By ANDREA POTEET
Sunday Times Newspapers
ALLEN PARK — An Allen Park High School varsity basketball player was suspended last week after he admitted to writing racial graffiti.
According to published reports, the teen was kicked off the team and suspended for up to 10 days Jan. 24 after players from the visiting Melvindale High School girls’ junior varsity team discovered the slur on a dry erase board in the locker room at APHS and a drawing of a lynching victim. Nearly half the team is black.
Melvindale coaches then alerted APHS staff.
The boy reportedly came forward after administrators threatened to cancel the football season.
Four percent of students at the school are black.
“We are taken aback and appalled by the actions of a student and we believe we addressed it and are moving forward,” Supt. John Sturock said, adding he doesn’t think the incident signals a negative racial climate in the district, which hosts multiple diversity programs, including a recent one for Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
“I think this was an individual situation you have anywhere. It could happen anyplace; it happened in our school district.”