The student at Ottoson Middle School in Arlington, Massachusetts who claimed to have received racist text messages actually made up the entire thing, according to the police.
Last week, the Boston Globe reported that police were investigating a student’s claims that one of his classmates, a twelve-year-old girl, had sent him racist text messages. A Tuesday article penned by the Globe staff reported that the boy’s mother had forwarded the news source a series of messages containing racist statements about Indians to her son “with the intent that her son relay the messages to another boy whose family is from India.”
But, as it turns out, it was all a hoax.
“Following an investigation, Arlington Police determined that the student who claimed to have received the hateful messages had created the narrative and fabricated the story,” a joint statement by Police Chief Frederick Ryan and Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Kathleen Bodie said, according to the Globe.
Although no charges have been filed against the lying student, the Globe reports that the police and school departments are working together to “determine the ‘appropriate corrective action.’”
#related#“The allegation of racist texts being sent from one middle school student to another was concerning and hurtful to the entire community and I am disappointed that a student would falsify a report of this nature,” Bodie said in a statement.
Obviously, Bodie has every right to be “disappointed.” Racism is a real and serious problem, but the more it’s falsely reported, the less likely it is that future reports will be believed – even when they’re true.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.