A Michigan high school roiled by racist hate speech over the past four years is facing another episode after white students allegedly drew Ku Klux Klan and Nazi symbols on minority students’ vehicles.
The latest incident occurred at the end of the school day at Saline High School on Sept. 13, according to the superintendent of Saline Area Schools, Stephen Laatsch, who issued a statement to district families the next day saying he was “deeply saddened and outraged” by “incidents involving hate speech” at the school. “Racism, in any form, has no place in our community, and we are committed to addressing this with the seriousness it deserves,” he said.
Laatsch said the investigation was still ongoing but that administrators had “reached out to victim families and were able to identify students suspected to be involved.”
He said the consequences of hate speech acts, as defined in the student handbook, include “a three-pronged approach to intervention” that includes “discipline, education, and restorative practices.” Discipline could include detention, suspension, or expulsion.
Acknowledging that “incidents like this often have a ripple effect throughout our school and broader community,” Laatsch said the district was convening a team to provide support to students and staff and pointed families towards resources, including guides on how to prevent and respond to prejudice, and how to talk to children about racial bias.
The Instagram account for the Black Student Union (BSU) of Saline High School, formed in 2022 after previous incidents of hate speech at the school, posted images reportedly from the day when racial slurs, Nazi symbols, and references to the KKK were drawn into the dirt on two minority students’ vehicles, reported MLive.
BSU president Aliyah Carrao, who runs the account, said group members knew the students who were responsible, adding they were “people that many group members called a friend, so we’re honestly all kind of stuck. But what we’re doing as a group when people comment on it, we are making sure we educate.”
Black students at Saline High have been burdened with educating their peers and others in the community about racism for several years, including over a controversial exchange of racist messages in a racially mixed student group Snapchat account in January 2020, which led to the suspension of four students.
The students, who used racist memes and phrases such as “My ni—er,” and “WHITE POWER” and “THE SOUTH WILL RISE AGAIN” in their posts, later sued the school system, arguing that the chats occurred off-campus and that their free speech rights were violated. The case was settled in late 2020.
Black and Latino students and their parents at the time attended school board meetings to protest racism and xenophobia in district schools and to lobby for diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, prompting one parent to ask another why he didn’t “stay in Mexico.”
In 2021, a group of parents of Saline High students sued U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland over a memo he had issued to the FBI and U.S. Attorneys regarding threats of violence and intimidation then being directed at school teachers, staff and board members across the country.
In their complaint, the parents argued that their constitutional rights to stand up at school board meetings and criticize the school district over its “harmful, immoral and racist progressive agenda,” as demonstrated by the district allowing a school to display a Black Lives Matter flag, and its Culturally Responsive Instruction curriculum, which the parents deemed as “CRT in disguise,” were being suppressed by Merrick’s memo and other federal policies.
A federal appeals court dismissed the case in December 2023, finding in their opinion that the parents had demonstrated no injuries and that their rights to complain and protest were fully intact.
Last fall, the N-word was written on the wall in a high school boys’ bathroom in Saline on two occasions, prompting the Black Student Union, which now has 28 members, to call for tougher punishments for discriminatory behavior at the November school board meeting.
Earlier this year, Black and minority students met on multiple occasions with district officials, including Laatsch, to address systemic racism concerns and to promote a more welcoming environment at the school, according to MLive. At a school board meeting, Corrao argued for a zero tolerance policy on hate speech and advised officials that “Saline’s actions — more than words — will have the greatest impact on students.”
During a 2023 incident where the n-word was written in the boys bathroom, Corrao issued a call for stronger punishment. “You’re not only writing on a wall, but you’re writing a racial slur, so can receive two punishments for that, which students are not receiving,” Corrao said during a board meeting addressing the incident. “There’s higher punishment for if there is a vape found in your backpack — students receive 10 days (suspension) — but they’re not receiving that for saying a racial slur, a racial comment, or making other students feel uncomfortable in a school building where they should be comfortable. Looking into the handbook, heightening the punishments and working with the punishments would be a very powerful thing.”
Saline, located south of Ann Arbor, has a population of 8,948, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. Its residents are 93.6 percent white, 1.4 percent African-American, 2.5 percent Hispanic or Latino, and 2.5% Asian.
While the football coach at Saline High declined to comment, The Saline Post reported that several people at the school confirmed that “the white football players” who “allegedly wrote the N-word on the vehicle of a Black football player … were not in the lineup in last Friday’s game,” during which people in the opposing team’s student section chanted, “Saline is racist.”
Parent Kandace Jones, a former Saline school board member who has two sons in the district, her eldest a 10th grader who is a member of the BSU, told MLive that racism toward Black and minority students has been going on so long that it has become normalized.
“Every year there are multiple incidents, many of which do not get shared, and it’s gotten to the point where my son feels desensitized to it,” she said. “It’s extremely disappointing and heartbreaking to see that this is so normal for them that they just kind of shrug their shoulders like, ‘Yep, it is what it is.’”
“I feel like the school is taking the process more serious this time around than they would have a year ago,” Corrao said of the response by the district to the latest racist slurs and symbols. “It’s not something we’re going to let up on,” she said. “We want change.”
