Saturday, March 21, 2015
Representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota plan to meet with St. Cloud Somali students and their families Monday to respond to complaints about racism and bullying that led to a protest and multiple lockdowns.
Police responded to another disturbance outside of Tech High School around noon Friday. Police say it was a verbal dispute and nobody was injured or arrested.
School officials briefly put Tech on lockdown then downgraded to containment status, according to the St. Cloud Area School District's Facebook page. North Junior High School and Apollo High School were also in containment status.
Students apparently are still upset with the way the administration handled racism and bullying allegations, CAIR Minnesota executive director Jaylani Hussein said.
About 100 students protested outside of the school earlier in the week partly in response to a social media photo of a Somali student with the word ISIS, apparently referring to the terror group operating in the Middle East.
Hussein said since Wednesday tensions are still high, even after meetings between students, adults and administrators. He has advised students to hold off calling any more meetings with school officials.
"Meetings are the ones that are causing a little bit of some of this rift at this point right now," he said. "We want to make sure that the students are in a position where they can first be heard and then hopefully we can negotiate and work with the school district as well so we don't have any incidents or walk outs."
The St. Cloud school district has not yet responded to requests for comment.