At the varsity hockey game against Northwest on Nov 3., an elderly man on the opposing side targeted senior Adrian Scott with a racist gesture, resulting in a backlash from the student section.

“I was at the bottom of our student section on the floor by the ice and we were chanting ‘Let’s Go West’ because it was tied,” Scott said. “I looked over, and a man in the stands looked at me and made monkey gestures and told me to go sit down. [He] basically called me a monkey.”

Taking deep breaths to prevent himself from eliciting a strong reaction to the man’s actions, Scott stepped away in an effort to calm down.

“I don’t know if he was necessarily racist or he was just mad, but it was either one of the two. I was honestly upset because I felt like he got away with it; I was upset that I couldn’t do anything about it,” Scott said. “It made me mad that I couldn’t react to it; I just had to sit there and take that from him.”

At first, the police threatened to force Scott and the man off the premises, but Scott and his friends refused to leave.

“He got up first to snitch on us. I walked up there as he was talking to the cop, and once I got up there, he basically pointed at me. That’s when I told the other cop what happened. They kept talking to him and kicked him out,” Scott said. “I was still upset but at the same time, I guess they handled it in their way.”

Not only did the incident anger Scott, but it also angered fellow senior Leul Mesfin.

“Obviously, I got really mad because it’s just not okay. A lot of people were surprised he said that and oblivious to the fact that people are still racist and think things like that,” Mesfin said. “I got angered because that’s not okay. You can’t go around saying that to teenagers when you’re a grown old man.”

Along with the conflict involving Scott at the game, competition between the two schools heated up as well and ultimately led to yelling and profanity in the stands.

“What we were doing wasn’t right, but at the same time, you can’t stop it. It was just going back and forth,” Scott said. “It got taken to a whole other level when [the man] did that.”

Northwest High School junior Trey Johnson said the man’s anger got the best of him, but Johnson believes the man’s comment does not define Northwest High School. 

“That is not what our student body is about,” Johnson said.

After the game finished, Mesfin had an argument with the elderly man in the parking lot. The scene caught the attention of the police, and Mesfin received a pat-down at his car because police officers believed he was carrying arms.  

“[The old man] was saying ‘you guys are liars’ and ‘monkeys’ and insulting stuff,” Mesfin said. “I said things back, but nothing like ‘I’m going to shoot you’.”

The police officers at the scene were looking for a tall black male with a white sweatshirt, under the impression the male would have a gun. Mesfin was wearing a red sweatshirt and did not fit the description, but the police searched all of his belongings and found nothing.

“That’s when I saw other cops swarm me; they thought I had a gun on me, and they searched everything and my car without my permission,” Mesfin said. “I think they searched me because I was black and because I was obviously angry. It’s a normal thing to be angry when someone says something racist like that.”

Junior Peyton Aalfs was an eyewitness to this scene when walking to a friend’s car.

“The fact that they had four or five cops come to his car and make a scene about it seemed really ridiculous,” Aalfs said.

Despite the unrest of that evening, Scott plans to continue attending school-sponsored functions in the community because he hopes to put an end to racist views.

“It made me want to go to more [school events] because it obviously shows how we can not necessarily get under other people’s skin, but affect people that much,” Scott said. “We’re just students—I was literally just chanting with my student section, and I got picked on like that. It shows not what people necessarily think, but how they can react.”