A Texas school is under fire for suspending an Indian student assaulted and choked by a white student in a viral video. (See, e.g., Yahoo News story here.)
Shaan Pritmani, the Indian student, is portrayed as a bullying victim. The school blamed both students, but suspended him for 3 days while meting out only a 1-day suspension to the other student.
In response, Pritmani’s family has hired a lawyer and threatened legal action, is demanding the white student be removed from their son’s school, and a Change.org petition describing Primani as an “innocent victim” (see it here) has collected over 300,000 signatures. A typical Twitter reaction is at left (click on it to enlarge).
The incident occurred in a middle school lunchroom in Coppell, Texas, on May 11, 2022. Dr. Brad Hunt, Coppell Independent School District’s superintendent, issued a statement that, “Bullying, both verbal and physical, as well as physical acts of aggression are never acceptable and do not align with who we are at CISD and our core values.”
The Dallas Morning News reported (here) the video, “shared widely on social media, captures one student standing behind another in the cafeteria. After a brief disagreement, the standing student puts the sitting one in a chokehold.”
That doesn’t add anything to other media reports. But then their article states it’s “alleged that [Pritmani] made violent threats against the standing student’s younger brother and against the family members of other students at the table.”
A counter-petition on Change.org (see it here) is more explicit: “Shaan threatened the ‘aggressor’ by saying he was going to rape his little sister.” (Sister? brother? can we get our stories straight?) It continues, “The ‘aggressor’ was only standing up for his family.” Uh, no. Not “only” that. Instead of reporting Pritmani’s threats to school authorities, he started a fight.
I don’t see any obvious evidence of racial discrimination in the school district’s handling of this situation, even though it’s being widely portrayed that way. But it does seem to me the school district screwed this up.
There’s nothing new about school fights, and dealing with them is a routine part of running schools. Looking at the facts of this case, you have serious verbal provocations by one side, and serious physical violence by the other side. You have two very guilty students. So why were they punished unequally? The school district obviously doesn’t consider them equally guilty, but hasn’t explained why. They need to, if for no other reason than laying to rest the inference of racial favoritism.
I think the physical assault was violent enough to report to the police, and warrants juvenile proceedings against the physical attacker.
As for separating the students by sending them to different schools, that may be possible. CISD isn’t a little school system; it has over 13,000 total students, and three middle schools. (Coppell is a Dallas suburb of over 40,000 residents, and the school district also includes some surrounding communities.) But then the question is, which one gets reassigned? And that revives the question, who’s guiltier?
The video is blurred on YouTube because the subjects are juveniles. A clear video of the incident is here.