The police and city education officials said yesterday that they were investigating the appearance of a racial slur on a bench that was to be used by a Harlem high school football team at a game on Saturday at Staten Island Technical High School.
Besides trying to determine who was responsible for the slur, school investigators were looking into the response of Staten Island Tech faculty members, said Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the Department of Education. The coach of the Harlem team, sponsored by Wadleigh High School, accused two Staten Island Tech faculty members of trying to trivialize the incident.
The coach, Duke Fergerson, said he noticed the slur written in black ink on the top of a metal bench assigned to his team, the Harlem Hellfighters, about an hour before it was to begin its game at noon against the McKee/Staten Island Tech Seagulls. Mr. Fergerson said the slur contained a common racial epithet and the initials “M.S.I.T.,” which he believed to refer to the Staten Island team.
The Seagulls are fielded by a joint athletic program of Staten Island Tech and McKee High School. The Harlem Hellfighters field players from a dozen high schools in Upper Manhattan.
Mr. Fergerson said he reported the discovery to a school security officer, who called the police. Then, Mr. Fergerson said, he was approached by an assistant vice principal from Staten Island Tech. “He said, ‘Why don’t you let it go?’” Mr. Fergerson said yesterday. “He said this could only have been done by kids.”
Mr. Fergerson said an athletic director from Staten Island Tech later chastised him for calling the police and told a referee to move the bench. Mr. Fergerson said he argued that the bench should stay in place until the police arrived, but the referee moved it anyway.
Mr. Fergerson said he could not identify either of the faculty members or the referee by name. He said the police arrived at the field about five minutes after the game began. (The Harlem team won, 44-36, in triple overtime.)
Staten Island Tech’s athletic director, James McCarthy, could not be reached for comment yesterday. Kenneth J. Bonamo Jr., an assistant principal, defended the response by Staten Island Tech officials, saying that they were dealing at the time with a 17-year-old student who had to be resuscitated after he collapsed on the tennis courts about 100 yards from the football field.
“I’m not African-American, so I can’t say I know how they feel, but I think any human being would put life before feelings,” said Mr. Bonamo, who added that he was not among the officials who spoke with Mr. Fergerson. “I think had they known that we had a student under cardiac arrest, they may not have perceived us having a cavalier attitude.”
The police said yesterday that the incident had been turned over to its Hate Crime Task Force, which has been busy. Last week a noose was found on the door of a black professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, and anti-Semitic graffiti were splashed across Brooklyn Heights last month.
Ms. Feinberg said the Department of Education was “taking these allegations very seriously, and we are investigating them.”
Mr. Fergerson was a wide receiver in the 1970s and 1980s for the Seattle Seahawks and Buffalo Bills, and the Harlem team was the subject of a documentary that was shown at the Tribeca Film Festival this year.
Staten Island Tech is among the city’s elite schools, with students gaining admission after taking the Specialized High School Admissions Test.
Trymaine Lee contributed reporting.
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