A William Diamond Middle School custodian discovered graffiti of hateful speech and symbols that target Jewish and Black communities on a boys’ bathroom stall on the evening of Dec. 8.
“The graffiti included an antisemitic neo-nazi symbol and a racist anti-Black epithet, and it explicitly named me in a derogatory manner,” Diamond Principal Johnny Cole, who is gay and a person of color, wrote in a memo to Diamond families Wednesday.
The school and the Lexington Police Department denied LexObserver photos of the graffiti. LPD said this is a “juvenile matter” so they are “prohibited from releasing any information.”
One Diamond parent, who is Jewish (and wishes to remain anonymous to protect her children from backlash), told the Observer she and other parents she has spoken with are disturbed by the incident.
“It feels very close to home,” she said. “I want every kid to feel like they belong and to feel safe in school, and I want my kids to feel that way as well. And I know, initially, when this happened, my daughter felt very uncomfortable.”
Those parents are also unhappy with how Cole responded.
In response to the incident, Cole did what he said is normal protocol for an incident such as this: he notified Lexington Public Schools Superintendent Julie Hackett and LPD of the graffiti the night it was discovered; Hackett then notified the School Committee and Lexington’s Human Rights Committee; Diamond’s assistant principals Stefani Harvey and Jeremie Bateman conducted an investigation to figure out who was responsible for the graffiti; and the graffiti was photographed and removed.
Cole let parents know about the incident through an initial memo on Dec. 12.
The parent LexObserver spoke with said she wishes he reached out sooner than four days after the graffiti was discovered.
“A lot of rumors and things were circulating during that time,” she said. ‘It erodes trust and makes kids feel really uncomfortable.”
She wishes Cole specified that the graffiti was antisemitic in his first memo. In that note, he described the defacement as “some particularly heinous hate graffiti.”
“When something hateful happens, it’s important to name it specifically…because you can’t fix or address something unless you actually name it,” the parent argued. “There’s kind of an underlying discomfort in labeling something ‘antisemitic,’ but it is antisemitism, so let’s call it what it is.”
The parent also thinks Cole should have sent the memo out to the whole LPS district, not just Diamond parents.
In addition to sending out those two memos and following graffiti protocol, Cole held voluntary staff meetings for Diamond teachers and staff to learn how to support students who feel uncomfortable because of the graffiti. The school also has “affinity spaces,” which are gathering spots for students to meet with staff who share a common identities or backgrounds, to connect.
“Time away from community,” or suspension, is how schools traditionally deal with instances like this. Cole did not specify whether the responsible students were suspended because he is “bound by confidentiality and cannot share disciplinary records,” he said. He argued suspension isn’t always the most effective way for students to learn their lesson, however — being educated is.
“We live in a world that is incredibly scary right now, particularly for people who hold identities that are targeted by events like this or the events that are happening outside of Lexington. We want students to understand that they have contributed to that fear,” he said. “We want them to do the opposite of this — we want them to build a culture of unity and togetherness in this space, and suspensions and traditional disciplinary methods don’t typically do that.”
This isn’t the first graffiti incident Diamond has seen.
Soon after the war in Gaza began on Oct. 7, one student wrote “free Palestine” across a couple of walls inside the middle school. A few months later in January 2024, a student drew an Israeli flag and a Palestinian flag on a white board and drew an “X” over the Israeli flag.
“That was concerning to community members for sure,” Cole recalled. He was not the principal of the school during those incidents. He was the LPS’s director of equity and student support.
“It feels like a pattern,” the parent LexObserver spoke with said. “When you think of what just happened in Australia, things like that don’t happen out of a vacuum, right? If you allow a culture of hate to persist then it normalizes acts of violence against that hated group. I’m not saying that’s going to happen at Diamond, but there is a sense of normalizing some version of hate and that is dangerous.”
Microaggressions, which are things people say or do that convey subtle derogatory messages about groups, are frequent at Diamond and are often targeted at other marginalized groups, Cole said.
“We encounter hate language and social media posts pretty regularly toward various groups,” he said. “We very often have anti-Black language that we’re dealing with, anti-LGBT, especially anti-trans.”
Asked where he thinks this conviction to spread hate speech comes from, Cole said, “it comes from everything — antisemitism, anti-Black racism, transphobia, homophobia, are baked into so much of our world. Students are certainly learning it from social media, from peers, from adults in their lives, from some staff probably.”
Diamond leadership is working to help staff identify and eliminate their biases to be better role models for students.
The parent LexObserver spoke with wishes Cole took more immediate action to educate students about antisemitism after discovering the graffiti.
The Anti-Defamation League, a leading global anti-hate organization dedicated to stopping antisemitism, suggests educators hold sessions to teach students about the history of antisemitic language so they can reflect, grapple with what happened, and discuss how to move forward.
Cole finds assemblies in instances like this ineffective, though. He finds it more effective to weave lessons on hate speech into the middle school curriculum.
“We teach Jewish identity in English language arts and social studies, we teach about genocide which addresses the history of the Holocaust and the roots of antisemitism and the evolution of antisemitic tropes, we talked about human rights, we help students recognize how prejudice and hatred can impact societies when left unchecked, and we promote critical thinking, engaging students, and the use of primary and secondary sources to develop a nuanced understanding of these events,” Cole said.
Regardless, antisemitism persists.
One town over, Concord-Carlisle High School has been dealing with students persistently acting antisemitic.
The regional school district is being sued for allegedly doing little to dispel a pervasive atmosphere of antisemitism, including slurs and Nazi salutes, CBS News reported in August. At the beginning of the school year, CCHS officials told CBS they were investigating a report of swastikas being drawn during ninth-grade orientation.
The Associated Press has been tracking antisemitic incidents every year since 1979. Its 2024 audit came out in the spring and Massachusetts landed in the top-ten for most antisemitic incidents last year. Massachusetts ranks third in the country for antisemitic incidents on college campuses, with 107 total incidents, 89 percent of which were Israel-related.
During a student government meeting at Tufts University in March 2024, that included discussion of multiple anti-Israel resolutions, Jewish students were spat on and harassed, AP reported. They were jeered at for wearing the “Bring them home” dog tag necklaces meant to raise awareness of Israeli hostages held by Hamas, and were subjected to comments including, “Go back to Israel, we don’t want you here,” and “Israel controls the entire world.”
Antisemitism carries on across the world, too. On Saturday, there was a mass shooting at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, targeting Jews celebrating the first night of Hanukkah in a public park. And the war in Gaza has heightened division between Jews, Palestinians, and their supporters.
We would all like to think there isnt antisemitism in Lexington but clearly that isnt true. The student that wrote the graffiti could be learning to do that from social media but they may be learning it at home from their parents. The last two years have shown that while antisemitism may lay dormant, it still exists under the surface. Using Israel as an excuse is not acceptable and is a form of gaslighting Jews. I tend to agree with the parent in the article that more could have been done including letting all LPS parents know and immediately the next day. I also dont find that relying on the school curriculum is enough to educate students about hate. Hate should be addressed as soon as its exposed. Was the student who wrote the graffiti found and punished? And if so, how was he punished? Without knowing that it makes many of us feel that nothing was actually done to prevent this from happening again.
Both of my children were on the receiving end of antisemitic incidents in the Lexington public schools back in the 1990’s. There were no consequences for the perpetrators then, and it looks like there won’t be consequences now. Suspension and education are not mutually exclusive.