Photo: Getty Images
A 14-year-old student in Colorado says he no longer feels safe at his middle school after facing egregious acts of racism from his peers.
Castle Rock Middle School student Jeramiah Ganzy told Denver7 that he's finishing the rest of the school year online due to the intense racism.
“Mainly this year is when it got the worst on the bus and in school. They'd be calling me, like, a monkey, the N-word. At the end of Black History Month, they were telling me it wasn't my month anymore,” Jeramiah said.
Teachers turned a blind eye to the harassment, and Jeramiah said he was even discriminated against by a staff member who accused him of stealing a water bottle.
“She proceeded to ask me where I got the money for it,” he said.
In a Snapchat group of roughly 100 students, Jeramiah peers allegedly exchanged racial slurs and threatened to lynch him.
“They were sending the N-word. They were sending things against people of the Jewish religion. They were sending things against the LGBTQ community,” Jeramiah said.
“There was a group of them calling for a lynching because my son had snitched and ruined their college future. And at that point, [Jeramiah] was immediately removed from the school,” Jeramiah's mother, Lacey Ganzy, added.
In one message exchange, one student appeared to write "We should remove Blacks from the planet" and "bring back Holocaust"
Jeramiah sent an email to the district about the racism in March, saying he felt "unwanted" at school. Castle Rock Middle School Principal John Veit told a colleague in a separate email: “It is unfortunate to hear. We are working on this, but I have a feeling it will be a long project for us. He did write very well in this.”
The Ganzys are planning to file a lawsuit accusing the district of downplaying the student's racism as bullying rather than classifying it as a hate crime.
“We're not going to keep classifying things as bullying, and we are going to classify them as hate speech and hate crime, because that's what they are,” the student's mother said.
“This isn't just, you know, kids will be kids. This is a higher level of harm to students who are subjected to racism and discrimination. And schools have a legal obligation — and a moral obligation — to make sure to put an end to that action, to that conduct, to educate its students,” attorney Iris Halpern added.
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