Racial Chants Erupt At Basketball Game Between Two Catholic Schools
(CBS) -- School officials at two northwest Indiana schools are investigating what appears to be racially motivated chants at a basketball game.
Video from the game went viral over the weekend. Both schools say they are taking this incident very seriously.
CBS 2's Suzanne Le Mignot reports.
Chants of "Si se puede!" -- Spanish for "Yes we can!" -- erupted from the super fan section of Bishop Noll Institute, a predominantly Latino school in Hammond, Ind. They responded to what spectator Ashley Howard calls a very racist exchange started by rival team Andrean High School.
She says the chants included "Build a wall!" and "Please speak English! No comprende!"
Howard was disturbed by the exchange between the two Catholic schools. She shot video and took pictures.
An Andrean student holds this poster with the face of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. A sign says "ESPN DEPORTES."
"It was sad to see and the administration was standing right there. They didn't step in and say, 'This is not all right. Give me those posters,'" Howard says.
Howard, a volleyball coach, says she would have intervened if it were her students.
Bishop Noll Junior Imari Beasley was also at the game.
"It shouldn't have happened, but we did receive an apology from the Andrean principal, so hopefully we can learn to forgive and forget and make sure it never happens again," he said.
In a statement, both schools say this as a teaching and healing moment while adding the incident remains under investigation.
"Any actions or words that can be perceived as racist or derogatory to others are antithetical to the Christian faith and will not be tolerated in any of our institutions. It was the furthest thing from anyone's mind that such actions would be happening at a gathering of two of our Catholic high schools. This is not what we teach our students," Bishop Donald J. Hying said in a written statement.