GETTYSBURG, Pa. (WHTM) — A law professor and former federal prosecutor questioned why a Gettysburg College student who allegedly had a racial slur etched on his chest has refused to speak with police about the incident.

“Let me be clear,” F. Lee Francis, a law professor at Widener University Commonwealth Law School in Harrisburg and a former federal prosecutor, said Friday. “I don’t think that by saying questions are outstanding means that we are denying the person’s experience or saying that what they have experienced or believe is wrong.”

“But we do need to make sure we have our facts in order,” Francis continued. “How does something like this happen? It makes me wonder why the person would would go to the media rather than going to the police if something as serious as a hate crime really did occur.”

Francis made his comments after Adams County District Attorney Brian Sinnett confirmed earlier Friday that both he and Gettysburg Police first learned about the incident from the media — not the student or his family — after the family released statements to the media, and that the student declined to pursue charges and refused to speak with police.

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Some students, including leaders of the school’s Black Students Union, have criticized school leaders for a lack of action and transparency regarding what they have called a hate crime. The school’s swim team has credited team captains with reporting the incident to school officials once they learned about it.

The college has said the swim team member who allegedly used a box-cutter to etch the N-word onto the chest of another student is no longer a student at the school. Leaders haven’t said whether that student, who is white, was expelled or left voluntarily. The family of the alleged victim, who is Black, earlier said the school removed him from the swim team.

In their statements, the family, college, and swim team haven’t mentioned the involvement of any other students.

Harris, the former prosecutor, said crime victims don’t always report crimes to police. But he said that’s most common with — for example — domestic situations, in which a victim lives with a perpetrator and is afraid to talk about what happened, for fear of reprisal. But he said that concern seems unlikely in this case, given how public the family has been about what it says happened.

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