Students, black leaders question scope of Boston Latin probe
The investigation’s focus on administrative action ignored wider issues with the school’s racial climate, said Kylie Webster-Cazeau (left) and Meggie Noel, Latin School seniors who launched a social media campaign about race issues at the school that led to the investigation.
Boston Latin School students and leaders of the city’s African-American community say a School Department investigation into racial conflicts at the elite exam school was too limited in scope and left many questions unanswered.
Investigators found that school administrators responded appropriately to several racially charged incidents and insensitive social media messages sent by students, according to an executive summary of the report released Thursday.
But that summary said Boston Latin leaders failed to notify parents of students involved in a 2014 incident when a “non-black” male student used a racial slur and references to lynching in an exchange with a female African-American student.
The School Department has not released the full report. Superintendent Tommy Chang said the document could not be made public because it contains confidential information about students and staff.
The investigation’s focus on administrative action ignored wider issues with the school’s racial climate, said Meggie Noel and Kylie Webster-Cazeau, Latin School seniors who launched a social media campaign about race issues at the school that led to the investigation.
“We didn’t feel like the findings represented the whole story,” Noel said.
The investigation’s relatively small number of interviews — 14 — left many issues unexplored, the teenagers said.
“There’s like 2,400 kids and 118 faculty,” Webster-Cazeau said. “There’s a whole lot of people in the building that they could have interviewed. . . . Fourteen isn’t enough to reflect what is really going on.”
The girls expressed dissatisfaction with the investigation’s findings regarding racially insensitive messages posted on Twitter amid a November 2014 student discussion of a Missouri grand jury’s decision not to indict the white police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black Students, black leaders question scope of Latin School inquiry - The Boston Globe: