A high school principal was suspended after he defended a student who came to classes on Halloween dressed as a German soldier and gave his peers a Nazi salute.
Joseph Powers, the principal of Jones College Prep High School, was removed from his duties pending an investigation by Chicago Public Schools (CPS) into the incident that happened on Monday, October 31.
Students at Jones circulated photos and videos of the incident on Twitter and TikTok, which subsequently attracted national attention.
In one video, the student can be seen goose-step marching across a cafeteria table for a Halloween costume contest. When he arrived at the end of the table, the student turned and appeared to perform a Nazi salute to the crowd.
Many students in the crowd can be heard booing and jeering the student throughout the incident.
After students began complaining, Principal Powers sent an email to the school’s staff insisting it was a misunderstanding. ‘One of our students wore an East German (communist era) border guard uniform probably from the 1980s, before the reunification of Germany in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall. I saw guards on the other side of the wall dressed this way when I visited West Berlin in the 1980s,’ Powers wrote.
However, the student allegedly told his peers earlier that the uniform was from the 1940s. Others pointed out that the student has a history of racially insensitive comments.
In a second email sent on Wednesday to the entire student body, Powers apologized for the ‘discomfort’ the costume caused some students, but appeared to double down on the assertion that it was not racist or anti-Semitic: ‘Please be assured that we take the well-being of all students seriously and do not tolerate hateful expressions of any kind. In this situation, it certainly appears this was not the intent of the Halloween costume.’
On Friday, CPS announced that Powers was suspended while the district would conduct an investigation into the incident, which they said was ‘widely recognized by students ,staff, and members of our broader CPS community as antisemitic.’
‘If we are going to protect our school communities from bias-based harm, there must be accountability when harm occurs,’ CPS chief executive Pedro Martinez stated.
At least one student, who identifies as Jewish and queer, told Block Club Chicago that they stayed home the following day out of fear for their safety.
This is not the first time Powers has come under fire. In April, he was investigated for mishandling allegations of discrimination and sexual misconduct by students at Jones.
‘The truth is that there has just been a very long-standing problem at Jones,’ parent Cassie Cresswell told the Chicago Tribune. ‘When there are racist incidents, the administration has not responded effectively or appropriately or safely.’
Creswell, who served as the chair of Jones’s Local School Council, voted for Powers’ removal in April. The council ultimately voted 8-2 to keep Powers in place as principal.
The Chicago Teachers Union said the school has been ‘plagued for years with charges that include persistent racial intolerance.’
They continued: ‘Students families and staff have repeatedly raised concerns about intolerance at Jones, and been routinely ignored. This is a pattern of behavior at the school, where, for years, students have felt discrimination, homophobia, and racial hatred from peers and administrators.’
Students also planned a walkout over how the incident was handled. At 1.45pm on Monday, students wearing black and red are planning to ‘protest the way the administration “handles” racial and ethnic discrimination at Jones,’ a flyer for the event reads.
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