youniversitytv.comA student has been suspended from Colorado College for saying that black women are ‘not hot’.
Thaddeus Pryor has been suspended for six months, reduced from 21 months following an appeal, after his school took offense to his comments on the anonymous social media app Yik Yak. Another boy and friend of Pryor, Lou Henriques, was expelled.
Their jokes took place on a night where the Yik Yak conversation on campus was centered around the theme #BlackLivesMatter.
slcfeminist.comPryor told The College Fix in a phone interview, that what started off as raising awareness quickly became ‘mud slinging’. When someone wrote ‘#blackwomenmatter’, Pryor anonymously replied: “They matter, they’re just not hot.”
Pryor immediately regretted his remark and said: “I was ashamed, because some people were clearly upset… So I deleted it.” However when Pryor walked through the students centre the next day, he found out that his comment had not gone unnoticed.
Pryor claims:
Some people screenshotted the most racial things said [On Yik Yak that night], and they blew them up onto banners and hung them up in the student centre in front of the dean’s office.
tech.comOne of the screenshots was his own misguided post. A student life disciplinary panel then brought Pryor in for questioning, where he discovered that he was being blamed for almost all of the offensive posts.
In less than 24 hours it was decided by the senior associate dean of students Rochelle Mason, dean of students Mike Edmonds, and assistant dean of students, Cesar Cervantes, that Pryor should be suspended for 21 months. This is the same amount of time it would take him to finish his degree and he was prohibited from being on campus.
Pryor was also banned from taking courses at other universities because of his stupid remark. Henriques was expelled after his comments, because of his previous disciplinary record.
Dean Of Student Mike Edmonds - digitalcc.coloradocollege.eduPryor wrote an appeal letter to Edmonds, where he admitted to posting the ‘not hot’ comment despite Mason and Cervantes having ‘no evidence’ other than hearsay that he was involved with the other offensive posts.
He claims the college has violated its own rules by failing to inform him of his alleged violations until he was sentenced, and also incorrectly recorded in ‘sanction papers’ that Mason and Cervantes had informed him of alleged violations of the student code of conduct.
Pryor wrote:
During my hearing, rather than presenting me with my possible violations then investigating my actions and how they may have constituted those violations, I was simply treated as broadly guilty
It was also never explained how the 21-month suspension was decided on. He’s accused Mason and Cervantes of ‘bias’ and believes that whoever reported him to the school ‘misled’ the officials as to the extent of his role.
Pryor claims that the Yik Yak conversation began with comments targeting white students, calling them ‘dirty hippies with small dicks’ who are ‘always fucking their cousins’, before moving on to mocking Muslims.
Edmonds claims that because Pryor ‘accepted responsibility for the comment’, he would not end the suspension but he would reduce it so the punishment would serve the educational purpose Pryor had asked for.
More of a concept than a journalist, Tom Percival was forged in the bowels of Salford University from which he emerged grasping a Masters in journalism.
Since then his rise has been described by himself as ‘meteoric’ rising to the esteemed rank of Social Editor at UNILAD as well as working at the BBC, Manchester Evening News, and ITV.
He credits his success to three core techniques, name repetition, personality mirroring, and never breaking off a handshake.