SPRINGFIELD, OHIO — A local high school geometry teacher has been suspended indefinitely after several traumatized students reported seeing what they described as a “deeply disturbing KKK hood” displayed prominently on the classroom whiteboard during Tuesday’s geometry lesson.
The alleged white supremacist hate symbol, later identified by mathematicians as an isosceles triangle, was reportedly drawn in black marker by longtime geometry teacher Robert Henderson, who had been attempting to teach his students about different types of triangles.
“I was just sitting there, trying to mind my own business and ignore the math, and suddenly I look up and he’s literally drawing a Klan hood right in front of us,” said 11th-grader Shontae Jackson, who immediately photographed the whiteboard and posted it to social media. “It was pointy at the top, flat at the bottom, and completely white. It was literal violence.”
The school district immediately dispatched a fleet of grief counselors and therapy dogs to the campus to help students cope with the exposure to the three-sided imagery. Administrators also removed the whiteboard from the classroom, noting that its inherent whiteness was deeply problematic and likely contributing to the toxic environment.
At publishing time, the school board had voted to completely remove Geometry from the curriculum, warning that math is a gateway to seeing racism everywhere. The district will instead replace the course with “Inclusive Spheres 101.”
