Legislators address racist activity at high school activities

BISMARCK, N.D. ( KXNET ) — Recently, there’s been concern regarding racist activity at high school activities and sporting events. Our legislators are now addressing these concerns on a statewide level.

At a Tribal and State Relations Committee meeting, state representatives Jayme Davis and Lisa Finley DeVille discussed multiple racist events that happened this year — including a mocking of Native American dancing that they say happened at Flasher High School’s prom.

Both representatives say a lack of rules isn’t the problem — a lack of rule enforcement is.

“It’s there, I mean people just need to take action, instead of just, ‘oh, we apologize,'” asserted Representative DeVille. “Every time it’s an apology, when there’s no action taken on the people doing the racial taunting.”

However, Brian Burbach with the North Dakota High School Activities Association said that student identities are protected by FERPA — meaning the public cannot be made aware of any discipline regarding any racist conduct.

Representative Zach Ista requested that the association release the de-identified information about discipline in order to create public accountability.

“The lack of public accountability is something like a lack of deterrence to, if students across the state don’t see anything is happening, the assumption is nothing is happening,” shared Representative Ista.

“I understand the federal preemption on this issue that we can’t overcome that, but if there are ways to do it in compliance with the federal law, I think we would be interested in knowing that for future meetings also,” added Representative Ista.

Burbach said he will be looking into a way to de-identify disciplinary action taken in order to bring public awareness.

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