The New York Times recently got deeply involved in high-school drama, siding with a half-black man who released a four-year-old video of a white woman using the N-word. The resulting social media whirlwind has caused her to be rejected from the University of Tennessee, with the school panicking at social media emotion after earlier accepting her.
Now the lawyer representing the white college student has accused the University of Tennessee of “caving in to hysteria” over the racial slur, delivered hip-hop style to her friends and not in disparagement of anyone, when she was 15 years old. “I can drive, n—-s!’ the young woman says in the video, celebrating getting her license.
Speaking to FOX News on Dec. 28, Mimi Groves’ lawyer Shan Wu said that the school made a “rush to judgement” after the video of Groves as she was sitting in traffic went viral.
The video resurfaced this year when a high school classmate, Jimmy Galligan of Leesburg, Va., who had received the video at the time on social media and appears to have had some kind of vendetta, posted it publicly.
Groves, a champion cheerleader, was planning to attend UT Knoxville with its cheer team who are reigning national champions. She was accepted onto the team in May.
“Mimi was a kid when she did this,” Wu told FOX News. “She’s appalled, and having said that, she’s not trying to excuse [her actions] in any way.
“What she lost was her dream. Like many athletes, she had worked most of her young adult life for a shot at going to a great school and being on their team. That was taken away from her in what can only be described as a rush to judgment.”
Wu elaborated that he felt the “University of Tennessee caved in — in a panic, to a lot of hysteria, a lot of social media going on — and they didn’t give her a meaningful investigation — which would have revealed that this happened years ago, and would have revealed the context of it.”
