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A Dallas high school valedictorian has claimed that administrators turned off her microphone while she spoke at graduation Sunday after she listed the names of black men and boys killed in a series of police shootings that sparked nationwide protests and criticism of how some police departments interact with minority communities.
Rooha Hagher told KXAS-TV that her principal at Emmett J. Conrad High School deleted some of the names from her speech during a review and told her that he didn't want the speech to be political.
Hagher felt the names -- Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and Michael Brown -- should remain in the speech and mentioned them anyway. She claimed her mic was muted immediately after she mentioned their names.
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"I never expected to be silenced,” Hagher told the news station. “The consequences I was expecting to face was them holding my diploma or having a conversation with my principal. I never expected them to not allow me to finish because at the end of the day, schools want to raise socially conscious students, students who are able to think for themselves. That's what I was doing."
In a video posted to her Twitter account, Hagher is seen standing at a lectern and mentioning the three teens before a man sitting behind her gives a signal to turn the mic off. She said the principal told her it was a "technical difficulty."
"I don't have any regrets," Hagher said. "And if it took me not being able to finish my speech, then so be it."
The teen, who immigrated to the United States with her family from Iran when she was 12, has been involved in social justice issues for several years. She plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin.
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In another tweet, Hagher said she did not mean to create divisiveness, but felt a conversation about the shootings and similar incidents needed to take place.
"We forget names and move on in three weeks," Hagher said.
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Neither Hagher, the school or Dallas Independent School District responded to Fox News' requests for comment Wednesday.
Rice, 12, and Brown, 18, were fatally shot in 2014 by police officers in Cleveland and Ferguson, Mo., respectively. Martin, 17, was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a Florida neighborhood watch volunteer, in February 2012.
The deaths of Rice, Brown and Martin have set off waves of protests, movements and conservations about gun control and the racial disparities in how police use force.
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