Six eighth-grade students at Southwick Regional School are facing criminal charges for participating in a Snapchat conversation last month that included “hateful, racist” language and a mock slave auction for two fellow students, Hampden District Attorney Anthony D. Gulluni said Thursday.
Students who participated in the Feb. 8 group chat shared “hateful, racist online chat that included heinous language, threats, and a mock slave auction,” Gulluni said.
“This discussion involved multiple juveniles, some of whom came and went during the course of the group chat,” he said. It included “notions of violence toward people of color, racial slurs, derogatory pictures and videos” and the mock auction, which targeted two fellow students.
Four juveniles are charged with threat to commit a crime, and another is accused of interference with civil rights, threatening to commit a crime, and witness interference. The sixth is charged with interference with civil rights and threatening to commit a crime.
“There is no question that the alleged behavior of these six juveniles is vile, cruel, and contemptible,” Gulluni said in a statement. “Seeing it, and facing the reality that these thoughts, that this ugliness, can exist within middle school students, here, in this community, in 2024, is discouraging, unsettling, and deeply frustrating.”
The names of the students were not disclosed because they are juveniles, Gulluni said.
Allyson Lopez, a mother of one of the victims, sent a letter to Gulluni “commending you for your diligent investigation and the courageous decision to prosecute the six unnamed individuals involved in the recent events.”
“Your dedication to upholding justice in our community is commendable and provides a glimmer of hope amidst the darkness of this traumatic incident,” wrote Lopez, who provided a copy of the letter to the Globe.
The racial bullying at the school is “symptomatic of deeper issues within our society,” and criticized the school district for its response to the incident.
“In particular, I feel compelled to express my continued dissatisfaction with the Southwick-Tolland-Granville School District’s response to issues of racism. It is evident that they have failed miserably in the past to adequately address and confront these issues, allowing them to fester and culminate in the abhorrent behavior we have witnessed,” Lopez wrote.
Southwick is a small town west of Springfield on the Connecticut border. The high school is 89 percent white, according to state data.
The chat started on the evening of Feb. 8 and continued into the early morning. School officials learned about the chat on Feb. 9 and on Feb. 12 suspended the six students, Gulluni said.
One student has been suspended for 45 days; two others have been suspended for 25 days, Gulluni said.
He said he has met with the students who were targeted by their classmates and their families.
“I intend to be very clear: hatred and racism have no place in this community,” Gulluni said. “And where this behavior becomes criminal, I will ensure that we act, and act with swift resolve, as we did here, to uncover it and bring it to the light of justice.”
Bishop Talbert W. Swan II, president of the Greater Springfield NAACP, said in a statement that the Southwick School District has long failed to protect Black students from systemic bullying and noted that the child of a sitting school committee member, Desiree Melloni, is one of the students involved in recent racist incidents.
Swan said Gulluni’s choice to pursue charges serves as a “call for accountability” for everyone “that has been apathetic to the concerns of Black families and the families of other students that have faced bullying and harassment within the district.”
Gulluni said his office will deliver a school curriculum “around the issue of hate and bullying” to the Southwick school community. He said he is also in conversation with Attorney General Andrea Campbell to create a program “to more deeply address and remediate the harmful forces of bigotry, racism, and bullying in our schools.”
John R. Ellement can be reached at john.ellement@globe.com. Follow him @JREbosglobe. Lila Hempel-Edgers can be reached at lila.hempeledgers@globe.com. Follow her on X @hempeledgers and on Instagram @lila_hempel_edgers.