Reference to Ku Klux Klan causes stir at Centennial graduation

By Emily Richmond

Wednesday, June 21, 2006 | 7:16 a.m.

Relaxing in his seat at the Thomas & Mack Center, Dino Rhoades kept one eye on the captions displayed on the giant video screen and the other on the stage where his nephew would soon collect his Centennial High School diploma.

Rhoades, who works in technical support for a court reporting agency, was enjoying something of a busman's holiday - reading the captions to judge the accuracy and speed of the technician operating the stenographer's machine.

When the words "ku klux klan" scrolled on the jumbo video screen, Rhoades wondered whether he had somehow misread the text.

"I was sort of in shock," Rhoades said. "I was wondering why anyone would write that in the middle of graduation."

So are UNLV police, who are trying to sort out just what happened during the June 13 ceremony at the Thomas & Mack Center.

And so is Shawn McCusker, office manager for Captions Unlimited, who said Tuesday that "nothing like this has ever happened before."

The Reno-based firm has a contract with the Clark County School District to provide captioning services at 27 commencement ceremonies this spring at a cost of $10,513. Real-time captioning services are provided by an individual who uses a stenographer's machine connected to a computer software program. The transcribed spoken remarks then scroll across a public display screen.

McCusker declined to identify which company employee was working the day of the Centennial commencement or whether that person left the machine unattended at any time during the ceremony.

McCusker said "certain key strokes will mean certain things something as simple as someone clicking on a key can trigger a word from the (software's) dictionary - it could be something typed during a previous job, an abbreviation. We're looking into safeguards to make sure nothing like this happens again."

Lauren Kohut-Rost, acting chief academic officer for the School District, said she saw a video of the Centennial ceremony and the offending words were visible.

"It was appalling," she said. "The matter needs to be thoroughly investigated, and we absolutely want to discover what occurred and why."

Kohut-Rost refused to make the video available to the Sun.

UNLV Police Det. Preston Perrenot said he would look at the district's copy of the video today.

Early reports suggested that just the letters "KKK" had appeared on the screen, which seemed easier to accept as a typographical error, he said:

"We thought maybe the stenographer let her finger rest too long on the button, but to have it spelled out is a different situation entirely. Those aren't words you can confuse with other words."

It is unclear what, if any, crime may have been committed, Perrenot said.

"We would have to do some research - nothing comes up and hits me right in the head," he said.

Margie Carlson, a Las Vegas court reporter with 38 years' experience, said embarrassing mistakes come with the job.

"You can write 'occupancy,' and it comes up 'OK you pansy,' " Carlson said with a laugh.

With court reporting, however, there's time to correct the transcript before submitting it - a luxury real-time captioning writers don't have.

It's not unreasonable, Carlson said, that the offending words at Centennial's commencement showed up on the screen by mistake:

"It just means the person has the phrase in their dictionary - it's not something in mine because it's never come up in a deposition."

At the Adult Education graduation at Thomas & Mack later in the week, School Board Vice President Sheila Moulton was describing Winston Churchill's recovery from a "severe case of pneumonia" as part of an inspirational story about the value of education.

But the words "severe case of ninjas" appeared on the Thomas & Mack video screen, much to the amusement of audience members who caught the typo. Captions Unlimited's McCusker would not say whether the same employee worked both events.

Carla Steinforth, superintendent of the district's northwest region that includes Centennial, said she had received no complaints from audience members regarding the captioning incident. Steinforth was on stage at the time, shaking hands with graduates.

"It's disturbing, but the feeling is that this wasn't anything associated with Centennial or a School District employee," she said.

Some Centennial parents said the appearance of the offensive language was upsetting given the school's connection to the "311 Boyz."

The gang of white teenagers gained national notoriety in 2003 after they were seen on videotapes beating people and committing violent acts in their affluent neighborhoods surrounding the northwest Las Vegas campus.

Several alleged gang members were current or former Centennial students. Four young men were sentenced to jail and two others to house arrest and probation for an attack that left a teenager permanently disfigured.

Police say the "311" moniker referred to three repetitions of the 11th letter of the alphabet - KKK - and that the name was chosen for its intimidation factor and not because the gang's crimes were racially motivated.

One Centennial parent, who asked not to be identified, called the graduation incident "outrageous" and found it difficult to believe that a phrase as volatile as "ku klux klan" was typed by accident.

"You go to graduation because it's a joyous event, not to see the Klan advertising their group," she said. "It put a real damper on the day."