Rosa said suspension proceedings had begun for the cadets known to be involved.
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College president Lt Gen John W Rosa called the photos “offensive and disturbing”.
The images, shared on several social media sites, show seven cadets in white clothes wearing white, pointy pillowcases with eye cutouts over their heads. “Preliminary reports claim the cadets were singing Christmas carols as part of a “Ghosts of Christmas Past” skit”. The South Carolina military college announced that seven cadets who appeared wearing the pillowcases as well as one upperclassman have been suspended and it’s not clear whether they will return to school.
But ABC 4 says the woman noticed that the man’s Snapchat account included images of white men dressed in white hoods with eyeholes cut out, along with a man in a Citadel sweatshirt – so she saved a copy and posted it online.
“Would anybody else take this as really just singing Christmas carols or supposed to be dressed up as ghosts?”
A source said the men seen wearing the hoods are likely first-year students, or “knobs”, based on the way they are standing.
The Citadel Minority Alumni Association’s chairman, Lamont A. Melvin, says the posting was “disgraceful” and shouldn’t be treated as a simple mistake.
But he said the pictures aren’t consistent with the college’s core values of honor, duty and respect.
School officials said they will provide more information upon completion of the investigation.
The Citadel was founded in 1842 and has about 2,300 students in its undergraduate Corps of Cadets, with another estimated 1,000 students in its civilian program. At the very least, there needs to be a zero tolerance policy established immediately for racially charged and racially-motivated rhetoric and activity.
According to the Associated Press, reported via MSN, in 1986, five white students, dressed in sheets and towels, entered the room of a black cadet and left a burnt paper cross. “It’s time for the Confederate flag to come down at The Citadel”, Clinton tweeted on Friday afternoon.
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Democratic presidential candidates are calling for the removal of the Confederate flag in a chapel at The Citadel in response to online photos of cadets who posed with pillowcases on their heads reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan.
