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A Texas school district apologized after a high school defender said his director had cut him off after mentioning the names of Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin.
"We never intend to censor the freedom of expression of anyone.Students have this right – Dallas ISD encourages it," said Monday the Dallas Independent School District.
On June 3, Rooha Haghar, a lawyer at Emmett J. Conrad high school in Dallas, tweeted that her speech was shortened because she "said the names of black children who were victims of police brutality".
"Our director reported that my microphone was to be turned off as soon as I told him" trayvon martin and tamir rice "and that I played it as a technical difficulty. Pathetic," writes Haghar on Twitter , accompanied by a video of the forced end of the speech.
In the video, Haghar says, "To children murdered during senseless mass shootings, to Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and all the other child victims of injustice …"
Then her lips keep moving, but she can not be heard because the microphone has stopped working.
Haghar understood what had happened, tapped on his microphone, flashed a heart symbol with his hands, and sat down under the applause of the crowd. When the director of the school, Temesghen Asmerom, approached the microphone, it was working again.
Haghar tweeted in addition to mentioning Martin and Rice, she would talk about "children around the world affected by war, famine, persecution and child labor" and remind her peers that "they have an obligation to their community and to the world at large. "
She said that she had shown a copy of her speech to Asmerom prior to graduation and that he had told her to remove the names of Martin and Rice as they would make the speech too political.
Martin, 17, was shot and killed by a neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman, in February 2012 in Sanford, Florida. Twelve-year-old Rice was shot dead in November 2014 by Timothy Loehmann, a Cleveland police officer, who was responding to a call from someone who was pointing a gun at someone else. Rice was playing with a pellet gun.
"The ISD has a habit of reviewing all Valedictorian and Salvatorian speechs.The school faced the following challenge: the Valedictorian chose to share other remarks that were unprepared for the administration's knowledge. to limit the student's remarks, "Dallas ITD said in his statement.
"In hindsight, we realize that this decision may not have reflected the fundamental values we teach our students as we work to train the leaders of tomorrow, for which we apologize", the statement said.
Haghar immigrated to the United States with her Iranian family while she was a child, according to NBCDFW. She plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin and continue to advocate for social justice.
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