Kansas cheerleader says she’s kicked off squad after coach says braids are too long
Talyn Jefferson said she refused to remove a hair bonnet during an Ottawa University cheerleading practice earlier this month because she worried her long braids might hit a teammate in the face.
Her refusal, she told The Star, led to a racist rant from her coach about her nearly 3-foot-long braids. Jefferson, a junior from Lawrence, said she was then kicked out of practice — and then kicked off the squad.
She plans to transfer to another school but has not said where.
“I got kicked off because I was standing up for myself against microaggressive comments that the coach made toward me, that made me and others very uncomfortable,” said Jefferson, who is Black.
“Instead of the university addressing the fact that the comments were out of line and made me uncomfortable and the coach should have apologized, their solution was to kick me off instead.”
She told a friend about the Jan. 6 incident, who drew attention to it with a post on Twitter.
In a later tweet, to dispel rumors that she had been expelled, Jefferson said she “was withdrawn from the school due to personal financial issues.”
Now others on social media are calling for the entire cheer team to quit in solidarity.
Jefferson, 20, who had been on the cheer team for more than two years, told The Star that she had never intended her story to end up on Twitter but was glad the friend she sent it to, via text, made it public.
Officials at Ottawa University, about 50 miles southwest of Kansas City, confirmed in an email to The Star that Jefferson was removed from the team, but said it “had absolutely nothing to do with her hairstyle” and was not related to the cheerleading practice incident.
Further, they said, “no student has ever been sanctioned or expelled for wearing box braids, bonnets, or any other hairstyle.”
Jefferson told The Star, “They claim I got kicked off because I defy authority and I have anger issues, but like I’ve said, that is not true. I have no type of misconduct issues at that school.”
In the tweet, Jefferson tells her friend that the coach, Casey Jamerson, told her, “You shouldn’t have gotten 7 foot long hair then! She proceeds to tell me that my box braids are a hindrance to my performance and they are not collegiate and I never should have gotten them in the first place.”
Jefferson describes an encounter full of racial microaggressions that escalated until the coach, using an expletive, told her to leave the practice.
She said that the coach, who is white, claimed she understands Black women’s hairstyles. “I do black people’s hair,” the tweet about the encounter quoted the coach saying. “I’m a cosmetologist! I lived with a black girl for five years. I do understand what it’s like to have hair like that.”
The coach did not return The Star’s request for comment.
Hair, and who gets to wear it how, has been the subject of discrimination lawsuits nationwide. Last October in Kansas City, the City Council voted unanimously to enact the CROWN Act, which adds hairstyle and texture in the city’s definition of race discrimination. In effect, it bars businesses from discriminating against Black people who wear hairstyles such as dreadlocks, twists or braids.
Scott Albright, a spokesman for the university, called the incident “regrettable,” and said it was being investigated, but declined to discuss the details, saying student privacy and confidentiality laws “prohibit us from doing so.”
In a statement to the campus community, university President Reggies Wenyika said he is concerned about “the narrative that is being circulated on social media.”
Wenyika said that after learning about the student’s “allegations of microaggression,” university officials talked with Jefferson and other student witnesses and reviewed video footage.
“The university recognizes that incidents of this nature can inflame passions, which can potentially lead to erroneous things being said or written,” Wenyika said. “However the targeting personal attacks and false and misleading information currently being circulated on social media are unfortunate.”
This story was originally published January 22, 2021 at 7:56 PM.
