A high school in rural Montana is making headlines after two of its students showed up to a school pep rally in “White Pride” shirts.
The incident occurred during “Color Wars” day at Polson High School. Each class is assigned a color (black for seniors, white for juniors, blue for sophomores, green for freshmen), and the class with the most students dressed in their class color is the designated winner.
Two junior students — one male and one female — were immediately asked to leave after they both showed up in “Trump 2016 White Pride” T-shirts. The male’s shirt was also covered with a Confederate flag and the word “REDNECK” across it, while the female student’s shirt had “WHITE POWER” written on it.
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“The Polson School District does not and will not tolerate harassment or discrimination in any form toward any person,”Polson District Superintendent Rex Weltz wrote in an official statement. “As a District we are disappointed in the actions of those few students and will take appropriate action based on our policies and procedures, which may include discipline for the individual students. We applaud the students who stood up against this conduct and will continue to educate all of our students about our policies and practices forbidding discrimination in any form.”
During Polson’s Homecoming football game last Friday, founder of advocacy group Native Generational Change Dustin Monroe led a small protest against the controversial shirts.
“Our kids should be able to go to school and not worry about people saying one race is better than another,” Monroe told Montana Public Radio.
Despite the negative attention brought by the T-shirt incident, Weltz said that all future spirit week activities would continue as planned.
“We had a couple kids who made poor choices,” Weltz told Montana Public Radio. “And really we don’t want to pull the activity and the program away for some bad choices.”
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