There is so much wrong with this story that I don’t where to begin.
The State Newspaper broke the story Friday night about a 16 year who not only filmed racist videos but followed them up with threats to shoot up Cardinal Newman School which he attended.
The videos were certainly bad enough.They showed this teen shooting boxes of Air Jordan’s as prop for African Americans. This happened back in May.Days after in a group text message he threatened to shoot up the school.
Those messages are reported to have gone to some ten of so friends who may or not have been Cardinal Newman students. None of them reported them at the time to the school or authorities much less to their parents. There is talk that this was all about who could say or do the most outrageous things. This is certainly nothing to joke about.Don’t tell me they didn’t know better.
The disturbing videos and texts were finally discovered the middle of last month by a parent who either found them on their child’s phone or was told about them.
It was at that time that the school was notified and the teen was arrested. That was three weeks before the story broke! In the meantime the school made two very bad decisions.
First, they decided not to inform parents whose kids attend the school. Imagine finding this out through the media weeks after it was discovered! True school was not in session, but that’s no excuse.
Second, rather than expel the student they allowed his parents to withdraw him from school. The claim is that this happened prior to their knowing about the threats against Cardinal Newman. There are published reports saying the teen is a member of a well-connected local family. Very well-connected. Is favoritism at play here or is this just a case of the school trying to sweep it under the rug, or both?
Imagine had we never found out about this. He would have enrolled elsewhere and that school would never have known about any of this. Maybe it was just a joke. But then again maybe it wasn’t. The administration had a duty and they failed everyone involved, expect maybe this teen and his family.