Princeton High School (PHS) Senior Jamaica Ponder was suspended for one day Monday in what her father, Rhinold Ponder, claims was “arbitrary and retaliatory” punitive action, “an attempt to silence some of those who would speak up about racism.” Ms. Ponder and her parents are African Americans.

In a letter sent to the school community last week, PHS Principal Gary Snyder reported that several students had submitted PHS yearbook collages including “insensitive, offensive, and provocative words and symbols of racial bias, bigotry, and anti-Semitism. Those students who submitted the inappropriate collages are responsible for their actions, and those actions are being addressed within the parameters of school discipline.” 

Mr. Snyder said that he was not able to comment further on specific matters related to student discipline.

Ms. Ponder’s yearbook senior collage photo, apparently deemed offensive because of its “explicitly racial language,” depicted Ms. Ponder and a group of 16 friends posing in the family basement. The problem arose from two of her father’s works of art hanging in the background, one of which, “Strange Fruit: High Tech Lynching,” depicts a lynching of Michael Jackson, Clarence Thomas, and O.J. Simpson. The other includes the words (only partially visible in the photo) “N——— RICH,” in dark acrylic paint and chopped-up dollar bills.

When not publicly on display, as they have been at Princeton University and in town on occasion over the past three years, Mr. Ponder’s provocative political paintings hang in his house. The point, he said, is to promote discussion about racism.

His daughter’s photo collage, Mr. Ponder said, was “a picture of her friends in the basement, and the focus of the picture was that she was the life of the party and her friends were acting goofy. The N-word was not in evidence.”

Ms. Ponder described her collage photo as “purposefully innocent and apolitical.” In her June 8 blog article in Multi Magazine: Exploring the Teenage Diaspora, she explained, “Art is trouble, if you’re doing it right. And Ponder art has a tendency to incite and provoke; to make people think. Right now, it serves its purpose from all the way in my basement, from behind the heads of my scooter and balloon wielding friends, from the purposefully innocent and apolitical photo that is my senior collage. My father’s art served its purpose without me even noticing and that’s how I ended up in the principal’s office this morning when I should’ve been doing my math homework.”

On the following day, June 9, Ms. Ponder had to return to the principal’s office and received notice of her suspension.

In her blog during the past year, Ms. Ponder has reported and commented on several high school and middle school incidents of racism: high school students playing “Jew-Nazi” beer pong last spring; a Snapchat photo of a student accompanied by the N-word and complaining about black students on her bus; and a middle school student falsely accusing a black classmate for giving him marijuana brownies, claiming that everyone would believe the accusation because the student was black.

Mr. Ponder claimed that his daughter has been the target of attempted intimidation and harassment ever since she reported on the racist beer pong incident last April. “Our house has been egged three times. Students have called her ‘b—,’ and we’ve been called into the office for meritless HIB (harassment, intimidation, bullying) charges against her.”

In his suspension of Jamaica, Mr. Ponder stated, “Mr. Snyder violated basic due process and procedure. Our strong feeling is that this punitive action was arbitrary and retaliatory. It’s a bigger issue than I thought. It’s about more than the one-day suspension. It was meant to be a message that this black girl and people like her do not need to speak out. It was a culmination of the intimidation and harassment that Jamaica has faced. There are a lot of people, black and white, who are complaining about this. The ACLU would say that none of the kids should be disciplined. She was disciplined unfairly and inequitably.”

Taking the long view, Mr. Ponder looked back on his daughter’s conflict-ridden encounters at PHS and her future at Northwestern University, where she’ll be a freshman next year. “It’s been a challenging road,” he said. “She’s passionate about her family, her friends, and justice. If she wants to engage in social justice she has to understand that this comes with the territory. She’s thrilled to be moving on to Northwestern in the fall.”