LEBANON, Oregon — An annual fundraiser at Lebanon High School has been overshadowed by a racist social media post by one of its students.
The post, which appeared over the weekend, shows seven teenagers wearing black face paint posing for a picture. The account that posted it used the hashtag #n****rgang.
"Let me be clear, this behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated." said school principal Craig Swanson. "I think the language used is completely offensive and I feel horrible for the vast majority that do not feel this way. In talking with students involved with this, they contended that was never any intent whatsoever."
The students were dressed in all black during the school's annual Haunted Barn fundraiser. Staff said $4,000 was raised along with hundreds of cans of food for their food drive.
Swanson says the faces were painted black to help them hide in the dark and scare people going through the haunted maze. He now says that future uses of black face paint will not be used.
"I think we need as a school to examine the whole idea and educate on the idea of blackface. There was a role for it, to understand that that's not acceptable," he said.
Swanson has been in contact with the Corvallis chapter of the NAACP and says he plans to invite the chapter's president to the school to help students learn from this experience.
The post shows a bigger issue with social media and the ability to post whatever, whenever.
"Social media is a great concern for lots of reasons. We have young adults that are not thinking things through completely. Whether it's something racist in nature as this was," Swanson said. "I don't think our youth are thinking completely through of what they're doing and what they're conveying prior to hitting send."
Swanson says he wants to be transparent about the issue and says Monday has been busy answering phone calls and emails from those in the community.
"One of our parents of a student of color said a different way to look at this is that by blackening our faces in a haunted barn, we're also depicting black people as scary, which I really appreciated her phone call to ensure that not that just blackface is inappropriate."
Swanson says that because the post was made by a student at a school-sponsored event, the student may be disciplined by the school.
Lebanon is a town of around 15,000 residents 70 miles south of Portland.