The administration sent an email to students and parents regarding swastikas drawn on school property on April 24. Swastikas were found on a desk and a wall, according to the email. Head of Upper School Beth Slattery said the process for responding to hate crimes on campus starts with investigating the perpetrators and the severity of the incident.
“We’ll usually find out about [incidents] through the community concern reporter,” Slattery said. “First, there’s an investigation where you talk to all the parties involved and you determine whether it’s an honor board situation or whether it needs to be a mediated conversation, depending on how people are involved in it. If there’s either a micro or macro aggression against somebody, that tends to [prompt] more of a one-on-one conversation.”
However, Slattery said the traditional disciplinary process can fall short with incidents like the most recently drawn swastikas because it is difficult to identify the perpetrator.
“One of the challenges that we have with something like the swastikas is that unless you have a camera or a witness, it’s nearly impossible to determine who did something like that,” Slattery said. “When we do the investigation, most of it involves figuring out whether we have a camera in proximity, but since we don’t have cameras in classrooms, we interview everybody who’s involved to establish a timeline of when something appeared.”
Assistant Head of School for Community and Belonging Janine Jones said the school tends to avoid assemblies after serious incidents to minimize harm and confusion.
“The recommendation of somebody who works at the school is not to have assemblies after things like this happen,” Jones said. “We also have had suicides here at our school, and so the philosophy is that you don’t hold assemblies after these major things happen because [the administration] is worried about copycat situations and people not understanding why something like this is so problematic.”
Upper School Coordinator of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Reb Limerick said the disciplinary process for race-based offenses includes attending an educational book club, which aims to foster accountability.
“The restorative process is about education for the person who said a word or drew an image that is racist,” Limerick said. “We have brought them in for book clubs, where they’ll have to read about the history of the word they said or the image that they drew. The whole process is about digging deep around the harm that was enacted and trying to educate that student so that they no longer use that word or draw that image and understand the weight behind it. Hopefully, they don’t just feel shame or guilt, but actually feel a responsibility towards being an advocate in that space.”
Limerick said she emailed both the students who were directly affected by the drawings and Jewish Club leaders on campus.
“I’ve reached out to the students who found it and were directly affected and let them know that I was sorry that they had to encounter this type of hate and that I was there for them if they wanted to talk or if they wanted to take action,” Limerick said. “[I also reached out] to the Jewish club leaders. Ultimately, that image, although probably carrying most weight for the Jewish community, does carry negative weight for anyone who is affected by fascism or those other groups who are targeted by the Nazis.”
Instances of antisemitic markings have occurred in the past. For example, the words “Hitler Rocks” were found engraved into a desk in October 2022. Moreover, President Rick Commons wrote in a school-wide email informing families of swastikas scratched on school desks and a whiteboard in January 2023. Three hate speech cases for antisemitism were reported by Prefect Council in November 2025.
Jones said the administration created a committee to examine the school’s curriculum and determine where they could bolster anti-Semitism and Holocaust education after prior anti-Semitic incidents.
“We try not to be reactive,” Jones said. “When Mrs. Ross, Mr. Engelberg and I had the first swastikas of our career here at the school, we created an anti-Semitism curriculum working group. That group looked at our curriculum from 7th to 12th grade [and did] an audit to see where anti-Semitism is taught or not taught in our curriculum. Then, we found places for [it in] our history classes, primarily.”
Slattery said Holocaust education was standardized as a result of the committee and its findings.
“We wanted to make sure that coverage of the Holocaust was standardized across our 10th grade history course because we discovered that some teachers were covering it as a whole unit and other people were covering it for a day, and so there was a discrepancy,” Slattery said.
Mattea Pisani ’27 said she encountered standardized Holocaust education in her sophomore year.
“I learned about the Holocaust in 10th grade, and from what I know, all my friends did as well,” Pisani said. “It was a very impactful experience.”
However, Mina* said she believes anti-Semitism is not addressed thoroughly enough in the 11th grade history curriculum.
“I definitely have not observed any curriculum changes,” Mina said. “If anything, within my history class, there’s an assumption that we’ve already learned about the history of anti-Semitism, as well as the Holocaust in 10th grade. As a result, we barely spend any time learning about it, which is concerning to me because of the wider implications related to Jewish identity in America. Additionally, I think there’s an underrepresentation of the history of anti-Semitism and of how Jewish people were viewed in America, particularly compared to the depth of coverage given to other historically marginalized groups.”
Slattery said the disciplinary process for graffiti has yielded limited results.
“In my experiences with hate speech graffiti, we’ve never had success in really identifying [anyone],” Slattery said. “There was one a couple of years ago where we thought that we knew who it was, but there was no way to prove it. Most people are not going to let you get away with punishing them for something that you can’t prove, so it’s frustrating on our end.”
Anti-Semitic incidents increased nearly five times in frequency in 2025 than levels tracked a decade ago, according to an audit conducted by the Anti-Defamation League. Limerick said campus tensions have worsened since Oct. 7th, affecting Jewish, Muslim and Middle Eastern students.
“There were instances of anti-Semitism before, but it definitely feels like, since October 7th, nationally, and on our campus, there is more anti-Semitism,” Limerick said. “There’s also more Islamophobia, so Middle Eastern, Jewish and Palestinian students are all experiencing more hate.”
Jones said the upsetting rise in hate requires the school to respond by educating students and discouraging such behavior.
“I really do see an increase in [hate] and I don’t know why,” Jones said. “It’s so disheartening. It’s incumbent upon us to do better and to continue to educate and hold people accountable, and also explain to people how hurtful hate speech and acts of hate are and how damaging they can be.”
*Names have been changed.k
