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Over 50 students suspended for viral TikTok video at West Creek High in Clarksville
Clarksville Now ^ | November 23, 2021 | Keely Quinlan

Posted on 11/25/2021 8:34:05 AM PST by dmam2011

CLARKSVILLE, TN – Over 50 students were suspended from West Creek High School on Friday after a video showing the students raising their hands or phones simulating a weapon went viral on TikTok.

The video, posted Thursday evening, gained almost 500,000 likes on the social media app before it was made private by the video’s creator – a sophomore at West Creek High.

(Excerpt) Read more at clarksvillenow.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Tennessee
KEYWORDS: clarksville; guns; keelyquinlan; localnews; mediawingofthednc; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; police; schools; socialmedia; tennessee; tiktok; westcreekhigh
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1 posted on 11/25/2021 8:34:05 AM PST by dmam2011
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To: dmam2011

Did they miss the last train to Clarksville?


2 posted on 11/25/2021 8:35:24 AM PST by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this? 😕)
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To: dmam2011

Thought crimes are MUCH WORSE than actual crimes.

It’s the mass-murdering SUVs that we need to worry about.


3 posted on 11/25/2021 8:36:28 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("Communism is not love. Communism is a hammer which we use to crush the enemy." ― Mao Zedong)
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To: dmam2011

These young people must be bored as hell to be so easily entertained. But I can’t see any harm that justifies suspension.


4 posted on 11/25/2021 8:36:53 AM PST by Artemis Webb (Be kind to each other, unless the other guy is a dumbass.)
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To: dmam2011

Should have used rubber chickens.🤡


5 posted on 11/25/2021 8:38:21 AM PST by Leep (Save America. Lock down pres. Brandon!)
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To: Artemis Webb

The school thought police disagree.


6 posted on 11/25/2021 8:39:10 AM PST by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: dmam2011

No Pop-Tarts? Then it wasn’t really serious.


7 posted on 11/25/2021 8:40:55 AM PST by Disambiguator
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To: Artemis Webb

“But I can’t see any harm that justifies suspension.”

So much for those 50 white kids (I assume) going to college. I guess they wanted to help the ‘diversity percentages’ a bit by limiting the white kids available for college.

In the end, most of those kids will likely do better without college anyway, providing they’re willing to work for a living.


8 posted on 11/25/2021 8:41:01 AM PST by BobL (I shop at Walmart and eat at McDonald's, I just don't tell anyone, like most here.)
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To: dmam2011

A teacher friend got an email from the school board advising that if they produced anything that went viral, they could be fired. Also, any company I ever worked for would likely have fired an employee who spoke to the press and was in any way associated with the company while doing so. You’d likely have been fired if you were in a very public embarrassing situation as well. (Unless you were a highly placed manager and then they’d bring out the Bimbo Eruption Containment Group, BECG.)

A school board is panicked by the thought they might be viewed poorly and thus “cancelled.” Whatever cancelled means to them.

Nobody has any balls anymore. In this case, I suspect the school board will quickly reverse this panicked over reaction.


9 posted on 11/25/2021 8:42:16 AM PST by Gen.Blather (Wait! I said that out loud?)
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To: dmam2011

What is the crime?


10 posted on 11/25/2021 8:42:26 AM PST by petitfour (APPEAL TO HEAVEN)
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To: dmam2011

Reminds me of the day at high school when we all parked in a jumble in the parking lot rather than neatly within the lines. You would have thought we burned the school down. We were warned that we would lose our parking privileges if we did it again. (Catholic school).

We laughed for a week.


11 posted on 11/25/2021 8:42:55 AM PST by SaxxonWoods (Elvis is dead and Joe Biden doesn't feel so good himself.)
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To: BobL

From what I could see, not all were of the caucasian persuasion. It seemed to be a multiracial fad.


12 posted on 11/25/2021 8:43:26 AM PST by Migraine
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To: petitfour

“What is the crime?”

Glorifying guns!!!!!


13 posted on 11/25/2021 8:44:54 AM PST by SaxxonWoods (Elvis is dead and Joe Biden doesn't feel so good himself.)
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To: Migraine

“From what I could see, not all were of the caucasian persuasion. It seemed to be a multiracial fad.”

Thanks and could get interesting then, as suspending a black kid is FAR RISKIER than suspending white kids.


14 posted on 11/25/2021 8:46:45 AM PST by BobL (I shop at Walmart and eat at McDonald's, I just don't tell anyone, like most here.)
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To: dmam2011

“CLARKSVILLE, TN (CLARKSVILLE NOW) – Over 50 students were suspended from West Creek High School on Friday after a video showing the students raising their hands or phones simulating a weapon went viral on TikTok.

The video, posted Thursday evening, gained almost 500,000 likes on the social media app before it was made private by the video’s creator – a sophomore at West Creek High.

The TikTok video
Christian Williams, 17 and a student at West Creek, told Clarksville Now he made the video on Thursday.

