A post on Instagram from Central Dauphin High School students has gone viral, after several female students were seen posing with a handwritten racial slur in a car. The district is currently investigating this issue and deciding whether or not the students will be punished. This is not the first racially-charged social media post in recent days.

A Facebook post by a Shippensburg University student has been causing a ruckus on campus and around the local area. An image of Paul Driscoll’s Facebook post has made a ton of publicity on social media as a hateful, racist comment after the statement read, “There’s a lot of dark meat on our campus this semester. Inner city garbage rolled in because the university wants to look “diverse.” A lot of them wear BLM shirts to classes. I’m gonna enjoy their faces when I start wearing my Baltimore City Police hoodie to classes in the colder days.” The student body of the University was so upset, they started a petition to suspend Driscoll until he proves to not be a danger to the students which has reached over 1,500 signatures, according to ABC 27 News.

Since the post, Driscoll, a Dean’s List student, has sent out an apology letter to the college that states, “I sincerely apologize to all for my words of hate.  Those words were borne out of anger, ignorance, selfishness and bitterness. I take full responsibility for the things I said, and their negative effects on others as a result. I can only ask for forgiveness from my peers and all who were affected by this.” In addition to the controversial comment, other students at the University have confirmed that he has told other students he carries a knife while he’s on campus.  The University has confirmed via Facebook that Driscoll is no longer enrolled at the college.

Recently there have been other cases with Pennsylvania colleges having issues with racial problems like this that include Albright College and Lebanon Valley College, according to Pennlive.com.

Alyssa DeGregorio, Big Spring and Shippensburg University Alum and signee of the petition said, “This upsets me because no student attempting to further their education should feel uncomfortable or unsafe at the University and should not feel threatened by fellow students.  I think the comments he made were extremely unsettling and he’s generalizing a group of people that are there to just get an education and are not harming him in any way.  These people are just being part of a movement that means a lot to them.”  She further stated, “It’s a shame because this kid, in just one post, may have completely destroyed his career and education; but it was a very unacceptable act and he got what he deserved.”

At the high school level, many students question whether or not what they post on social media outside of school can lead to punishments in school.  Cory Hoffman, Big Spring’s Dean of Students stated, “The creator of the social media posts, regardless of the time and location of the post, can be held accountable for the content of the post by the school if the school can establish a nexus between the post and a “substantial disruption” in school.  A post can be said to create a “substantial disruption” if it encourages violation of school rules, illegal activity, violence, etc.”

As mentioned, the school is allowed to take disciplinary actions if a social media post outside of school creates a disturbance so it’s very possible something like this could happen at  the Big Spring School District. To tell us what you think about these policies, take the poll on our website.