AFTER A SWASTIKA APPEARED IN A SCHOOL CHAT: HOW SHOULD HWRHS RESPOND TO HATE?

Last February, students in a Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School homeroom group chat opened their phones to a disturbing image: a tenth-grader’s selfie altered with a red swastika on his forehead and a black bar beneath his nose meant to resemble Adolf Hitler. Two students later transferred out of their homeroom.

For the students who saw it, the image was more than an offensive joke. It raised a larger question among students, school leaders, and antisemitism experts: When hate appears in a school community, what responsibility does a school have to respond publicly?

"It seemed like no one even acknowledged the image, as if it didn't matter that someone would post Nazi imagery to a public forum," said Nicolas Szekely, an 11th-grader who was in the homeroom. "I felt uncomfortable enough to transfer out of the homeroom entirely. Even if it's a joke, it's not remotely funny."

Szekely is one of two students who requested and received homeroom changes after the incident.

"I was pretty shocked," another 11th-grader from the homeroom, who asked to remain anonymous, told H-W News. "It made me pretty uncomfortable. I switched homerooms a bit after."

The group chat incident was not isolated.

A 12th-grader, who also requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said she has heard students joke to her Jewish friends about "killing the Jews" by gassing them.

"These comments are so prevalent," she said.

Another senior said he has seen students perform Nazi salutes behind teachers' backs and once during a dodgeball game.

While students described antisemitic behavior inside the school, educators and Jewish community leaders said those incidents reflect a broader trend extending far beyond Hamilton-Wenham.

Addressing Bias in Schools

Hamilton-Wenham Regional School District requires staff members to report incidents of antisemitism to school administrators, who then investigate and respond, Superintendent Eric Tracy said. The reporting process follows Massachusetts law, which requires pubic schools to take action when bias incidents are reported.

Principal Bryan Menegoni said he investigated two antisemitic incidents during the past school year but declined to discuss details because of student confidentiality laws. He said schools determine how much information to share publicly based in part on how widely an incident affected the community.

"If you walk into the bathroom and see something written on the wall, maybe you're the only one who saw it," Menegoni said. "But if it happened publicly and a lot of students [saw] it and were impacted, that's going to affect how much communication happens and when exactly."

Because only a limited number of students viewed the group chat image, Menegoni said the incident did not warrant a letter home to families.

Sara Colb, deputy director of the Anti-Defamation League of New England, called that decision a "hugely missed opportunity." She said schools should communicate with families after incidents like this, explaining that doing so reinforces community values and demonstrates that antisemitism will not be tolerated. Rather than issuing a general statement condemning hate, she argued, administrators should explicitly identify antisemitism when it occurs.

"If it was an antisemitic incident," she said, "call it an antisemitic incident."

A National Trend

The incident at HWRHS reflects a broader concern about the normalization of antisemitism among young people.

"We're seeing a really frightening normalization of hate symbols like the swastika," she said.

Educators at HWRHS said they have seen the same concern reflected in classrooms.

"I could see a student drawing a swastika without knowing its significance," history curriculum coordinator Kristen Borges said. "That's why it's important for us to make sure that we know the history behind those kinds of messages."

History teacher Johann Knets said understanding the Holocaust requires more than studying its atrocities. Students must also understand how prejudice becomes accepted long before violence begins.

National data suggests incidents like those reported by HWRHS students are becoming increasingly common.

According to the U.S. Department of Education, antisemitic incidents in K–12 schools increased by 135% between 2022 and 2023. ADL New England documented a 213% increase in school-based antisemitic incidents between 2022 and 2024.

The impact extends into classrooms.

An October 2024 ADL New England survey found that more than one-third of parents said their children had witnessed or experienced antisemitism in school, while 71% of Jewish parents reported their child had personally experienced antisemitism.

The Online Influence

Educators and community leaders said much of the rhetoric students encounter now reaches them long before they enter a classroom.

Rabbi Alison Adler of Temple B’nai Abraham in Beverly said members of the Jewish community have described feeling increasingly isolated because of what they see on social media, including posts that hold Jewish people collectively responsible for events overseas.

Borges said that same online environment is shaping what students bring into school.

She recalled an incident in which a teacher privately spoke with a student after the student repeated an "extreme right-wing conspiracy theory."

Students today, Borges said, are exposed to far more hate speech and misinformation online than previous generations.

