Two students from the swim team at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania have been suspended for scratching a racial slur onto another student’s body.

Officials at the college said in a statement that they had received “a deeply concerning report of a racial slur being scratched on to a student using a plastic or ceramic tool”.

Yesterday afternoon Vice President for College Life Anne Ehrlich sent an email across the campus that issued an update on the investigation. The Gettysburgian, the college’s student newspaper, reported that Ehrlich informed the college via an email to the student body that a student had been expelled.

“[The] investigation is nearing its conclusion, and we can report now that the individual who scratched a slur onto another person is no longer enrolled at the College,” she wrote.

College president Robert Iuliano also commented on the impact of this event, saying he felt “profound distress about what happened”. He also said that the incident happened at an “informal social gathering at an on-campus residence” and was first reported by senior members of the swim team.

The college refused to comment further but a member of the victim’s family told the Gettysburgian that they consider the incident a hate crime. They said the family member considered the student responsible to be a friend of the victim’s.

According to WGAL-TV, Gettysburg police chief Robert Glenny Jr said that the victim had decided to handle the incident through the college’s internal process. This was against college suggestions for him to go to the police.

Photo: Penn_hall1 by Gettysburg College is available HERE and is used under a Creative Commons License. This image has not been modified.