The Citadel military college has issued punishments to 14 students after photographs of them wearing Ku Klux Klan-style hoods surfaced online, The Post and Courier reported Monday.
The images made headlines in December and showed the students wearing all-white outfits with eye-holes in their hoods. The pictures were posted to Snapchat and later uploaded to Facebook by a woman who doesn’t attend The Citadel.
The 14 cadets punished following an investigation conducted by the college included seven juniors and seven freshmen, the newspaper reported. The investigation found that the freshmen, who are required to obey upperclassmen’s orders, reported to an upperclassman’s barracks room where they sang Christmas songs. The freshmen in the photograph were dressed like the “Ghosts of Christmas Past.”
“The investigation found that the cadets did not intend to be offensive. However, I am disappointed some recognized how it could be construed as such but didn’t stop it,” Citadel President Lt. Gen. John Rosa said in a news release.
The Post and Courier reported that the college dismissed one student, meaning he or she must spend two semesters away from campus, and suspended two other cadets for one semester. Eleven others received what the newspaper described as “on-campus punishments.”