“It was a huge power imbalance of this grown man and his camera crew - and these 14- to 18 year-olds without their phones, just high school kids.” Students had to lock their phones in special pouches beforehand to prevent recordings.Ī spokesperson for the school said that about eight students came forward to ask questions. “He could tell we were nervous,” said one of the students we spoke with. Some students were equally put off by Chappelle. Sims said that person “couldn’t even entertain the idea of a conversation.” At one point, after a student left the assembly room, Chappelle singled her out by saying, “Of course she left early.” The two students who spoke to Playbook said they were afraid to speak up at the assembly because Chappelle often laughed at students’ questions or responded with jokes. If anything, Dave is putting the school on the map.” Chappelle has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Duke Ellington and brought A-list celebrities such as BRADLEY COOPER and CHRIS TUCKER to its campus. Sims, the Chappelle spokesperson, responded: “They are complaining that he talked and said the n-word. What kind of judgment is the school showing to allow that?” … He was being dead serious and using the n-word on the record. The father of one of the students, who also declined to speak publicly to protect the identity of his daughter, said, “As a parent, I have to say I have a real problem. ONE DISTURBED PARENT: The two students we spoke to declined to go on the record out of fear of retribution from the school. The students recalled that another student in the audience shouted at him, “Your comedy kills,” and Chappelle shot back, “N- are killed every day.” He then asked, “The media’s not here, right?” I’m sure you’ll be household names soon.” In response to another antagonistic question, Chappelle roughly told the student body of artists: “I’m better than every instrumentalist, artist, no matter what art you do in this school, right now, I’m better than all of you. NO APOLOGIES: Chappelle responded, as recalled the next day by the students, “My friend, with all due respect, I don’t believe you could make one of the decisions I have to make on a given day.” That peeved some students who were hoping for an apology or some semblance of one from Chappelle. The comments were confirmed by Chappelle’s spokesperson CARLA SIMS. Some 580 students packed into an auditorium to hear their school’s most famous alumnus discuss the uproar triggered by his Netflix special “The Closer.” With a camera crew in tow, Chappelle took the stage to a raucous reception of cheers and some boos - and the hourlong session went south from there, we’re told.ĭuring a Q&A session, one student stepped to the mic and called Chappelle a “bigot,” adding, “I’m 16 and I think you’re childish, you handled it like a child,” according to two students present. The fowl’s owner, McGraw noted among many other funny observations, was “in Boarding Group A, which is called, ironically, the early-bird check-in.”Ī NOT-SO WELCOME HOMECOMING - DAVE CHAPPELLE made a surprise stop by D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts on Tuesday in the latest chapter of the running saga with his alma mater.īut if the self-proclaimed GOAT hoped to smooth things over amid the backlash over his jokes about transgender people, he was in for a surprise of his own. READ OF THE DAY - WaPo’s account of our own Meridith McGraw’s retelling via Twitter of one dead turkey’s journey on a Southwest flight from DCA to Austin: through scanning at TSA, into an overhead bin and, 3 hours and 24 minutes later, on to someone’s home in Texas. | Sean Rayford/Getty Images DRIVING THE DAY Dave Chappelle made a surprise stop by D.C.’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts on Tuesday in the latest chapter of the running saga with his alma mater.