Photofinished - Racist Snapchat pic gets student kicked out of University of Alabama
A Snapchat message with a racist caption, boasting there were no black people in the sender's University of Alabama sorority, saw the student expelled after the image went viral on social networks.
The faces of the women in question have been blurred out
The woman, now removed from the university and the Chi Omega sorority, sent a Snapchat to friends with the caption: “Chi O got NO niggas!!!!!"(sic.)
However, one of the image recipients screenshot the picture using a mobile feature which defeated Snapchat's message expiry timer.
Rumours arose online that the image was fake and that the caption in question was added after it was sent.
Furthermore, the student claimed the offensive caption was the result of an auto-correct error which she said replaced "ninjas".
The claims were rubbished by the university which verified the authenticity of the 'snap' to the media.
Judy Bonner, president of the University of Alabama, issued a statement to students: “As many of you already know, one of our students posted a photo on Snapchat on Saturday afternoon that included particularly offensive racial language.
“I immediately asked the office of student conduct to conduct a full investigation and was assured by the national Chi Omega headquarters that they had already begun an investigation of their own."
Bonner added: “We are all extremely disappointed when any student uses language that is disrespectful or offensive to any segment of the UA community. We are especially sad that this incident occurred on a day that was an exciting and happy one for the young women who participated in fall recruitment.”
Chi Omega spokeswoman Whitney Plumpton denied the student's claims that the sorority did not accept black people, claiming that it had recently accepted two new pledges from African-American women.
In March, Snapchat admitted that pictures that are reportedly expired in the app, may still be retrievable, undermining the app's usefulness as an impermanent picture messenger.