Student Allegedly Handed Paper Containing Swastika to Another Student in VA Middle School

A student allegedly gave a sheet of paper with a swastika drawn on it to another student on Jan. 28 at a middle school in Arlington, Va.

The Washington Post reported that Thomas Jefferson Middle School Principal Keisha Boggan wrote a letter to parents explaining that the incident was unacceptable and that the school met with the students and their families.

“The staff at [Thomas Jefferson Middle School] strives to create a welcoming environment,” Boggan wrote. “To that end, we are stressing that if our students, staff and families hear or see something . . . they say something immediately.”

The police are investigating the incident.

Other recent swastika sightings at schools in the Washington, D.C., area included a swastika drawn with a pencil on a desk in Silver Creek Middle School in Maryland in November as well as a swastika in a boy’s bathroom at the same middle school in May.

In March, swastikas in student usernames appeared on a projector during an interactive student assembly at Sidwell Friends School in Washington, D.C. It was the third time a swastika incident had occurred at the exclusive school, whose alumni include standout members of the arts, science and government communities as well as the children of at least five presidents, in the span of a few months.

“There is something out in the atmosphere today that seems to be enabling hate, hate symbols, slurs,” Anti-Defamation League Washington, D.C., Regional Director Doron Ezickson told WUSA 9 at the time.