Content warning: This post contains some racist imagery.

On Monday, Cleveland High School Principal Ayesha Freeman emailed parents and students to tell them a teacher found string tied like a noose hanging from one of the building’s entryways.

Four days later, she had another note for the school community, this time about “an event … that was hurtful to our staff and students of color.”

That event, it appears, was the discovery of a cake Thursday that some students and parents say is a display of blackface.

It started as a plain chocolate cake, Cleveland High senior Brody Kreiter said in a Twitter thread. Students in the culinary arts class then decorated it to feature two blue eyes and exaggerated lips.

a bunch of white girls at my school made a blackface chocolate and we're all pissed about it: a thread (PLEASE SHARE THIS SO SOMETHING CAN ACTUALLY BE DONE) tw: racism, sexual assault pic.twitter.com/eh6EXTLpbB — brody hehe (@brodyurbro) April 26, 2019

The image was sent to several students through Snapchat. That’s where Kreiter saw it.

He decided to take a screenshot and post on Twitter because, Kreiter said, he wanted something to be done about it even though he’s not a person of color.

“I just believe that certain communities within Cleveland get treated unfairly and I'm sick of it,” Kreiter told The Oregonian/OregonLive through direct message on Twitter. “And it's our job as members of those communities to come together and take action.”

A majority of students at the Southeast Portland high school, about 69 percent, are white, according to district figures. Three percent of Cleveland students are black.

Freeman, the school principal, said in a note to parents that Cleveland would begin working “towards a restorative process” in the wake of the incident. The district is also investigating.

“We are still gathering facts to determine what happened,” Portland Public Schools spokesman Harry Esteve said in a statement. “We want and expect our schools to be places where students feel safe, welcome, included and respected by staff and classmates. Any act of racism, racial insensitivity or discrimination of any sort is completely unacceptable at our schools.”

The incidents come six months after Cleveland High officials found swastikas and “hateful words” written on fliers for the Jewish Student Union.

The club’s members produced a panel discussion for 90 faculty and staff in the days after the fliers were discovered. And a vice principal organized an all-school anti-hate assembly.