“I was at school and I was on my phone just going through random Instagram stories. I saw the trend on someone’s page and I’m like, ‘Oh, we need to do this, we need to do this. We could probably go viral for this,’” Williams said.

The trend is called the “Who Want Smoke” challenge, and Williams said after seeing it, he started going around asking other students if they wanted to be in the video. He recorded them gesturing as if they were raising a weapon. That night he compiled the videos and posted it to TikTok.

“I think it was at 200,000 (likes) the first three hours,” Williams said. Before he moved the video to where only his mutual followers could see it, the video hit almost 500,000 likes.

While Williams said he didn’t come up with the trend, he said he was one of the first to go viral with it.

On Friday, the day after the video was posted, Williams said he was called to the principal’s office. Several other students who were in the video also then showed up at the office.

“The SRO (school resource officer) comes to get us, and we go back to the conference room in the back,” Williams said, adding that all the West Creek High principals came into the room too.

Disciplinary measures
The principal asked the students about the TikTok video, which Williams said was put up on a projector screen. They were told a parent called the school about the video, and they were informed it was against the student code of conduct.

According to Jessica Goldberg, director of communications and marketing for CMCSS, the district cannot confirm any disciplinary measures, as that could violate Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) rules.

She did acknowledge that the school addressed the matter.

“School administration referenced the CMCSS Student Code of Conduct offense ‘Other Conduct Warranting Discipline.’ This includes ‘any conduct which is disruptive, dangerous, harmful to the student or others, not otherwise specifically enumerated herein,’” Goldberg said in an email to Clarksville Now.

She said the district became aware of the video on Friday.

Williams said dozens of students were suspended.

“(The principal) was suspending everybody that was in the video, and it was 50-plus people, because I made two parts to this video,” Williams said, adding he was not expecting the video to go viral.

“Lesson learned,” Williams continued.

He said other students were suspended for two or three days, while he was suspended for five days.

This is not the first time this year that viral TikTok challenges have created issues at local schools. In September, a TikTok challenge that encouraged students to steal or destroy property led to over $20,000 worth of damage to Clarksville-Montgomery County school buildings.

Viral again
A different social media post about the video at West Creek High and the suspensions went viral, but this time involving one of the law enforcement officers present during the discipline.

A post from @domislivenews shared another post from @lexisgambino, Alexis Hardy, that alleged an officer with the Clarksville Police Department told students at West Creek that he would have shot them if he had seen the students making the gestures in the video.

Hardy told Clarksville Now her young sister was in the video, and that she was suspended too.

Screenshot from viral post about the suspensions at West Creek. (From @domislivenews on Instagram)
Williams said he witnessed the incident as well. The SRO officer told students that CPD was there, and that they would be talking to the students. Williams said another student started laughing.

“I guess it like made one of the officers mad, and he was like, ‘What are you laughing at if you think this is funny,’” Williams said. “And then he was like, ‘Because if I would have seen you on the street pointing an object that looked like a gun, I don’t have time to sit and think about if it is or not, I’m just going to shoot you, and I won’t get charged for it.’”

While Williams said he understood what the officer meant about a phone kind of looking like a weapon if held that way, it was the way the officer said it that was upsetting.

“He said it so serious, like, ‘If I had of seen you on the street, I would have shot you and went home and no charge would have been filed against me,’” Williams continued.”

C’mon - really?! That officer is completely tone-deaf.


15 posted on 11/25/2021 8:46:49 AM PST by Skywise
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To: SaxxonWoods

Great symbolism there....

Reminds me of my “bad behavior” in a Catholic nursery school.

During naptime I built a gigantic structure out of blocks (instead of napping). Then I knocked it down and woke up everyone.

The nuns were not acting very Christian at that moment....

;-)


16 posted on 11/25/2021 8:47:33 AM PST by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it. Think of it as the Cantillon Effect in action.)
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To: Disambiguator

“No Pop-Tarts?”

I remember that. Liberal school admins. Freakin’ lunatics.


17 posted on 11/25/2021 8:48:19 AM PST by V_TWIN
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To: Leep

As I am reading that school’s policy on what is acceptable behavior it is apparent that a rubber chicken could be grounds for suspension. The policy is unreasonably and unconstitutionally vague. A good lawyer is gonna win a lot of money from this stupid school.


18 posted on 11/25/2021 8:48:31 AM PST by MercyFlush (DANGER: You are being conditioned to view your freedom as selfish)
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To: Skywise

That officer who proposes shooting kids for holding cellphones should be the poster boy for the defund and disband police department movement.


19 posted on 11/25/2021 8:50:09 AM PST by MercyFlush (DANGER: You are being conditioned to view your freedom as selfish)
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To: Skywise

this policy of stationing cops with guns in schools is not going to work out like they think. Sooner or later some kids are going to get killed.


20 posted on 11/25/2021 8:51:46 AM PST by abb
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