Tyvion Campbell eventually received her diploma, but not before she says she was escorted out of the auditorium.
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In a video that’s since gone viral on TikTok, Chicago Tech Academy student Tyvion Campbell is seen walking onto the stage at the Harold Washington Cultural Center during her graduation ceremony before she drops into a split. The video, which shows the moment from different angles, has racked up more than 835,000 views on TikTok.
Just one day after posting that video, Campbell returned to TikTok to claim she’d faced “discrimination” by the school when they did not hand over her diploma on that stage. In the follow-up video, which now has more than 2.3 million views, she claimed that she was scolded by school administrators for doing a split on stage.
“Now, a quick back story. I’ve been telling these people for weeks that I was gonna do a split on stage,” she claimed. “It was not a surprise. They just thought I was joking, and that’s the problem. Now, don’t think I’m joking, because I’m not.”
When she walked over to the person handing the graduates their diplomas, she said it was not handed to her.
“I honestly thought that they mixed up my name and didn’t have my name in the right order. I didn’t even think that she was purposely not trying to give me my diploma at first,” she continued.
After being directed to sit down without her diploma, she was then escorted out of the auditorium to meet with the dean and the principal, Zataya Shackelford.
“She was beyond angry. Like, livid. It was genuine tears in her eyes, and her mouth was shaking. She was really, really, really, really upset,” Campbell claimed of Shackelford. “And she’s like, you need to figure out a way how you’re gonna make up for this. Um, you’re not getting your diploma until you figure out a way how you’re gonna, um, make up for what you just did. And I’m like, wait, I have to figure that out, or do you have to figure that out?”
Campbell said the experience was “confusing” and she ultimately left the ceremony before it was over, unable to complete the tassel-turning portion of the ceremony as she was “really upset.”
“We did receive rules, but the rules had nothing to do with what you can and cannot do while you walk across the stage,” Campbell told Fox 32.
In a memo obtained by Fox 32 conveying rules to parents of graduates before the ceremony, Chicago Tech Academy warned parents not to bring helium balloons and instructed them on specific locations where they could park. Still, there were no memos about on-stage behavior.
In a video posted to TikTok on June 3, Campbell confirmed she had received her diploma from the school. The recent graduate is planning to attend Georgia State University in the fall, where she will study business administration.
PEOPLE reached out to Chicago Tech Academy for comment.
“I hope everyone stays true to themselves and never change for anybody,” she told the news outlet.
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