A black principal, four white teens and the ‘senior prank’ that became a hate crime (WaPo)

randompasserby · Jul 10, 2019

I hate the prank excuse so fucking much.
If fucking NOBODY is laughing at your so-called prank and the only ones amused are the pranksters, it's just called being an ass.
Do racist shit as a prank, then congrats you've just been upgraded to a racist pos as well.

Toxi · Jul 10, 2019

Krejlooc said:
What is the functional difference between spray painting that someone is a nigger as a prank, and doing it because you're a racist piece of shit? Intent? So you're going to honestly say you didn't seriously intend to hurt someone when you called them a nigger, because you don't believe it? Hate spread as a "prank" is still hate. I think this is something a lot of young people don't get. That poor principal.

The case of the ironic goat fucker: It doesn't matter if you were fucking the goat ironically, you still fucked a goat.

Grug · Jul 10, 2019

We cemented a toilet in the middle of the access road to the school.

FaceHugger · Jul 10, 2019

Something like this happened at my middle school in the 90's. Some dudes I knew (not well, not friends, I just knew them by proxy really) spray painted all over the courtyard and trailers (we had trailers for classrooms for a few years because of a sudden influx of students). N-word this, jew that, swastikas, called out other students by name, the vice principal sucking a huge cock in effigy, etc. Was kind of surreal showing up for class and seeing all that crazy stuff everywhere.

Anyway, our senior prank was carving a gigantic penis into the track field. Granby High baby, 2000.

Aeana · Jul 10, 2019

As I read this piece, it really struck me how good the author is. She needs some credit for writing this so well. She does a great job of adding in bits that show what kind of people they are even outside of the crime committed.

This part cracked me up:

He didn't think anyone would recognize him come Monday, when he was going to start a new job in a heating and cooling apprenticeship program an hour away. It was going to pay $14 an hour. If he liked it, he might get his HVAC license. And then in three years when his probation was over, he thought he might move to Florida. Do some fishing. Start over.

He pulled into the jail parking lot 20 minutes early, switched off his engine and pulled out his phone. He turned on Kodak Black, who started rapping about "nigga s---."

followed by

Josh pulled out a can of tobacco dip. Seth took a hit from his strawberry-flavored Juul. They sat there until Josh said, "You ready?" and then Seth followed him inside.

sph3re · Jul 10, 2019

"I never really understood the symbol of the swastika. I knew it was wrong to plaster it somewhere. I didn't learn exactly what [the Nazis] were doing to the Jews until I went to the Holocaust Museum. I never learned that they were mutilated. I knew that they were, like, burned. But I never learned that they had experiments done on them, were injected with diseases. The school didn't include that. They just included the burning and the train cars."

Matt Lipp, whose graffiti attacked Jewish, black and gay people, would serve 11 of the 16 he was sentenced to. He has filed an appeal, still arguing that his First Amendment rights had been violated.

These kids are fucked, but fuck this kid in particular

Holy shit

Powdered Egg · Jul 10, 2019

"Ay buddy just because I beat up random Black people every now and again doesn't mean I'm raysuss!!"

Deleted member 7279 · Jul 10, 2019

I read the article and a few thoughts I had

- You can do something and be sincerely contrite. I don't think someone does 180 hours of community service and all those other things without being prompted by the justice system without some bit of sincere contrition. For at least one of them, it seemed incredibly important to not be defined by one single act.

- The article focuses too much on humanizing a racist act. I don't really care for hearing input from 19 year old kids who spray painted slurs all over their school and thought it would be funny. They had their say with the act itself.

- We have to be able to forgive people. We have to. I know it's hard and what they did was awful, but if we never forgive anyone and we don't believe anyone can change or mature or grow up, what do we have left as a society. Every crime should be life with no parole then.

- Things like this grow in two ways. First is the obvious systemic racism and white privilege baked into society. Second is that attitude that kids in schools have. You all know what I'm talking about. Kids will be shitheads to each other when no one is looking and no one speaks up about it and before you know it this lifelong asshole is a "good kid" from a "good family"

- I knew about the Nazis and the Holocaust, but it never quite clicked with me fully until I read Night by Elie Wiesel in the 10th grade. I was assigned it for an English class and I read it all in one day. It hurt my heart to read about the cruelty that can be done to other human beings. I'm not sure I buy not understanding the impact of what those symbols and slur are though. You hear facts in a class and yeah yeah yeah is this going to be on the test. But you never take real time to reflect on what those words mean. You never fully empathize with those people because it is so far removed from today. It's shameful that we "teach" things like this but often times there is no time to fully reflect on what actually happened when so often that is exactly what is needed. Reading Night 100% made me much more aware of the horrors of World War II as a young person that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Tlaloc · Jul 10, 2019

Man it must be awesome to have people trip over themselves to defend you and not have to worry about actually taking responsibility for your actions. That's something us brown and black folk can only dream of. Imagine a world where we wouldn't have to have "the talk" with our kids and instead know people all across the country and those with power would humanize our kids and say they have good hearts and families and the future is bright for them.

