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Putnam County Students Suspended For Racist Tweets Post-Basketball Game
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Mar 7, 2014
Modified Mar 7, 2014
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Courtesy Mount Vernon Mayor Ernest Davis
By
Rebecca Fishbein
Published Mar 7, 2014
Modified Mar 7, 2014
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In case we need more reminders that children are the future, three students from a Putnam County high school were suspended this week for allegedly posting racist tweets after a rival team beat them in a basketball game.
A Mahopac High School loss to rivals Mount Vernon High School on February 27th grew so heated that fights broke out in the stands. The ugliness continued post-game, when students allegedly tweeted racial slurs and images of Confederate flags, referring to the Mount Vernon students as "monkeys," and saying things like "Go back to your cages," and "One of the few biological Mount Vernon fathers just tried to sell me crack outside the county center."
School officials were able to identify three students from their tweets, and have since suspended them. “What they did was unacceptable,” Mahopac school Superintendent Thomas Manko told CBS News. "Some have already been suspended, others will be and as an education institution, they will be reeducated that words do matter and there are some words you just don’t use."
And Judith Johnson, Mount Vernon's interim school Superintendent, wrote a letter [pdf] this week urging Governor Cuomo to publicly recognize the tweets as a "civil rights violation and racial harassment," in addition to conducting a full investigation into the incident and suspending the Mahopac basketball team for a year.
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mahopac
mount vernon
putnam county
racism
westchester
Rebecca Fishbein
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