By Amelia Pak-Harvey

apak-harvey@lowellsun.com

LOWELL — Six students have been suspended from Lowell High School after a racially-charged text conversation went viral this week that included the use of the “N” word.

School officials are investigating the incident that blew up on social media Tuesday just hours after election results declared Anye Nkimbeng, an African American senior, the Class of 2016 president.

The group text conversation, apparently between 13 students and titled “We Love Black People,” featured comments like “rule out blacks and #MakeLHSGreatAgain.”

Another person in the conversation expressed concern about Nkimbeng’s graduation speech, saying that every black person in the grade would be standing up, yelling “ayeeee” and twerking.

“That’s why Class of 2017 is the best,” replied another student. “We’ll be the first class in years to have a white president.”

“F**k black people,” read one response to the group.

School officials said Thursday they’re working to address the situation.

“We are a community of over 60 countries, we’re one of the most diverse schools in Massachusetts and we take great pride in the fact that we get along incredibly well here,” said Headmaster Brian Martin. “But this is a sign that we’re missing something here, that we need to do a better job at understanding cultures and respecting cultures, and we’re not going to tolerate any kind of this behavior.”

Martin declined to give the names of the students suspended, whom he said were minors.

The conversation went viral after one member of the group took a screen-shot that ended up on social media online platforms. By the end of the day, LHS students could all see it.

The group message, according to students interviewed by The Sun of Lowell, started from a faction of students who supported one of Nkimbeng’s opponents.

But Nkimbeng also said there was a rumor going around that one student in the text conversation was going to lynch him.

He said he approached the student, who told him he was joking.

“He didn’t deny it, he just said, ‘Oh yeah I was playing around,'” Nkimbeng said. “I was like, look, that’s not even a joking word. Lynching? That’s life-threatening.”

Nkimbeng’s father, Fru, said his son came home terrified. He waited for a school official to call, he said, but it never came.

When he met his son’s housemaster the next day, he said he was told that the parents of the students involved were contacted.

“I’m very, very disappointed that you called 12 white kids’ parents but you did not call the son’s parents whose life was in danger,” said Fru Nkimbeng, who has served on the Police Department’s Race Relations Council and helped coordinate the annual African Cultural Festival.

Contacted by The Sun, LHS Headmaster Martin said he could not release the ethnic identities of the students involved, nor their grade level.

In a related matter, a photograph of a toilet torn from a restroom wall made the rounds on Twitter, damage to school property that Superintendent Salah Khelfaoui said appears to have occurred over frustration with the elections.

In addition, an online petition calls for students to impeach Nkimbeng.

“He shouldn’t be president, impeach him,” the petition reads. “Imagine him doing your graduation speech.”

Lowell police and the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office were called in to investigate the situation, Khelfaoui said, but later handed it to school authorities to investigate on their own.

But two days after the incident occurred, school officials were still scrambling to put together a report on the situation and how staff handled it.

“We’re still investigating so I can’t talk about it too much,” Khelfaoui said on Thursday. “I want to make sure that the handling of it was proper and all was done as per protocol.”

Khelfaoui said he was meeting with Nkimbeng’s mother Thursday afternoon.

He added the administration is taking it very seriously, and wants to turn this into an additional learning moment for students.

“I’m not going to allow the angry reaction of a dozen students to paint our entire student body,” he said. “I will not accept that. I think our student body is very well diverse and in general very respective of each other.”

Anye Nkimbeng’s friend, Avery Ochijeh, said there was no tension during the election campaign but said he could feel it on Tuesday, the day the results were posted.

“All I know is that I looked on my phone and just saw that all over Twitter,” he said of the group text conversation that went viral.

Meanwhile, Nkimbeng said he’s disappointed.

“It’s just sad and disturbing knowing that people in Lowell HIgh School wanted to hurt me and attack me because I won class president,” he wrote in a letter recounting the day’s events. “I never did anything.”

Nkimbeng’s peers have expressed frustration at the incident as well, including junior Franck Wafo, who was mentioned in the text conversation as a possible black presidential candidate for the Class of 2017.

“No one’s gonna vote for him,” one student wrote.

Wafo said the incident is worrying the whole student body. He doesn’t know if he’ll run for class president next year, because his parents told him not to.

“I fear that my school is not safe anymore for any person of minority,” he wrote in an email.

Follow Amelia on Twitter and Tout @AmeliaPakHarvey.