TheIlliterati · Jul 10, 2019

"I'm a non racist and this is my racist trick" - the joker

boris_feinbrand · Jul 10, 2019

Swiggins said:
Jesus Fuck.

The Senior Prank I remember most vividly was when the seniors from an adjacent high-school stole a life-sized cow statue from a nearby steak-house and then put it on the roof of the school. It was later returned unharmed. That was a cheeky bit of fun that didn't hurt anybody and was a fun little memory.

This...this isn't a fucking prank...

Yeah, stuff like that is harmless fun. We barricaded the schools entrance with empty beer cases from bottom to top and sprayed anyone coming close with waterpistols and doused students and teachers with waterbombs. Our principal had taken the day off (lol).

A mind that thinks that spray painting the full plethora of racist garbage everywhere is fun is sick, twisted and cruel.
Their weak ass excuses are laughable.

KhadD · Jul 10, 2019

The school didn't include that. They just included the burning and the train cars

sph3re said:

Maybe he thought it was about state sponsored train trips and some lighthearted jokes about your mom beeing ugly. Honest mistake.

brawndolicious · Jul 10, 2019

So these guys went to court wearing their best clothes and presumably coached on what to say by their lawyers, and their argument was that they were too stupid to understand anything at all about segregation or the holocaust or any racist thing that ever happened in local or global history and that that was their right under the First Amendment?

Well that's a hell of a senior prank.

Box · Jul 10, 2019

Gross is about all I can muster.

Wackamole · Jul 10, 2019

Pranks are never funny and always completey selfish. Like surpises.

This one is on another level of stupid though.

III-V · Jul 10, 2019

Title has it backwards. It was a hate crime that became a senior prank.

NekoNeko · Jul 10, 2019

III-V said:
Title has it backwards. It was a hate crime that became a senior prank.

yeah... title made it seem like an accident or a misunderstanding of some sort. i didn't expect this.

iapetus · Jul 10, 2019

III-V said:
Title has it backwards. It was a hate crime that became a senior prank.

No. You have it wrong too. It was a hate crime that remained a hate crime.

hombremalo · Jul 10, 2019

I hope the prison they go to is multicultural so they learn from different races and religions.

III-V · Jul 10, 2019

iapetus said:
No. You have it wrong too. It was a hate crime that remained a hate crime.

Judging by their lenient sentences I'd say I got it right.

Deleted member 44129 · Jul 10, 2019

Ive heard "just a prank" in the form of "just a joke" at work. It's an excuse that needs to be torn down.

zashga · Jul 10, 2019

It's crazy how much people can convince themselves that they're not actually racist, no matter how vile and bigoted they act. I'm convinced a lot of people think a racist is just a vaguely bad person, so they (or their friends or family) can't be racist because they're "not bad people." A little introspection could do these guys a lot of good.

take_marsh · Jul 10, 2019

WIth how the article ended, that school certainly isn't losing racism and anti-semitism any time soon.

SurrenderDorothy · Jul 10, 2019

'I spray paint one racist thing and, suddenly, I become a racist? Just because I did it doesn't mean I hate Jews, gay people or black people.''

DragonSJG · Jul 10, 2019

Why do people think murder is something funny to joke about?

FluxWaveZ · Jul 10, 2019

hombremalo said:
I hope the prison they go to is multicultural so they learn from different races and religions.

Together they had figured out how to navigate their 48-hour stints locked up: how to make the time pass, how to hide their toilet paper so it wouldn't be stolen, what to do when the other inmates threw dominoes at their heads.

Seth didn't know the names of the people who gave them trouble, but he had nicknames he made up for them. "String Bean," for the tall, lanky one. "Pistachio" for the one with the mustache.

"Two black kids who just do not like us," he called them.

hombremalo · Jul 10, 2019

They obviously learning the lesson

Chaos2Frozen · Jul 10, 2019

I hate prank culture

I hate prank culture as an excuse

AuthenticM · Jul 10, 2019

lol this article is all "poor racists they didn't mean it".

dotpatrick · Jul 10, 2019

Shit like this makes me so angry.

Fuck all four of them and fuck their "punishment". I am not for locking people up and I believe that people with the right help can change for the better, but it is stupid that their hate crime gets expunged after just three years and they got to serve their sentence as a glorified school detention. There are people without the affluence of these people and their parents, who have spent more time in jail and not been guilty because they couldn't afford to post bail than these four men did.

I also hate that articles like this feel like they have to include the viewpoint of the perpetrator. Get their comment sure, but don't let them try to present their bullshit "I'm not a racist" viewpoint and give them any kind of space to try and paint themselves as sympathetic. There are plenty of "these are good kids who did something bad" types out there that are more than willing to shallow their horseshit. Thank god for good guy Seth "I know this is wrong and I should stop them, but also I am going to make my own racist graffiti" Taylor.

