Three people in Ku Klux Klan costumes posed for photos at a Halloween party in Wellston, Oklahoma, and the pictures went around social media this week. The town’s school district says it is “disappointed and heartbroken.” It has not said whether anyone will be disciplined.
Local stations KOKH Fox 25 and News 9 report that the three are current and former Wellston students. The party was off campus and not sponsored by the district, which says it consulted attorneys and cited the federal student privacy law, FERPA, when asked about consequences. The district’s statement, as News 9 reported it, read: “We are disappointed and heartbroken by the images.” The superintendent also urged parents to talk with their children about how students represent the community.
That is a statement about feelings. It answers nothing about what the district will do. The Klan murdered, bombed and terrorized Black Americans for generations, and in Oklahoma its shadow includes the 1921 destruction of Greenwood in Tulsa. A robe and hood is not a costume with a neutral meaning, and a district that calls it heartbreaking while declining to say what follows has told every student who has been targeted in its hallways how seriously it takes them.
Those students exist, by the account of people who grew up there. Katie Denham, a former Wellston student, told Fox 25 about her own experience of racial harassment in the district: “I had students call me slurs and things like that.” She said online apologies are not enough and that those involved should be held accountable. Justin White, a Wellston native who shared the photos on Facebook, told News 9 he wanted people to “understand how their choices affect others and their own futures.” News 9 reported that the images brought back slurs he heard as a child in the town. One parent told the station they were shocked but would not appear on camera for fear of retaliation.
One of the people pictured has apologized online. A photographer’s studio, Abbey Lane Photography, removed a girl involved in the posting from its senior representative team, News 9 reported. The district has made no comparable move that it has announced.
The district has a real point: FERPA does restrict what a school may disclose about an individual student’s discipline, and some of those pictured are no longer enrolled. But the law bars naming a student. It does not bar a district from saying what its conduct code covers, whether it opened an inquiry, or what it will do for students who say they have been harassed with slurs. Parents who feel unable to speak on camera should not have to guess whether the school will protect them.
The district says it will follow its attorneys’ guidance. Families in Wellston are waiting to learn what that guidance is.
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