By The New York Times (U.S.) | Created at 2024-09-22 22:17:39 | Updated at 2024-09-30 07:27:00
1 week ago
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A family says their son, a member of the swim team at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, was victimized when a teammate etched the slur across his chest with a box cutter.
Sept. 22, 2024, 5:46 p.m. ET
School administrators at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania are investigating a report of a student scratching a racial slur onto another student’s chest at an on-campus residence this month.
Both the student who wrote the slur and the student who was scratched were on the swim team at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, Pa. The school and the family of the targeted student said in a joint statement on Sunday that the investigation was almost finished and that the student who scratched the slur was no longer enrolled at the college. It was not immediately clear whether the student was expelled or had decided to leave.
The names of the students have not been made public. The family of the targeted student had said in a statement published on Friday in The Gettysburgian, the college newspaper, that their son became “the victim of a hate crime” when a teammate used a box cutter to etch a slur against Black people across their son’s chest at an informal swim team gathering on Sept. 6.
They said that their son had been the only person of color at the gathering and that the teammate had been a “trusted” friend. Their son was later interviewed by members of the swim team’s coaching staff and then dismissed from the team, according to their statement. It was unclear on Sunday whether his status had changed.
The school and the family are now having conversations about “how most constructively to move forward,” they said on Sunday.
“The college and the family both recognize the gravity and seriousness of this situation and hope it can serve as a transformative moment for our community and beyond,” the statement read.
