Students in Snapchat video chant racist lyrics from song celebrating MLK's death

This story has been updated with new information released by Santan Junior High School on Wednesday afternoon.

A video circulating on social media that shows several Chandler students chanting racist lyrics to a rap song has raised parents' concerns.

The video posted on Snapchat shows a group of Santan Junior High School students jumping and chanting, "(Expletive) all N-----s" in unison.

The school principal, in an email sent to all parents Tuesday, said the song playing in the video's background is a rap song released 18 years ago.

By Wednesday, she clarified it was another song. The song, played on YouTube and Soundcloud more than 100,000 times, leads with a lyric celebrating the death of Martin Luther King Jr., and recounts numerous racist stereotypes.

The controversy surfaced Monday, on the holiday honoring the civil-rights leader's legacy.

"While the students’ actions do not fall under the purview of the school, we condemn on the strongest terms the highly offensive language and actions," Principal Barbara Kowalinski said in the email to parents at the south Chandler school, which is in the Chandler Unified School District. "Please continue to reach out to your children and discuss the harm of language that is offensive and inappropriate in our community."

The video of the students made the rounds through Chandler teens' phones on Monday, when parents became aware of it and the Chandler Police Department was notified.

Geoffrey Mobisson, a Chandler father whose daughter attends Santan, said he was horrified. "This is not a song you dance to, it’s not a song that's popular," he said. "Someone had to look for it and someone deliberately had to play it. It took effort to find this thing."

Police investigated the incident after a threat was made against one of the students in the video, a police spokesman said.

Police report no complaints were officially made about the Snapchat video itself, and that its posting was not a crime.

"It was obviously a really poor decision for them to make, the fact that they would even say that, whether it was part of a song or not," said Detective Seth Tyler, a Chandler police spokesman. "But as far as the legality, no crime was committed."

Schools and hate speech

In the U.S., hate speech is not an exception to free speech, according to James Weinstein, a professor at ASU's Sandra Day O'Connor College of Law.

"Just because it's hate speech alone is not a reason to label it a crime," Weinstein said. "If the speech turns into a threat, if they turn into fighting words, then the police can investigate."

The precedent for cases involving student speech was established in Tinker vs. Des Moines, which found that to justify the suppression of speech, school officials must prove that the conduct in question would "materially and substantially interfere" with the operation of the school, he said.

While some parents say they plan to complain to the school, Weinstein said it gets tricky when the incident happens off school grounds.

Social media is just another tool that gives courts pause in cases like this, where hate speech can be widely disseminated in an instant, he said.

"It's a really open question about whether students can be punished for online speech that was taken off campus," Weinstein said.

Parents speak up

Parent Anthony Armstrong said he was shocked and upset to learn the teens in the video attend school with his daughter, who is among the 5 percent of black students in the Chandler district.

"I feel hurt and frustrated because these are kids that are in her class," Armstrong said. "It's pretty upsetting that she's thinking she has these close friends but behind her back they're yelling the N-word on Snapchat."

"There's a lot of immaturity mainly because there's so few minorities at that school," Armstrong said. "It's upsetting that I have to drop her off at school knowing this."

Mobisson is disappointed at how the school and parents are reacting to the issue, saying they are more concerned with the dangers of posting content to Snapchat than with respect for their black classmates.

"The lesson should be that this type of behavior, that disparages and breaks communities, will not and cannot be tolerated," Mobisson said. "Be accountable for what happens."

"The school absolved themselves of accountability by saying they were singing along to a rap group," Mobisson said. "They missed a teaching and learning opportunity for the kids."

Amber Hutchinson, whose daughter attends the school, said members of the Chandler-based Black Mothers Forum plan to speak with school officials in the coming week.

Hutchinson spoke up earlier this school year with concerns about the junior high school's decision to show a movie about slavery and the Underground Railroad that uses an iteration of the N-word.

Hutchinson said her daughter has notified everyone from the bus driver to the dean of students at her school about hearing racial slurs at school, but punishment is rarely handed out.

"I'm not sure that the school is concerned about her safety just based off the way they are permitting the blatant disrespect and the provoking of the African-American students," she said.

Hutchinson said she understands the video was filmed on private property, but she believes the school has a responsibility to curb these behaviors on campus.

"We as a community will no longer remain silent while our children are blatantly disrespected, provoked, threatened, neglected and discounted by their peers, teachers and the administration of CUSD due to the deeply rooted, racially charged stereotypes," Hutchinson said.

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