An unnamed Gettysburg College student accused of scrawling a racial slur on a teammate’s chest is no longer enrolled at the Pennsylvania liberal arts college, the school announced over the weekend.
“We can now report that the individual who scrawled an insult on another person is no longer enrolled at the university,” the private university said in a joint statement with the victim’s family on Sunday, announcing an investigation into the campus incident, which occurred during a gathering of members of the men’s swimming team on Sept. 6.
The incident was first reported Wednesday by the student publication The Gettysburgian. A college spokesperson confirmed it, saying the accused and the victim had been suspended from the swim team pending the outcome of an investigation.
The next day, college president Bob Iuliano condemned the racist incident in a letter to the campus community.
“There is no place on this campus for words or actions that demean, belittle or marginalize anyone based on their identity and history,” Iuliano wrote.
The victim’s family said in a statement published Friday by The Gettysburgian that the incident occurred during an informal gathering of swim team members on campus, during which the displaced student allegedly carved the N-word into the victim’s chest with a box cutter.
The victim’s family said he was the only person of color at the gathering and that the alleged perpetrator was a trusted friend of his. They used the word “etch” to describe the offense and called it a “hate crime.”
The family, which said it wanted to keep the victim’s identity and its own identity confidential, condemned the incident and said letters complaining of discrimination, harassment and “lack of due process” have been sent to state and local NAACP organizations, as well as to the Pennsylvania Commission on Human Relations.
Those agencies, as well as spokespeople for the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday evening.
The family says it is aware that it has the option to file criminal charges, but prosecutors are free to investigate and pursue a potential case regardless of third-party participation.
It was not made clear why the victim was suspended. The family said in its statement that the student was “dismissed,” not suspended, from participation.
University spokesman Jamie Yates said the school is limited in what it can say until the investigation is complete. However, he noted that the family’s joint statement with the university on Sunday indicated that the two parties had agreed to continued “discussions … about how we can most constructively move forward.”
It seems the Division III men’s swimming team is used to more provincial headlines. This year, there were stories about how seven members were named to the All-Centennial Conference team and how four members were named to the Division III Academic All-District team, thanks to a grade point average of 3.5 or higher.
The university canceled the team selection due to the national attention, out of fear for the safety of the student-athletes suddenly making national headlines, Yates said in an email.
Iuliano, the university president, defended the team’s culture and leadership on Monday, saying the captains should be commended for reporting the incident to the coaches.
“The investigation into student behavior has confirmed that the incident is not a result of unhealthy sports team culture or a reflection of the team itself. Rather, we see that the team captains, by informing their coaches, are demonstrating what it means to be a Gettysburger,” he said in the message to the campus community.
Iuliano said he hopes the storied university, founded nearly three decades before the Civil War that made the town of Gettysburg famous, by a man who would condemn slavery as a national “sin” and own slaves through marriage before freeing some when he moved north, can learn a lesson from this month’s events.
He said he has asked the college’s diversity officer to lead an investigation that should result in “concrete measures” to prevent something like this from happening in the future.
“We know there are lessons to be learned — lessons that must reckon with our collective history,” Iuliano wrote Monday. “We know those lessons will not reveal themselves.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
