By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

AUBURN – Two teenagers were expelled from Edward Little High School on Tuesday for beating up another student.

A third teenager, who was originally suspended for his involvement in the Jan. 26 fight, did not receive further punishment.

Shawn Whyles, 17, and Roberto Continat, 18, both African-American, were expelled for beating up a white 17-year-old junior. Several people involved in the dispute, including the victim, said racial issues were not a direct factor in the incident. Whyles, Continat, their parents and more than a half-dozen other students who attended the hearing said the teenagers had been routinely harassed and called racial slurs by the white student and his friends. They said school administrators turned their back on the situation – and all racial harassment at the school – and the teenagers had reached their breaking point when they got into the fight.

“I tell teachers all the time (about the racial slurs). Nothing happens,” said Whyles as he left the School Committee hearing room hearing room.

School officials refused to comment Tuesday, citing confidentiality. But administrators have told the Sun Journal that Edward Little doesn’t have a big racial problem and that they respond swiftly to all student complaints.

The teenagers’ parents said Tuesday that the school doesn’t respond to racial complaints at all. They planned to move their families out of state to find a better educational environment. Both families have younger children in the school system, and the parents said they felt uncomfortable sending them back.

“We’re not wanted here,” said Anaika Whyles, Shawn Whyles’ mother. “That’s what the school’s been telling us for three years: We’re not wanted here.”

Tuesday’s closed-door disciplinary hearing lasted four-and-a-half hours. During the School Committee’s deliberations, students gathered in the hallway and complained about the racial slurs and harassment they said they see at the high school every day. They believe administrators and teachers know there’s a problem, but do little or nothing.

“They say it’s not an issue. How can you not know?” said 15-year-old sophomore Martin Houston, who said he often hears racial slurs in the hall and in class.

After the School Committee voted 6-0 to suspend him, Whyles agreed. He said he was a quiet kid and a B-student who’d only received one detention, for failing to change for gym class. He admitted to hitting the white student, but said the student and others called him “nigger” and harassed him, but the school’s administrators wouldn’t do anything.

Whyles, who has been suspended since the Jan. 26 fight, said he was surprised by the verdict.

Maria Continat, whose son, Roberto, was also expelled, said she wasn’t surprised at all. During the hearing, she said, she could see it coming.

“It was unfair. As always,” she said. “He (the white student) called him a nigger.’ They didn’t even want to hear about that.”

Whyles, a junior, and Continat, a senior, said they didn’t know where they were going to go to school after the expulsion.

Police have charged Whyles, Continat and a third teenager with assault. They have not yet appeared in court.

Because the three are black and the victim is white, the police have also forwarded their investigative findings to the attorney general’s office for possible prosecution as a hate crime. Police said it is standard policy to involve the attorney general’s office if there is a possibility a crime may have been racially motivated.