Blackage · Jul 10, 2019

Oof, the 2019 "prank" is like the cherry on top.

sph3re · Jul 10, 2019

KhadD said:
Maybe he thought it was about state sponsored train trips and some lighthearted jokes about your mom beeing ugly. Honest mistake.

Ah right, of course

Jonathan Lanza · Jul 10, 2019

silkysmooth said:
- We have to be able to forgive people. We have to. I know it's hard and what they did was awful, but if we never forgive anyone and we don't believe anyone can change or mature or grow up, what do we have left as a society. Every crime should be life with no parole then.

Dude what?
On what nightmare world are you in where "Racists should be punished and kept away from influencing society" is the same as "WE SHOULDN'T FORGIVE ANYONE FOR ANYTHING EVER!"?

Literally nobody is advocating for every crime to be life on parole. Nobody has said anything about looking at every bad thing someone says and does and immediately going "no forgiveness, you stole that cookie, never forgive" so I'm really not where you're getting this idea from.

There are in fact certain people that should not be forgiven depending on what they do. That's called nuance. That's what being a rational person entails. Your extreme all or nothing viewpoint is just that: extreme. Not to mention you don't have the right to determine if someone does or doesn't have to forgive something. That's not up to you to decide and people can live perfectly happy and productive lives doing either or.

SugarNoodles · Jul 10, 2019

silkysmooth said:
- We have to be able to forgive people. We have to. I know it's hard and what they did was awful, but if we never forgive anyone and we don't believe anyone can change or mature or grow up, what do we have left as a society. Every crime should be life with no parole then.

I don't think you understand that reform is not part of what's happening here. The reason these boys did these things is because the people they grew up around instilled those values into them. You can see clearly that they still don't see the weight of what they've done, and it's because the people around them don't think it's a big enough issue.

People are not entitled to forgiveness. It has to be deserved, and if you see this situation and think those boys deserve forgiveness as things stand, you are part of the problem.

Marvelous · Jul 10, 2019

silkysmooth said:
I read the article and a few thoughts I had

- You can do something and be sincerely contrite. I don't think someone does 180 hours of community service and all those other things without being prompted by the justice system without some bit of sincere contrition. For at least one of them, it seemed incredibly important to not be defined by one single act.

- The article focuses too much on humanizing a racist act. I don't really care for hearing input from 19 year old kids who spray painted slurs all over their school and thought it would be funny. They had their say with the act itself.

- We have to be able to forgive people. We have to. I know it's hard and what they did was awful, but if we never forgive anyone and we don't believe anyone can change or mature or grow up, what do we have left as a society. Every crime should be life with no parole then.

- Things like this grow in two ways. First is the obvious systemic racism and white privilege baked into society. Second is that attitude that kids in schools have. You all know what I'm talking about. Kids will be shitheads to each other when no one is looking and no one speaks up about it and before you know it this lifelong asshole is a "good kid" from a "good family"

- I knew about the Nazis and the Holocaust, but it never quite clicked with me fully until I read Night by Elie Wiesel in the 10th grade. I was assigned it for an English class and I read it all in one day. It hurt my heart to read about the cruelty that can be done to other human beings. I'm not sure I buy not understanding the impact of what those symbols and slur are though. You hear facts in a class and yeah yeah yeah is this going to be on the test. But you never take real time to reflect on what those words mean. You never fully empathize with those people because it is so far removed from today. It's shameful that we "teach" things like this but often times there is no time to fully reflect on what actually happened when so often that is exactly what is needed. Reading Night 100% made me much more aware of the horrors of World War II as a young person that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

True forgiveness is only obtainable when the perpetrator can ask for it. It is then on the victim to decide whether or not they will offer forgiveness. These kids maintain they have done nothing wrong, and continue to be willfully ignorant about the damage they have caused to their community and the people within it. How can you forgive someone for something they think they didn't do, and will the victims ever really find peace with a perpetrator who refuses to understand?

That systematic privilege works in a multitude of levels within our society, from the top of the judiciary system, to the judiciary system within each and every family. Kids aren't just shit heads just because no one was looking and no one spoke up. A lot of these families that generate them hold these same values, and they are reflected in their children's behavior. This includes complacency, where if you don't instill moral values within your children, then you aren't really teaching them anything.

In the article itself, the father expressed his regret that it wasn't what he did say, but what he didn't say, that allowed his kid to follow this path of racism and bigotry. But the truth is more likely that the father doesn't have enough importance on this moral value to begin with, and he's not doing his part as a member of society to uphold greater values. They are also part of the problem. Doing nothing is part of being the problem.

A black principal, four white teens and the ‘senior prank’ that became a hate crime (WaPo)

One Winged Slayer

User requested account closure

Losing is fun

Persona Central

Son Altesse Sérénissime

One Winged Slayer

"I've made a Gigantic mistake"