Two Naperville North students involved in posting a video containing racial slurs on social media are facing school discipline and a wave of backlash from the NNHS community.

Naperville North counselor and Black Student Leadership Association advisor Ebony Baker said for all the pain involved, she hopes the incident can lead to an improvement in the school culture.

“The conversations that have taken place after are extremely appropriate and necessary to address underlying concerns that have probably been present previously,” Baker said. “We just never had it out in the open to discuss.”

The video went viral after another North student posted it on Twitter, objecting to its contents. Close to 1000 people have “liked” her denunciation of the video. This prompted an NBC television segment, which aired Monday night, reporting on the reactions of NNHS students and staff. This was not the first time Naperville North made the nightly news in the past year. In December 2016, several students were involved in an incident with cannabis-laced gummy candies, which rapidly spread across local and national news.

Another factor that added to the community’s outrage was that the video surfaced during Black History Month.

The short video appeared to take place out of school. According to NNHS Principal Stephanie Posey, disciplinary action for off-campus student behavior can be enforced in their extracurricular activities because of Naperville North’s Code of Conduct. However, Posey declined to discuss specifics in the case.

“Any student who signs a code of conduct here understands that it is a 24/7 operation,” Posey said. “We would make determinations after giving the student due process and talking with parents about what the appropriate consequences are for any actions that a student might have taken or been involved in.”

NNHS junior and BSLA exec board member Mariel Thompson expressed her thoughts on why some people might use racial slurs.

“We’ve come to a time where it’s cool to be black in the pop culture sense. But it’s not cool when you have to fight for it and you have to experience anything other than privilege,” said Thompson. “I think a lot of other races want to join in and they feel the only way that they can join is by taking advantage of a word we use to connect ourselves. When in reality, for a lot of people it’s just meant for a specific group of people.”

Despite the adversity many North students have faced as a result of the video and the anger it provoked, Posey believes this incident can be used as a unifying point for the NNHS student body and staff.

“We [need to] take this as a jumping off point to address something that maybe we haven’t addressed as well as we should,” said Posey. “I’m very proud of that fact that our students have been reflective… and understand that although a mistake was made, forgiveness is an opportunity for us to grow as a building.”
This article was reported by Will Trubshaw and Alex Gray