ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, February 20, 1997 TAG: 9702200027
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: WYTHEVILLE
SOURCE: Associated Press
MEMO: NOTE: Shorter version ran in Metro edition.
Eddy Umberger said his son was just following a fashion trend when he and nine other white high school students began tying the drawstrings of their jacket hoods into hangman nooses.
``It was, what do you call it ... a fad,'' Umberger said Wednesday. ``They weren't going around trying to intimidate anybody.''
But black parents said it's common knowledge that a student hung a black doll from a noose attached to a locker at George Wythe High School last year, and administrators agreed the noose was used as a racist symbol.
The 10 sophomores and juniors were suspended for two days last month when an assistant principal saw them wearing the nooses.
``This has come to symbolize a racial statement, and historically that has been the case,'' county school Superintendent James Vaught said. ``It was construed as a disruptive act.''
Now, the parents are divided on the appropriateness of the punishment.
Black parents contend the suspensions were too lenient, while Umberger and the parents of three other students want the Wythe County School Board to overturn the penalties against their children when it meets March 12.
Carlton Pike, whose son was among the students suspended, complained in a letter to the School Board that Principal Ted Phillips may have unintentionally stirred up racial problems with the sanctions.
Phillips said there was no racial tension at the school, where whites make up about 90 percent of the 600-student body.
``It's orderly, like always,'' he said.
But Robert Green, a black representative of the local Concerned Citizens Network that promotes racial harmony, said black students often endure racism at the school and white administrators ``sweep it under the rug.''
Asked for specifics, Green said a white teacher used a racial epithet in class and a black high school student told him this week that a white girl spit in her face. He was unsure when the two alleged incidents occurred.
Green told the school board last week that the acts of racism are symptomatic of an underlying problem in the county school system.
``I told them it was a weed in the garden, and if you don't pull it out, it will infest the entire school system,'' Green said.
The first school day after the suspensions were publicized in the local paper, two students tied their jacket drawstrings into hangman nooses at Fort Chiswell High School in Wythe County.
Fort Chiswell Principal Joe Bean would not comment on what disciplinary action was taken, but said, ``It ceased being a problem as quickly as it started.''
Vaught said school officials never determined who hanged the black doll in the mock lynching. But over the summer, the school system established a task force to address racial issues and added a ``diversity awareness'' unit in the eighth-grade social studies classes.
Green said the school system, which has no black administrators and only six blacks among the 302 teachers, also needs to increase the number of black authority figures in the schools.
LENGTH: Medium: 63 linesby CNB