A high school student has been suspended for three days after she recorded her teacher using a racial slur in class.
The Missouri student decided to record the incident on her phone on 9 May during her geometry class at Glendale High School in Springfield, US.
According to NBC News, the teacher allegedly used the racial slur more than once, which is when the student, Mary Walton, decided to take a video on her phone, the teenager’s lawyer Natalie Hull said.
The school district has not yet publicly identified the teacher who used the N-word twice in the video.
In the video, which lasts about one minute, another student objects to the teacher’s use of the word, to which the teacher responded: “I’m not calling anyone a n*****. I can say the word.”
NBC reported Springfield Public Schools as saying the teacher is no longer employed with the school system
The student was suspended for three days, prompting the teenager’s lawyer and mother to demand that the district apologize and remove the suspension from her school record.
Ms Hull said the teenager was suspended under a policy prohibiting students from recording faculty members unless they get consent before filming.
In an interview with NBC News on Tuesday, the lawyer added: “It is absolutely impressive that the 15-year-old girl knew something was happening and stood up in the face of it and said: ‘I’m going to document this. I’m going to stand up for what’s right, no matter what. And I am going to make sure that this is brought to light’.”
‘She’s worried about how she’s going to be treated’
The lawyer said the student was only trying to provide evidence of the “monumental wrong” she was witness to.
She added: “Mary was trying to provide indisputable documentation of the monumental wrong she was witnessing in class. Mary does not understand why she got punished, because she did the right thing.”
