Natalia Martinez, a freshman on Georgia State women’s soccer, has been suspended from the university’s team after using the N-word on social media on Friday, January 19, 2018. Her name no longer appears on the team’s roster.
According to reports, Martinez posted a photo on Instagram with the captions “I passed N***ers”. Specifically, the post was posted on Martinez’s “Finsta”, a “fake Instagram” account that has become popular amongst millennials.
A petition has appeared online calling for Martinez, a freshman defender from Florida, to be expelled.
via iPetitions:
On 01/19/2018, Natalia Gomez, a member of the Georgia State University Soccer Team, posted racial slurs towards other black students calling them “niggers”. As a result, Natalia was only temporarily suspended from the GSU athletics soccer team. As a progressive, diverse university, we GSU students feel like this sort of behavior should not be tolerated and that Natalia should be expelled from the university.
Georgia State’s mission statement states that we “provide an outstanding education and exceptional support for students from all backgrounds”, and these Panther values are not concurrent with the very disturbing statements made publicly by the GSU freshman and soccer player. Please support our effort in keeping our university a positive, hate-free environment by signing this petition to have Natalia Gomez expelled from Georgia State University
Georgia State University released a statement on Twitter about Martinez:
“Georgia State Athletics is aware of an incident on social media involving one of our student-athlete code on Friday.
We do not tolerate the language the student used in her post. Pursuant to our student-athlete code of conduct, she has been suspended from the soccer team.”
https://twitter.com/GSUPanthers/status/954746260006850560
Patch reports that Martinez played four games for the Georgia State Panthers in 2017, is a native of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and played high school soccer in Weston, Florida. At the time of this writing, the petition to have Martinez expelled has over 500 signatures.
Martinez’s suspension comes a week after University of Alabama student and Alpha Phi sorority sister Harley Barber was expelled for her racist social media posts.
