Last May, the St. Louis University baseball team visited Washington, D.C., and on a private group chat, several players had a discussion about eating options in the area that quickly devolved into the string of racial epithets you see above. One of the players on the chat took a screenshot of the conversation and sent it to his roommate Brenden Twomey, who is a former student manager, and also happens to be black.Twomey had recently left his position with the team and considered this image confirmation that he did the right thing. "I think him sending the screenshot to me was kind of a reassurance of, look at them, they're back at it again." The incident is only now coming to light, however, because Twomey didn't do anything with the picture at first. It wasn't until his girlfriend saw the image earlier this month that a formal bias incident report was filed with the school. The report was filed on April 4, and according to the university's student newspaper, the investigation was closed on April 7 with no punishment for those involved.
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The screenshot then became public last week when the incoming president of the school's Black Student Alliance, Jonathan Pulphus, posted it on Facebook. Following the revelation, the captains of the baseball team wrote a letter to the student paper condemning the actions and apologizing for it, but Twomey doesn't buy it and thinks the team should be suspended from the conference tournament.In a bizarre coda to this all, Twomey appears to have been the victim of some gross retaliatory acts from his roommate, the same roommate who sent him the picture in the first place. Two days after the screenshot went public, Twomey discovered chewing tobacco spit on his floor, more used chewing tobacco spilled all over his sink, and finger and toenail clippings placed on a cloth Twomey regularly uses to clean his glasses. His roommate has voluntarily moved out of the apartment.h/t Deadspin[River Front Times]Since the offensive messages had been sent within a private group chat, rather than directed at one person, Dr. Mona Hicks, Associate Vice President and Dean of Students, said that the school could not punish the students. (The student newspaper's report was written by SLU senior Emily Higginbotham, who is also an intern with the RFT this semester.) "If I were to directly state to you, 'You suck because of all of your social identities that God gave you.' That would be wrong. That would require some adjudication," Hicks told University News. "We also need to respect laws. This was a private conversation, or at least the perception of private between in-group parties."