An informal gathering of the Gettysburg College swim team that included a racial slur being cut into the body of a student identified as a Person of Color has put the college in the national news.
Over the past week, the story, orginally reported by the college newspaper The Gettysburgian on Wednesday Sep. 18, has been shared by dozens of local, state, and national news sources including The Washington Post, NBC News, and The New York Times.
College administrators, family members, and students have responded to the situation through a series of emails to the campus community expressing their opinions and concerns.
The Gettysburg Police Department announced it will not investigate because no complaint has been made.
The college reported this week that “the investigation is nearing its conclusion, and we can report now that the individual who scratched a slur onto another person is no longer enrolled at the College.”
The college also shared a statement from the victim’s family who said they had filed complaints with state branches of the NAACP but had chosen to not report the incident to the police. “We are well aware that we retain the right to pursue local, state and federal criminal charges in this matter,” said the family.
Members of the swim team, some of whom reported the event to the college, said in an email that “The national spotlight has unfortunately led some to believe that our team, or the culture within our team, is complicit in the racist incident that took place. This couldn’t be further from the truth.”
No further description of the events has been made public by the college or the family. College President Bob Iuliano said in an email that the college is “constrained in discussing a student-related matter governed by federal privacy laws.”
Iuliano expressed his “profound distress about what happened, its impact on those who have long been underrepresented on this campus and its implications for a community continuing its evolving efforts to create a truly inclusive environment.”
A statement from the college said “The student conduct investigation affirmed that the incident is not a byproduct of an unhealthy athletic team culture or a reflection on the team itself; rather, we see in the captains the measure of what it means to be a Gettysburgian by their notification to their coaches.’”
Criminal attorneys asked to comment on the event said it was not unusual or inappropriate for a police department to refuse to investigate a case in which there is no complaint, no 911 call, no medical report, and no visual evidence regarding the sequence of events.
Gettysburg Connection thanks Vincent M. DiFonzo, Editor in Chief of The Gettysburgian for help with this article.