"Oftentimes there's no guardrails, and sometimes a lack of those guardrails is promoted under the First Amendment," Borges said. "So when people consume some of this information, they might take it at face value and then feel the need to repeat and repost without really thinking it through. That's why we need to reinforce the importance of media and digital literacy—so when students encounter information like that, they're able to challenge it, critique it, rather than just take it for face value."

She also pointed to the influence of public figures with large online platforms, like Ye (formerly Kanye West), whose antisemitic statements and rhetoric have contributed to broader discussions about how hate can spread online.

History teacher Nicholas Ristaino said teenagers are especially susceptible to provocative online personalities because many are drawn to content designed to shock.

Colb said schools cannot control what students encounter outside the classroom, but they can control how they respond once those ideas appear inside it.

"Schools have limited control over what students do outside of school—what they see and absorb—[but] control they must," Colb said. "That means making sure that within the school day, and within this school context, issues of antisemitism, when they bubble up, are handled properly."

Preventing the Next Incident

For school leaders, responding after an incident is only part of the challenge. The larger question is how to prevent similar incidents from happening in the first place.

Superintendent Eric Tracy said HWRHS reviews curriculum and instructional materials to ensure they are free from simplistic generalizations or bias. Teachers also receive annual anti-bias training addressing federal civil rights protections, although Tracy noted that training is not specifically focused on antisemitism.

Educators interviewed for this story agreed that prevention begins long before a disciplinary incident occurs.

“It’s important that we learn about our history, because an important part of learning history is learning how to treat each other with respect and humanity,” Principal Bryan Menegoni said. “I don’t think you can just start in grade nine doing that.”

At HWRHS, formal Holocaust education begins in junior-year history classes, where students read Elie Wiesel’s Night and study the rise of totalitarianism.

“The Holocaust doesn’t just happen—it’s the culmination of a decade and a half of laying the groundwork ... this constant, incessant message to demonize, belittle, and condone harassment and violence until those things become normalized over time,” Knets said.

For Adler, education must extend beyond historical events to address the everyday ways prejudice appears.

“Sometimes kids think it’s funny to tell a Holocaust joke, and they don’t always understand that it’s actually not funny and is incredibly hurtful,” Adler said. “Just like … if a kid dressed up as a Ku Klux Klan person and thought that was funny—and how that would affect the Black kids in the school—this is the same. How would that be handled?”

More Than Intent

The central disagreement among those interviewed was not whether the image was wrong, but how schools should respond after incidents occur.

Menegoni cautioned against allowing a single incident to define the students involved.

“Be mindful of the fact that these are classmates that did something really stupid,” Menegoni said. “They’ve been dealt with.”

But Colb said that focusing on intent can sometimes overshadow the impact on students who experience the harm.

“We cannot ignore the problem or downplay it and think that it is going to go away,” Colb said. “It has to be highlighted, and then school leaders have to use that as a moment to educate all.”

She said schools must be careful not to focus only on whether students intended to cause harm.

“Unfortunately, many times when it is the Jewish community that is the target … people talk more about intent than impact, and that’s a problem,” Colb said.

Although Menegoni and Colb disagree on how publicly schools should respond, both emphasized the importance of creating a culture where students feel respected and supported.

“I think trying to keep things positive is really important,” Menegoni said. “You can tell people all day long, don’t do this, don’t do that, but if you don’t talk about what you are supposed to do, I don’t know if you work towards [the desired goal].”

What Message Does a School Send?

Earlier this fall, HWRHS held school climate meetings during homeroom in which students discussed kindness, respect, inclusion, and ways to support classmates who feel excluded.

Although the discussions were prompted in part by what one homeroom teacher described as “bias-related incidents last year,” they did not specifically mention antisemitism.

For Colb, that distinction matters.

When antisemitic incidents occur, she said, school leaders should identify them directly rather than referring only to bias or hate in general.

“It’s really important to identify the community that was hurt and to lift up that community,” Colb said. “You cannot sweep antisemitism under the rug and miss the opportunity to teach and to hopefully prevent that type of incident from happening.”

For students like Nicolas Szekely, however, the issue is not only about language or policy.

A single image was enough to make him leave his homeroom.

Months after the group chat incident, school leaders and antisemitism experts continue to disagree about what the appropriate response should have been. Administrators emphasize accountability, empathy, and moving forward. Experts argue that schools must also acknowledge antisemitism directly when it occurs.

The question is not only how schools respond to the students responsible, but what message they send to every student who saw the image—and every student who wondered whether anyone would respond.

After a Swastika Appeared in a School Chat: How Should HWRHS Respond to Hate?