Albany

Racist taunts including use of the n-word began on Twitter almost immediately after Kori Dobbs, who is African-American, was elected senior class president at Albany High School in late September.

The online harassment accelerated two weeks ago after Dobbs, a popular and high-achieving student, was voted by classmates "Most Likely to Be Successful" in a tradition known as Senior Superlatives.

Four white students, including the son of an Albany High teacher, were given three-day in-school suspensions Thursday and additional suspensions are possible, school officials said. They did not release the names of the suspended students, though one student spoke to the Times Union.

When the matter was brought to their attention last Friday, school officials traced the Twitter and social media accounts through documentation known as "screen grabs" that identified the offenders. It was determined their behavior violated the school's code of conduct and warranted the suspensions, officials said.

"We took this very seriously. We're a microcosm of the city, and this issue is bigger than Albany High School," said Dale Getto, a principal at Albany High's Abrookin Career and Technical Center who met with Dobbs' parents as well as the parents of the four students who were suspended.

Selina Dobbs, Kori's mother and a 1990 graduate of Albany High School, said, "We wanted these kids to be disciplined to let them know this is not going to be tolerated and it's not acceptable." She called the suspensions "a teachable moment" and said that "these kids grow up to be adults and hold positions of power, and we don't want them to continue these racist attitudes."

"I just couldn't take the cyberbullying anymore and had to tell someone," Kori Dobbs said. "I was really upset and sad."

Dobbs transferred two years ago from the Academy of Holy Names, and this fall she and three of her girlfriends — an African-American, Caucasian and Hispanic — ran for the senior class cabinet posts in late-September with a campaign slogan: Unify Albany High.

They won, and a racist backlash began.

Students posted tweets on Twitter that the senior prom would include malt liquor and have a ghetto theme. The class president and cabinet members have a leading role in planning the spring senior prom.

"I'm not a racist," said senior Christopher Kissane, one of the four students suspended. He said he made a joking Twitter reference in October to the TV sitcom, "It's Always Sunny Philadelphia," that was misinterpreted as racist.

"Maybe I'll step it up a little and do blackface," Kissane tweeted after students were urged to wear black to show school spirit during Spirit Week.

"It was done in a joking, satirical manner and was not meant to be offensive to anybody," said Kissane, an honors students in the National Honor Society who plays saxophone in the marching band and has leadership positions in the robotics and ski clubs.

"I don't feel my son has done anything wrong," said his father, Richard Kissane, a technology teacher who has been on the faculty for 32 years and is a 1978 graduate of Albany High. "There are a lot of racial undercurrents in the building. The stuff I hear in class and in the hallway I find very offensive. I report offenses, and most of the time they are disregarded."

The online slurs amounted to a small tremor that exposed racial fault lines just below the surface in a diverse school body of 2,214 students at Albany High who are 54 percent black, 23 percent white, 13 percent Hispanic, 9 percent Asian and 1 percent multiracial, according to 2012 state Education Department statistics. In the past few decades, the locus of power in the school has shifted as white students have declined from a large majority to a minority — indicative of a demographic shift that has reshaped the city.

Thursday's suspensions of the four students followed recent school board meetings at which parents complained publicly about racist incidents and attitudes at Albany city schools.

"We need to help our children with managing diversity and civility in our schools at a time when things are becoming less and less civil," said Superintendent Marguerite Vanden Wyngaard. She said there will be additional programs and public discussions about race and civility that she hopes spark a citywide discussion.

"It's a divided city," she said. "We need to flip it."

The new senior class president and her officers say they are focused on encouraging tolerance.

"Our cabinet is a diverse group and we really are about uniting and getting everyone in our class together," Kori Dobbs said. She is also editor in chief of the high school yearbook, Prisms, as well as a student representative on the school board. She worked for two summers in a youth employment program for Mayor Kathy Sheehan when she was city treasurer. Dobbs has taken several Advance Placement courses and has applied to college nursing programs with the goal of becoming a nurse practitioner.

"Kori is a great student who is standing up to this challenge," Getto said. "This is bigger than her."

Her late grandfather, Robert Gene Dobbs, was a founding member of The Brothers, a 1960s Albany black civil rights group that organized poor, disenfranchised blacks across the city and fought on their behalf for jobs, social justice and equal rights. The Brothers often used militant tactics, which are discussed in a current documentary and historical exhibit on display at the Ten Broeck Mansion annex in Arbor Hill.

"We raised her to be strong. She's the granddaughter of a fighter," said her father, Corey Dobbs, who works as a hall monitor at Albany High. He and his wife met with school officials several times beginning last Friday and demanded swift disciplinary action.

"I'm raising a confident child and a leader who is humble but who will stand up for herself and take appropriate action," said Selina Dobbs, who works for Commission on Economic Opportunity, a human services agency in Troy that helps needy families. The couple's younger daughter, Camille, is a freshman at Albany High.

She said she had no plans to remove either of her daughters from Albany High, where both have been doing well and have had largely positive experiences.

"It's very upsetting to my family how my son was treated, too," said Lisa Kissane, Christopher's mother. "To call my son racist is absurd. I've seen a lot of tweets that have gone back and forth and a lot of them are very racist against both blacks and whites."

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Thursday's suspensions also followed last month's anti-cyberbullying law signed by Albany County Executive Dan McCoy and an ongoing anti-bullying public service campaign sponsored by District Attorney David Soares, titled "Words Can Hurt or Heal."

School officials said they hoped the incident would bring about positive change.

"Some healing needs to be done," Getto said. "Out of adversity and ugliness, the phoenix rises."

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Kori Dobbs has asked for a town hall-style meeting with the senior class to address the hurt the incident has caused on all sides.

"I want us to talk about this and to say it is not OK," she said.

pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623 • @PaulGrondahl

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