Racist ‘Zoom’ bombing is traced to Olympia School District student, North Thurston says
An Olympia School District student and an unidentified Seattle computer user have been tied to racial slurs used during an online gathering of Black Student Union members at North Thurston Public Schools, a district investigation has found.
The Black Student Union gathering was held in late March on the online meeting platform known as Zoom. The meeting was interrupted by both written and verbal racial slurs, according to teachers and students who attended.
“After we received more information from the (Black Student Union) group advisers, our technology director took direct control of the investigation and was able to identify the IP addresses of the offenders,” North Thurston spokeswoman Courtney Schrieve said.
An IP, or internet protocol address, is used to identify devices on the internet.
“We then confirmed that the attack didn’t come from an IP address associated with any of our district devices or student logins,” Schrieve said. “Reaching out to other districts in our region, we were able to identify a match with a student in a neighboring district.”
The Olympia School District student has been linked to spoken racial slurs, while the Seattle address points to someone who typed racial slurs in a chat box, Schrieve said.
The information has been shared with the Olympia School District, spokeswoman Susan Gifford confirmed.
“Due to student privacy/student records, we do not share what action was taken or what school/grade level the student is in,” she said.
However, she said Olympia school officials met with the student and addressed the issue of attending another district’s Zoom meeting without being invited. During that meeting, the student told school officials they did not say anything during the NTPS meeting, Gifford said.
But then the district received additional information from NTPS last week — the accounts of teachers who heard the person use racial slurs, Schrieve said.
“Our district takes these allegations seriously and will move quickly to investigate the additional information we received from NTPS,” Gifford said.
After the racial slurs were used, the group advisers to the Black Student Union meeting scrambled to set up a new Zoom link and moved the meeting to a new online destination. Those same advisers, who are teachers at NTPS, initially expressed disappointment after they reported the incident to the district’s technology department and Lacey police.
Sgt. Shannon Barnes, a spokeswoman for Lacey police, said the use of a racial slur, in and of itself, is not a crime. Only if the racial slur had been used in the context of a threat would it have risen to the level of a crime.
“Is it absolutely inappropriate? Yes,” she said.
Meanwhile, North Thurston has taken steps to secure the online meeting environment.
The district had 17 teachers at Aspire Middle School pilot additional authentication requirements for online meetings.
“We anticipate sharing training with all our staff on how they can enable the additional authentication to further secure our virtual meetings,” Schrieve said.
Teacher and Black Student Union adviser Alliniece Andino said NTPS has done a good job of following up and pursuing the zoom bombing.
“Within a couple days of the incident, and up ‘til now, the district has responded well,” she said.
This story was originally published May 3, 2021 at 5:45 AM.
