigate and ask Lily a few questions. I’m here at school so I would appreciate it if you would call me with her. Otherwise, I have to maybe send someone to the house.”
If you attend Scituate High School and you see or hear another student use racial slurs, the school will threaten you with suspension and send someone to your house as part of their “investigation” if you tell any of your friends about it. You will then be suspended for 10 days for using racial slurs that you never used, just because you passed along information about another student using those slurs. This is their policy.
I figured they were trying to get her on the last sentence of this part of the student handbook:
If she sent a friend a message and her friend passed it along and it “impacted the immediate school environment,” then she could be disciplined. That’s obviously a ridiculous and stupid rule that violates the First Amendment, but it’s also not what she was accused of in the letter. They are accusing her of violating “rules prohibiting racist, hateful speech.”
These out of control administrators are drunk on a power trip.
Here’s the ironic part. In November administration at SHS virtue signaled about how they were going to be addressing racism in the school.
The school’s new administration, led by Dr. Maguire, has made a commitment to being an “anti-racist school” that is actively working to eliminate racism.
Students who felt previous efforts were ineffective welcome this change. Junior Sarah Weinberg, vice president of the SHS Anti-Racism Club, said in the past, racist incidents have been “brushed under the rug” in regards to the administration’s responses.
The administration is taking steps toward stopping the spread of racism in the community. In an upcoming teacher Professional Development (PD) day on December 16th, this topic will be covered in order to train teachers on how to handle incidents of racism. Last year, there was teacher PD in the works on this topic, but plans were cut short with the pandemic. The school’s new administration, led by Dr. Maguire, has made a commitment to being an “anti-racist school” that is actively working to eliminate racism.
So basically, in an attempt to be woke and prove they cared about ending racism, administration vowed not to brush instances of racism under the rug. They even caved and wasted a day of professional development on how to train teachers to stop kids from making racist jokes outside of school. Then they were confronted with a video of a student using the n word, and instead of going after her they went after some random girl who sent video of the student using the n word to a friend. In other words, they would prefer if videos like this didn’t get out so they could continue to “brush it under the rug.”
Hello Turtle Riders. As you know if you follow Turtleboy we are constantly getting censored and banned by Facebook for what are clearly not violations of their terms of service. Twitter has done the same, and trolls mass reported our blog to Google AdSense thousands of times, leading to demonitization. We can get by and survive, but we could really use your help. Please consider donating by hitting the PayPal button above if you’d like support free speech and what we do in the face of Silicon Valley censorship. Or just buy our award winning book about the dangers of censorship and rise of Turtleboy:
