From Principal Jacob Schutz: Mount Greylock Regional School is committed to being a community that promotes the ideals of diversity, belonging, inclusion and equity. We recognize the presence of systemic racism and pledge to do the work to build an antiracist school community.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — Mount Greylock Regional School is investigating an incident in which an intruder entered a virtual classroom to target a student with racist audio.
Principal Jacob Schutz and Assistant Principal Colin Shebar notified the school community of the Thursday incident in a campuswide email at 4:56 on Thursday, about four hours after the school acknowledged the incident on its Twitter account.
According to the school's incident report, which was shared in the email, at the end of a high school class, a student lied his or her way into the room and played a song that involved the lyric, "f***k the (n-word)."
The incident report goes on to explain the outreach from school staff to the student targeted and his or her family.
"Mount Greylock Regional School is committed to being a community that promotes the ideals of diversity, belonging, inclusion and equity," Schutz tweeted and included in the email blast. "We recognize the presence of systemic racism and pledge to do the work to build an antiracist school community. Racist actions have no place at MGRS."
Later Thursday evening, Schutz said the school has notified the Williamstown Police Department about the incident, but he declined to say the extent to which outside agencies are assisting school personnel with the investigation.
Schutz also said the school is operating under the assumption that the perpetrator is a student at the middle-high school.
"I would say we have no reason to believe it's anybody other than a student based off of how our Zoom information is published and available to students," Schutz said. "That being said, it's not foolproof."
Schutz said there have been a handful of incidents of students entering virtual classrooms where they did not belong, though none involved targeting of other students over race. He said he is aware of no incidents to date where an individual outside the school community has entered one of the school's virtual classrooms.
According to the incident report, the class was engaged in self-guided work and the teacher was monitoring student work at the time of the incursion.
"During the first half of the class, the teacher heard the 'ding' of someone entering the Zoom waiting room," the report reads. "Upon seeing the student's name, the person was let into the room (the teacher assumed the student had been kicked out of the Zoom and was rejoining). This was the imposter responsible for unmuting and playing the music at the end of the period."
The report indicated many of the students in the class had the volume turned down to concentrate on their work and did not hear the offensive song, which reportedly played for about 30 seconds.
"During this time, the teacher, several times, muted the person playing the music," the incident report reads.
The student whose name was appropriated by the perpetrator, referred to as "the victim" in the incident report, stayed in the classroom after the period ended to make sure that the teacher knew they were not behind the incident.
Mount Greylock staff, including the assistance principal and the victim's counselor talked with the victim over the next couple of periods, and school staff will follow up with the victim's family, the report reads.
School counseling staff will join the targeted class during its next session to help the students process the incident, and the school promised to provide updates on its investigation when appropriate.
In addition, the Mount Greylock administration: met Thursday with the Greylock Multicultural Student Union to talk about next steps; promised to refocus the diversity, equity inclusion goals of the School Council; talked about extending the district's relationship with the Disruptive Equity Education Project; and said it will look at technology updates and training to "better prepare staff and students to appropriately respond in a digital realm."
At Thursday evening's meeting of Williamstown Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Equity Committee, committee members said the were pleased with the school's quick response and efforts to be transparent with the community about the incident.
"We have good partners to talk with," Kerri Nicoll said. "These are issues that are long-standing, and more needs to be done, but we have some windows to do some of that work."
Schutz said he looks forward to sharing that work.
"I want to move forward as a community to figure this stuff out, and we can't do it alone," he said. "I appreciate the support so far that the community has offered, and I look forward to continuing that relationship with everybody."
If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.
Your Comments
iBerkshires.com welcomes critical, respectful dialogue. Name-calling, personal attacks, libel, slander or foul language is not allowed. All comments are reviewed before posting and will be deleted or edited as necessary.
OK, What we have here is a failure to communicate. In normal terms the student that was targeted would be known as the "victim." Was the student that was targeted identified as they were the only non-Caucasian, non-Asian in the class? Does this make it a certainty? Next, the person who played the music was initially assumed to be whoever used the name of the student who had just popped in to the class. How was this determined? Could it been anyone who was logged in the the session. Why are we calling the holder of the name of the popped in student the "victim?" Who coined this confusing term? The person who played the racist music is a "perpetrator." The student whose name was used to pop in, could be a possibly falsely accused perpetrator. In short, reading this was very confusing.
The student whose identity was used to enter the classroom is the victim. A similar incident occurred at a North Adams board meeting when an imposter entered the call using a board member's name and image.
Williamstown Library Committee Looks to Advance Renovations
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Milne Library's Building and Grounds Committee on Thursday recommended that the director move ahead with several repairs to the building.
On a vote of 4-0, the committee recommended that the Board of Trustees accept a bid from Bennington, Vt.'s, Vermont Roofing to fix the roof over the bathrooms in the front of the library.
And in a separate 4-0 vote, the building committee told Director Angela Zimmerman to issue a request for proposals to redo windows and doors, two major issues raised in a report the Trustees commissioned from Bennington's Centerline Architects.
In June of last year, the trustees learned that the Centerline report was recommending a number of "critical issues" to be addressed in the building, including the windows and doors, with an estimated price tag of nearly $262,000.
At the May 2023 annual town meeting, members authorized up to $300,000 toward capital repairs at the library.
On Thursday, Zimmerman, who came on board in March, told the Building and Grounds Committee that the $300,000 needs to be committed by the end of fiscal year 2025 next June.
"We at least need to have the projects in motion," Zimmerman said.
The Milne Library's Building and Grounds Committee on Thursday recommended that the director move ahead with several repairs to the building. click for more
The exhibit, "Edgar Degas: Multi-Media Artist in the Age of Impressionism," coincides with the 150th anniversary of the first impressionist exhibition, which was held in Paris in 1874.
click for more
The Select Board on Monday discussed how the town communicates to residents during an emergency and whether residents unaffiliated with Williams College should have access to the same information as college students and staff about incidents on campus. click for more
The Prudential Committee on Wednesday discussed the need for a policy for all call-volunteer firefighters who reach the state's mandatory retirement age.
click for more