University of Missouri suspends Lee’s Summit teen for video mocking George Floyd
Clarification: The following story has been updated to clarify both the source of information connecting the video to George Floyd’s murder and which teen said “I can’t breathe.”
Update: Teen’s lawyer says the video was ‘innocent horseplay,’ not George Floyd mockery. Story here.
A Lee’s Summit teenager who made a video that University of Missouri officials believed may have been mocking the death of George Floyd was suspended from the school, where she was set to enroll as a freshman. She was the subject of an MU civil rights investigation until she recently withdrew from the school.
In the Snapchat video, three young women are heard laughing. Only one of them can be seen clearly, placing her knee on her friend’s neck, pretending to choke her while the friend says, “I can’t breathe.” The Lee’s Summit school district confirmed that all three are recent graduates.
The university said the video appears to be an attempt to parody the death of Floyd, the black man who lay prone on a Minneapolis street as a white police officer pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes to restrain him. A bystander’s video captured Floyd pleading with the officer, saying he could not breathe. His May 25 death has sparked protests, some violent, in cities around the country, including Kansas City.
“The video is both shocking and disturbing,” MU Interim Chancellor Mun Choi wrote in a statement Monday. “We have received numerous emails and social media posts from members of our community and the public who felt hurt and dehumanized by the video.”
On Snapchat, videos disappear after 24 hours. But the video was copied and posted May 29 on the Twitter account of Jerica Mcafee, another recent Lee’s Summit graduate. The tweet said, “this video was posted by a graduating senior in my class of two other girls in my class. disgusting!”
Lee’s Summit school officials said in a statement that they were investigating but declined to identify the students, citing their privacy. “The district would like to make it abundantly clear that racist behaviors or any actions or behaviors that mock issues of racism, discrimination and intolerance are unacceptable and are not condoned by Lee’s Summit,” the statement said.
The school district was the center of racial controversy over efforts to hire a firm to do diversity training for teachers and staff. After school board members twice rejected recommendations from Dennis Carpenter, the district’s first black superintendent, he resigned, citing “philosophical differences” with the board. Diversity training did begin there last year.
On Tuesday, Lee’s Summit voters elected the district’s first black school board member, Megan Marshall.
The teen in the video was forbidden from entering MU’s Columbia campus while its Office for Civil Rights investigated her behavior. University officials, who declined to identify her, said she had applied to MU and had been accepted. But after the university informed her that it had launched its investigation, she withdrew her application, said Christian Basi, university spokesman.
Choi said he learned about the video on Friday, one day after he and the three other chancellors of campuses in the University of Missouri System had “condemned recent acts of racism around our country and shared our commitment to our values of inclusion and respect.”
The chancellors, in a statement to university communities in Kansas City, St. Louis, Columbia and Rolla, said, “We have no tolerance for discrimination or acts of hate in our community.”
Nearly five years ago, unanswered complaints of racism on the Columbia campus resulted in protests led predominantly by black students. That summer, Michael Brown, a black teenager, had been shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, near St. Louis.
The student protests led to the ouster of the university chancellor and the UM System president. And they set off a series of race-related protests on college campuses across the country. Enrollment at MU plummeted, and donations to the university suffered. It took at least two years before the university could claim recovery.
University officials said they are well aware that students may be wondering about MU’s commitment to equity.
Choi reached out to members of MU’s black student groups and has had several meetings with students in the last few days, Basi said.
“University leaders and I remain committed to combating discrimination and racism in all its forms,” Choi’s statement said.
This story was originally published June 3, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
