CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Over 50 students were suspended from West Creek High School on Friday after a video showing the students raising their hands or phones simulating a weapon went viral on TikTok.
The video, posted Thursday evening, gained almost 500,000 likes on the social media app before it was made private by the video’s creator – a sophomore at West Creek High.
The TikTok video
Christian Williams, 17 and a student at West Creek, told Clarksville Now he made the video on Thursday.
“I was at school and I was on my phone just going through random Instagram stories. I saw the trend on someone’s page and I’m like, ‘Oh, we need to do this, we need to do this. We could probably go viral for this,'” Williams said.
The trend is called the “Who Want Smoke” challenge, and Williams said after seeing it, he started going around asking other students if they wanted to be in the video. He recorded them gesturing as if they were raising a weapon. That night he compiled the videos and posted it to TikTok.
“I think it was at 200,000 (likes) the first three hours,” Williams said. Before he moved the video to where only his mutual followers could see it, the video hit almost 500,000 likes.
While Williams said he didn’t come up with the trend, he said he was one of the first to go viral with it.
On Friday, the day after the video was posted, Williams said he was called to the principal’s office. Several other students who were in the video also then showed up at the office.
“The SRO (school resource officer) comes to get us, and we go back to the conference room in the back,” Williams said, adding that all the West Creek High principals came into the room too.
Disciplinary measures
The principal asked the students about the TikTok video, which Williams said was put up on a projector screen. They were told a parent called the school about the video, and they were informed it was against the student code of conduct.
According to Jessica Goldberg, director of communications and marketing for CMCSS, the district cannot confirm any disciplinary measures, as that could violate Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) rules.
She did acknowledge that the school addressed the matter.
“School administration referenced the CMCSS Student Code of Conduct offense ‘Other Conduct Warranting Discipline.’ This includes ‘any conduct which is disruptive, dangerous, harmful to the student or others, not otherwise specifically enumerated herein,'” Goldberg said in an email to Clarksville Now.
She said the district became aware of the video on Friday.
Williams said dozens of students were suspended.
“(The principal) was suspending everybody that was in the video, and it was 50-plus people, because I made two parts to this video,” Williams said, adding he was not expecting the video to go viral.
“Lesson learned,” Williams continued.
He said other students were suspended for two or three days, while he was suspended for five days.
This is not the first time this year that viral TikTok challenges have created issues at local schools. In September, a TikTok challenge that encouraged students to steal or destroy property led to over $20,000 worth of damage to Clarksville-Montgomery County school buildings.
Viral again
A different social media post about the video at West Creek High and the suspensions went viral, but this time involving one of the law enforcement officers present during the discipline.
A post from @domislivenews shared another post from @lexisgambino, Alexis Hardy, that alleged an officer with the Clarksville Police Department told students at West Creek that he would have shot them if he had seen the students making the gestures in the video.
Hardy told Clarksville Now her young sister was in the video, and that she was suspended too.
Williams said he witnessed the incident as well. The SRO officer told students that CPD was there, and that they would be talking to the students. Williams said another student started laughing.
“I guess it like made one of the officers mad, and he was like, ‘What are you laughing at if you think this is funny,'” Williams said. “And then he was like, ‘Because if I would have seen you on the street pointing an object that looked like a gun, I don’t have time to sit and think about if it is or not, I’m just going to shoot you, and I won’t get charged for it.'”
While Williams said he understood what the officer meant about a phone kind of looking like a weapon if held that way, it was the way the officer said it that was upsetting.
“He said it so serious, like, ‘If I had of seen you on the street, I would have shot you and went home and no charge would have been filed against me,'” Williams continued.
According to CPD spokesperson Scott Beaubien, officers were conducting a “walk through” of the school on Friday, meaning they were walking through the school to make positive community contacts with the staff and students.
“CPD officers were asked to speak to a group of students about the incident by the school administrators who were present about the laws related to such behavior,” Beaubien said.
“Nothing inappropriate was said according to the school administrators present when the officers spoke,” he said.