It’s prom season, and some Colorado high school students are facing heat for some questionable accessories.
A photo posted on Twitter last weekend of eight high school students posing with rifles and a confederate flag has sparked controversy on social media and in the community less than an hour from Aurora, where the July 2012 movie theater shooting spree took place killing 12 and injuring 70 people.
"I'm sorry," says one girl who posed with #Confederate flag in this Parker #prom photo. Her story, on @KDVR at 9pm. pic.twitter.com/uevxR6JWN1
— Jeremy Hubbard (@JeremyHubbard) May 6, 2015Although the photos were not taken on school campus, an official from the Douglas County School System said on Wednesday a meeting has been scheduled with the students, parents, and school officials.
“We’re looking into all of this to discuss next steps,” the school district’s public information officer Paula Hans told msnbc, adding that there has currently been no formal action taken against the students.
Some community members were shocked to see the image last Saturday, the day of the Chaparral High School prom.
“I recognized one of the girls in the picture and thought it was a meme because it was so outrageous,” a former student of a nearby high school told msnbc.
DiGeorge, now a student at University of Colorado Boulder, tweeted the picture with the caption: “… it really needs to be addressed how messed up this picture is.” DiGeorge told msnbc that people in the community have felt “shame” to attend school with the people in the picture. In an interview with Fox31 Denver, a mother of one of the students in the photo blamed the stunt on a lack of maturity. “I think in (the students’) immaturity they kind of think it is a cowboy type of thing, but to have parents feed into it and support it is really upsetting to me,” she said, adding that when she arrived to the home with her son, “he was surprised that guns were brought out and the Confederate flag was brought out.”
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