Schools report racially charged incidents after election

Associated Press

In the wake of Donald Trump's election, reports of racially charged incidents are emerging from the nation's schools and universities, including students who chanted "white power" and called black classmates "cotton pickers."

Reporting by The Associated Press and local media outlets has identified more than 20 such encounters beginning on Election Day, many involving people too young to cast a ballot.

At the University of New Mexico, a Muslim engineering student said a man attempted to snatch off her hijab Tuesday while she was studying.

"I turned around and there's a really buff guy wearing a Trump shirt," freshman Leena Aggad said today. "He reaches his hand out to my forehead and attempts to pull my scarf off."

Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League office that monitors extremism, said young people "were watching and observing this presidential campaign as closely as anyone else." Now that the campaign is over, "the impact of what they have seen is not just going to go away."

On Wednesday, minority students at a high school in Gurnee, Ill., organized a meeting and protest after a "whites only" message was found scrawled on a bathroom door. The same day in Michigan, students at Royal Oak Middle school were filmed chanting "build a wall" in the cafeteria.

At Trump's alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania, black freshmen were added to a group chat in which one post read "daily lynching," and one participant was called a "dumb slave." School officials are meeting with students groups to respond.