KANSAS CITY (AP) — The interim principal at a Kansas City-area high school has apologized for storming onto a volleyball court before a girls game and demanding that the team take off their racial unity T-shirts.
Students said the T-shirts — emblazoned with the words “Together We Rise” and three raised fists in different skin tones — are meant to promote racial equality and unity.
The incident unfolded when the Park Hill South High School's girls volleyball team wore the T-shirts for warm-ups before their Sept. 29 game against North Kansas City High School, WDAF-TV reported.
Kerrie Herren, the interim principal at Park Hill South, made them remove the T-shirts that they were wearing over their uniforms.
“It was extremely embarrassing and disappointing because we were wearing them in unity with North Kansas City, and they had to watch as we took the shirts off and they were allowed to keep theirs on,” said volleyball player Abbie Day, a senior at Park Hill South.
Day said she saw the shirts at a unity march over the summer and wanted to use the volleyball team as the platform for their unity message in her senior year of high school.
When asked if he had a message for the girls, Herron said Tuesday: “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that I may have embarrassed you. I’m sorry that my quick action ultimately had bigger consequences than what I thought they were at the moment, and I would like any opportunity to continue the conversation and make it right.”
Herren told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he asked the students to remove their shirts because he had received a complaint from a parent that there were students on the team who did not feel comfortable purchasing or wearing it.
After the game, Herren and another staff member told team members they worried that the T-shirts represent a political movement rather than student speech, and that wearing them could be as inappropriate as wearing shirts that promoted the Ku Klux Klan.
“That example was used and should never have been used because there is no comparison between what the KKK stands for and what these students were trying to do,” he said.
Herren said discussions with students in the days that followed helped him to understand that the T-shirts represent a desire for love, unity and inclusion. He has since repeatedly apologized to the team, the student body, the community and the superintendent.
“It was not easy, but it was the right thing to do — to own a mistake —and try to make it right by bringing the focus back to what the girls want to talk about and that is inclusion, equity, love and hope,” he said.
The volleyball team wore the shirts for a game this week without an issue.