Missouri High School Under Scrutiny After Afghan Refugee’s Suicide on Campus

Emails among faculty members at a Missouri high school where a 14-year-old Afghan refugee took his life in early May paint a picture of a system failure.

Rezwan Kohistani was placed at Webb City High School in January 2022, after he and his family narrowly escaped the horrors of Kabul last October. His family was part of a group of 50 refugees placed in and around Joplin, Missouri, but Kohistani was the only one placed at the 1,300-student high school. His three younger siblings were also placed in the district.

On May 5, Kohistani’s body was found under bleachers at the school. He had been skipping school, failing exams, and had only rudimentary English language skills. On several occasions, he was reprimanded for text messages streaming into his cellphone during class, despite the device being the only method available to him to translate English to Dari.

A March 18 email seen by the Kansas City Star was optimistic. “The Kohistani family seems to be adjusting well,” a teacher wrote, according to the records obtained by the paper. “Teachers staff and other students seem to love them.” A few weeks later, another teacher said she thought Rezwan’s English was improving. “He is in survival mode, but he seems to be very grateful to be here,” she wrote.

But something went drastically wrong between March and May, when he took his life. Several families in the area said he might have been bullied due to his Muslim faith. The Missouri chapter and national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has called for a full investigation into what the civil-rights watchdog refers to as “the pattern of anti-Muslim and racist bullying to which he [Kohistani] had allegedly been subjected.”

Things apparently started to go bad for the teenager in early spring. The school started sending emails to the family in English, and it is unclear whether they were able to have them translated. One teacher noted in Kohistani’s file that he seemed tired midway through the day. Another teacher wrote that it may be due to the fact that in Afghanistan, students did not attend school for the full day. Still, no one reached out to see if that was the problem that was leading to his increasing absences, according to the Kansas City Star.

There was also a clear lack of community integration, according to CAIR, which says it had met the family, who had expressed interest in moving from Missouri to Texas. But when the group contacted the school to see if it could help foster a transfer of Kohistani’s credits, it was already too late. One teacher wrote in the file that his absences and missed assignments made it impossible to transfer any credits to any other school.

When asked by the Star, Webb City Superintendent Tony Rossetti accepted the school’s responsibilities, especially the language barrier. The school uses a robocall system to notify parents that an email has been sent to them about their child. “It’s sent out in English,” Rossetti told the Star. “So if they got the message, they would have to be able to translate that.”

New information shows that the four Kohistani children who were placed in the school were given little support at all. The school did reach out to the NGO RAISE, which helps with refugee transitions, but it took three weeks for the group to respond. By then, the school enrollment specialist Madeline Bridgford was too bogged down with other work, she wrote in an email. “I’m only part time and it’s actually insane how just an incredible amount of things need attention every day!!” she wrote the Webb City school when asking what grades the Kohistani children were placed in. Neither RAISE or the Webb City High School had the capacity to read or translate the paperwork from Afghanistan, which led to much of the confusion.

The Kohistani family said they never spoke to Bridgford in person.

The high school is now undergoing an evaluation of how it handled the refugee family—who have since moved to Texas. “This still happened on our watch, on our time,” Rossetti told the Star. “To the extent of what role Webb City High School played in his life or didn’t is unknown to us at this point.”

If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741

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