Issaquah High School students, district debate way to handle racist sign

Outrage erupted at Issaquah High School after a student made a sign asking a boy to the school’s Tolo dance, which read, “If I was black I’d be picking cotton, but instead I pick you. Tolo?”

The racist sign has sparked a whole host of questions for the district and student body, including what was going through the student’s mind to write such a hurtful sentiment; what a proper punishment should consist of; how much of and what kind of social media response is appropriate; and, most importantly, how to move forward after such an emotional incident.

Issaquah School District Communications Director L. Michelle told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson that her immediate reaction to the photo was disbelief.

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“To be honest, I looked at it, and I looked at it again, and I just questioned, ‘Am I really seeing this?'” she said. “And then when you realize yes, and then [with] some other colleagues, we started to communicate. And we were just so heartbroken.”

The Issaquah School District, which made an official statement condemning the racially offensive language after the photo began circulating, had already been making a special focus on equity and cultural competence in the district’s schools for the past few years. Michelle said that in light of the Tolo incident, the district’s first priority will be “facing the racism that is in our community.”

“While we do have free speech, we also have consequences for our speech,” Michelle said.

Issaquah High School students plan walkout

To show unity among people of all races and ethnicity, and to demonstrate that one student’s Tolo sign does not reflect the beliefs of Issaquah teens as a whole, Issaquah High students Engu Fontama and Alex Liu organized a walkout for 12:15 p.m. Wednesday. The walkout is entirely student-planned and is not sanctioned by the district.

“They just want to dissociate themselves … it’s come to, everybody now has to wear this mantel who goes to Issaquah High School,” Michelle said. “And I do think that, because it is so inconsistent with most of the students’ beliefs and values, they just want to differentiate themselves, and separate themselves from that idea, and not be lumped in with the whole.”

Fontama and Liu said that unfortunately, this is not the first time that Issaquah High School has been connected with racist speech. In 2014, some Issaquah basketball players sent racist Tweets to players at Garfield High School in Seattle ahead of a tournament between the two, making slurs such as, “Checkmate was when Abraham Lincoln made the mistake of freeing you.”

“We feel that Issaquah High School is going to go down and have a reputation of being racist and bigoted, ” Liu said. “And we feel that does not represent the whole student body, and even though it’s just a couple singular events, we want to be clear and make sure that people know that the Issaquah community, and specifically the students at the high school, don’t all share these beliefs that these incidents portray us as.”

Bullying backlash

Twitter users were quick to dox the girl who made the sign, posting her name, her family members’ names, and places of work, and calling for her expulsion, for her college admittance to be revoked, and even for her death.

One Issaquah senior, who wished to remain anonymous, came forward — despite hardly knowing the girl in question — to support her at a time when, he said, all of her friends have distanced themselves.

“I think we’re using this situation as perhaps maybe an opportunity to throw fire at this girl and really just be kind of nasty people in response to something nasty that she did once, that we know of,” he said. “We should instead be using this as a learning opportunity … to educate her and other students who may not realize how serious of an issue this is, rather than deciding to … absolutely persecute her for it.”

Michelle was adamant that any sort of hate speech “does not meet our expectations in our code of conduct,” and that “the same rules apply to anyone who would be retaliating to a situation like this.”

The walkout organizers, too, condemned all bullying on social media.

“I don’t think that’s acceptable either,” Fontama said. “I think that’s just fighting fire with fire, and it’s wrong.”

Focusing on the future

The doxing actually takes away from the purpose of the walkout and the important conversations about racism, Fontama and Liu said, because it shifts the focus away from discussing the greater issues at hand.

“The whole purpose of the walkout tomorrow (Wednesday) isn’t really to provide a platform for just bashing on this one individual, it’s more to reflect the overall pattern, and to try to demonstrate what Issaquah High School and the Issaquah community is more about,” Liu stressed.

The best step, Fontama said, is to learn from this incident and to strive to be better in the future.

“The fact of the matter is that it’s been done,” she said. “And that’s the only thing that really matters at this point, is that she said what she said, and our school is going to do the best that they can to educate her on why that was wrong. I can’t speak for her perspective, all I know is that what she did was wrong, and it hurt our student body.”