Principal Dan Donovan has asked the student body to take the high road in reacting to an incident at last week’s varsity football game at Wilton High School.

Donovan, on Friday, Nov. 18, during his morning address to the student body reported that some Wilton students had chanted from the stands, “Build a wall.”

As Donovan said, this is a chant that became popular after president-elect Donald Trump’s promised to “build a wall” on the border with Mexico.

The chant, yelled by Trump and his supporters at his rallies, became what many viewed as a racist mantra to keep people of color out of the United States. He maintains the building of such a wall will help secure the country’s southern border from undesirables such as criminals and terrorists.

Donovan told the student body that he had been in contact with the Wilton administration and is satisfied it is handling the situation. The students have been identified and spoken with. As Principal Robert O’Donnell told Wilton news outlets, he’s using the incident as a “teachable moment.”

Others, however, including Mayor Mark Boughton, have demanded an apology from those students. He wrote a letter to the Wilton administration that said a teachable moment is fine, but is meaningful only if the students spouting the chant do the apologizing.

He said in his letter, ““My office has received several calls as well as notifications through social media describing the pain those comments have caused.”

Instead, Donovan said he received a letter of apology from the Wilton High School student body imploring the DHS student body not to believe the insensitive actions of a few are a reflection of the Wilton campus as a whole.

Hatters’ reaction to the incident and the apology was mixed.

Sophomore Diomar Ruiz said, “What they said and did was very small minded of them. I also do not accept the apology that was made to our school.”

DHS has a student population of about 3,000, and many of those students are minorities and immigrants. Donovan noted that the school has the 3^rd largest minority population in the state.

Sophomore Michael McKenzie pointed that out, too. “It was very offensive of them to do what they did knowing the amount of Hispanics who attend DHS.”

Senior Jay Danzy said the incident “really shows the ignorance in our society and that there are a lot of steps that we need to take as a nation to becoming one.”

Danzy said he appreciated Wilton’s “attempt” to apologize, noting that actions speak louder than words.

Donovan said the campus can react one of two ways: stoop to the level of the students’ offending remarks, or try to work with Wilton and its administration’s attempts to do a better job at teaching tolerance. Donovan said he wants the student body to join him in the second approach.

“Maybe by working with them – they are still our neighbors – will help them become more culturally aware,” Danzy said.

Editor’s note: Staff Writers Raquel Uchoa, Helena Trofa, Meghan Edwards, Abby Martinez and Katie Walsh contributed to this report.