file photo by Boyd Loving
the staff of the Ridgewod blog
Ridgewood NJ, Several schools in Bergen and Union counties have recently been vandalized with graffiti containing hateful messages and symbols. In Bergen County, a student at Ridgewood High School alerted officials on December 4 of a swastika alongside a Star of David carved into a bathroom stall.
On November 30, swastikas and racial slurs were found on a bathroom wall at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale. That incident follows several others since September in which anti-Semitic and racist graffiti had been drawn at nearby Pascack Valley High School in Hillside. In Union County, students reported on November 30 that swastikas had been scrawled inside bathrooms at Summit High School.
The symbol and other offensive drawings had been discovered a day earlier on bathroom walls at Lawton C. Johnson Summit Middle School. Superintendent of Summit Public Schools June Chang told parents that swastikas were also seen at the middle school before the Thanksgiving holiday break.
On November 29, Edison Intermediate School Principal Matthew Bolton told families a student at the Westfield school “defaced school property with messages of hate directed at various groups.” Similar incidents in the area occurred over the past two months, as a swastika was drawn in a bathroom at Franklin Elementary School and misogynistic, racist, and anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered on exterior walls of Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School.
