Dallas teens’ trip to A&M was more slur than tour

Sixty of Dallas’ smartest high school juniors went touring Tuesday at Texas A&M.

Outside the old Walton Hall dorm, white students called them the n-word, one woman teased them with her Rebel flag earrings, and for an unclear reason somebody called to the high school students, “Go back where you came from.”

That would be Texas and America.

That’s why university and school officials and at least one state lawmaker blanched Thursday at the idea of the Uplift Hampton Preparatory charter school junior class encountering a young pack of backward bigots.

Every graduate from the Dallas-based regional Uplift system goes to college, which is why universities compete for students like the 60 juniors from the campus on South Hampton Road.

A&M tour guides showing off the best of Aggieland instead encountered the worst.

Chancellor John Sharp phoned state Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, to alert him after the guides reported it.

“I feel like I’ve been hit over the head with a hammer. … To have this happen is like a gut blow to everything they’re trying to do” at A&M, West said.

At a university where African-American enrollment is less than 3 percent — in comparison, at private TCU it’s 5 percent — President Michael K. Young wrote to students that he is “outraged” and that administrators had to reassure the Uplift students they are “welcome and respected.”

A spokeswoman for the Uplift system, where former trustees include Land Commissioner George P. Bush, said in a written statement that Uplift is “proud of our scholars for the grace and composure” of their response.

The students were on Uplift schools’ annual “Road to College” tour for all juniors, spokeswoman Sara Ortega said. In seven years of tours all over, “this has never happened at any other campus,” she said.

It was not clear Thursday whether the men and women involved in the harassment have been identified, but A&M officials described them as students. University staffers called campus police at the scene, but one officer was quoted as saying the students were “expressing their First Amendment rights.”

In an interview with KTVT/Channel 11, one of the Uplift Hampton teens said the original “Go back where you came from” comment was a response to one of the Dallas students’ Texas Longhorns logo bag. But others in the A&M group may have repeated it.

One Uplift student took a cellphone photo that was turned over to police, the school official said. A&M officials did not immediately release the police report or any surveillance video from outside 85-year-old Walton Hall or along the sidewalk to Parking Lot 32.

West said he was “shocked” that police took no action but “the reality is that the university holds students accountable for conduct.”

“This was about more than just one student or a Confederate flag,” he said. “This was about several students using the n-word and saying, ‘Go back where you came from.’ ”

Send them back to whatever bleak century or cave they came from, and give the space to more of Texas’ smartest scholars.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 7:25 PM with the headline "Dallas teens’ trip to A&M was more slur than tour."