Students at Lincoln-Way East High School in Frankfort, Illinois plan to walk out of class Wednesday in protest of two alleged racist incidents in one weekend, both aimed at Homewood-Flossmoor High School and both now under review by the Illinois High School Association.
The first was the football game: video from Friday, Sept. 4, shows five Lincoln-Way East students allegedly making monkey gestures and sounds toward the Homewood-Flossmoor crowd. The school apologized and called the behavior "egregious and intolerable."
The second surfaced a day later and involves an adult. In a statement posted to social media, three cross country athletes from Homewood-Flossmoor said they overheard the Lincoln-Way East coach refer to them as "monkeys" before a meet on Saturday.
Lincoln-Way East says that account is wrong. "Lincoln-Way East coaches merely recounted a well-known story about an area of the Lyons Township course referred to as 'the jungle,'" the school said in part. "The Lincoln-Way administration is confident that neither its staff nor student athletes intended to harass, intimidate or offend any of their competitors or those competitors' families."
The walkout is set for the beginning of fifth period, around 11:50 a.m. It is being organized by Lincoln-Way East students against their own school, which is the part that separates this from the weekend's coverage. Ocean Myrick, who is leading it, told ABC7 Chicago she wants the school to stop treating racism as something it merely does not condone.
"They sit here and they claim, 'oh, they don't condone racism. They don't condone this.' But racism is one of the loudest things and biggest issues I've done seen in that hall in general," Myrick said. "I was even scared at one point to walk them hallways by myself... We will always have history that repeats itself. But all we could do is try."
Lincoln-Way East is about 69% white and 11% Black, according to federal enrollment data; Homewood-Flossmoor is 74% Black.
Two accounts of one sentence
The athletes say they heard the coach call them monkeys. The school says the coach was retelling a story about a stretch of the Lyons Township course, that runners call the jungle. Whether the story was told within earshot of three athletes from a school that had been taunted with monkey gestures the night before, and whether that context should have occurred to an adult coach, is the question the IHSA will have to weigh.
The IHSA's authority runs to member schools and their athletic staff and athletes, which means a coach is squarely within its reach in a way the five students in the football video, who were spectators, are not. Executive Director Craig Anderson said over the weekend that a safe and respectful environment is a condition of remaining a member in good standing.
As of Wednesday morning, Lincoln-Way East had not shared any details of disciplinary action against the students in the video or the coach. The school also has not said whether it will treat the walkout as an excused absence.
Sources
ABC7 Chicago: Lincoln-Way East students plan walkout to protest alleged racist incidents
allk12: Five Lincoln-Way East students accused of racist monkey-gesture taunting at football game
Enrollment and demographic figures from allk12's analysis of National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Common Core of Data.
