A Nashville family is speaking out after a freshman at Antioch High School was expelled following what they say was nothing more than reporting a potential gun threat on campus. Lilith Pipkin, a first-year student, says she overheard other girls talking about a weapon in the school bathroom and reported it immediately. Instead of being treated as someone who did the right thing, her father Chris Pipkin says the school turned on her.
“I keep thinking someone, one day, is going to run a background check and see she was expelled for some terroristic threat,” Chris Pipkin said. “It’s just horrible.”
The situation started on January 14, when Pipkin got a call from Antioch High saying his daughter was in trouble over a note. He assumed it would be cleared up quickly.
It wasn’t.
Lilith said she was changing in the bathroom before JROTC physical training when she overheard a group of girls talking about having a gun and telling a friend to leave school at 1:30. When she walked out of the stall, there was a handwritten note sitting on the counter that read: “I have a gun. leave at 1:30. don’t tell anyone.”
Lilith said she immediately reported both the overheard conversation and the note to a hall monitor and her JROTC captain, who then contacted the school resource officer. What followed was anything but the response she expected.
“They searched me, searched my backpack, and then they brought me down to the principal’s room, and she started screaming at me, like, ‘You’re going to get expelled. You’re going to get arrested,’” Lilith said.
Chris Pipkin said officers at the school told him directly that they did not believe his daughter was a threat. The Metro Nashville Police Department later confirmed that the Davidson County District Attorney’s Office, after being briefed by their Security Threat Team, declined to prosecute the case.
Despite that, the expulsion stood.
Pipkin appealed the decision in February, but after one hearing, nothing has changed. He worries the consequences stretch far beyond his daughter’s academic record.
“Now, anybody who knows her is going to feel scared, or they’re not going to want to ever report anything they see,” he said. He also expressed concern about the alternative school environment Lilith would be placed in alongside students with drug and violence charges.
Lilith, for her part, is clear about where she stands.
“I feel like I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
Her father is now exploring legal options and says hiring an attorney is likely the next step in fighting to clear his daughter’s name.