A student’s violent arrest was captured on video by a classmate at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina on October 26. The video went viral, sparking widespread outrage around the country.

According to CNN the 16 year old student would not participate in her math class, and she was allegedly asked by her teacher to give him her cell phone and she refused. The teacher proceeded to call the principal, who then called one of the School Resource Officers (SRO), Deputy Ben Fields, after she refused to leave the classroom. From that point on, everything went downhill.

The video begins with SRO Fields asking the student to get up. When she doesn’t comply, the situation quickly gets aggressive.

Fields puts his arm around the student’s neck and pulls her back. The desk, which is connected to a chair as one unit, crashes over and the student is yanked out of her seat and dragged across the floor by the officer.

Junior Francisco Flores was surprised when he watched the video.

“It was shocking,” Flores said. “To pull her backwards while still in that desk was very dangerous. When it further escalated to physically throwing her…unbelievable.”

Senior Sharon Nunoo was also outraged at the situation. She feels that the role of an SRO is to protect everyone in the school and keep things in order.

“Nothing gave the SRO the right to do that,” Nunoo said. “No matter how disrespectful the student was being she did not deserve to be treated like that.”

I sought out the perspective of our own SROs here at Free State, but they were hesitant and declined to comment on the subject.

The girl, whose name remained anonymous, was charged with ‘disturbing schools’, and released to the custody of her parents, according to WLTX 19 News. Niya Kenny, 18, was another female student that was faced the same charge. Kenny said she was standing up for her classmate.

Students were not the only ones shocked by the video. English teacher Carol Spring was disturbed by the adult that stood at the front of the classroom and quietly watched it go down.

“What bothered me was the adult just standing there,” Spring said. “I don’t know if he was a teacher or administrator, but he did nothing.”

Spring understands the frustration that come from students who will not comply, but she believes the situation was taken too far.

“The teacher in me understands the frustration of students who will not comply. The teacher in me also fully recognizes that there are procedures for dealing with such students,” Spring said.“To pull her backwards while still in that desk was very dangerous. When it further escalated to physically throwing her…unbelievable.”

Because of the recent negative occurrences of white authority figures and the black population, underlying questions attached to this incident arose due to the officer being white and the student being black. Was this a race issue? Are black students disproportionately punished?

Black students are at times stereotyped as being aggressive, disrespectful, and not willing to abide by the rules, therefore, authority figures in schools tend to view them this way.

“I want to say it wasn’t [race based], but experience in the St. Louis schools plus that of my own mixed-race children tells me otherwise,” Spring said.

Although the student held responsibility for not complying to the requests of school officials, the SRO did not take the correct procedures to handle the situation.

“If she refused to go out into the hall, having everyone get out the classroom and talking to her calmly would have been better,” Nunoo said.

Deputy Fields was initially suspended without pay, and eventually fired, but many believe he should have been punished further for his outrageous actions.

“In my opinion, the SRO should be fired and charged with assault,” Spring said.