NJ School District Hit With 6th Swastika Incident In 5 Months

Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A school district in New Jersey has been hit with its sixth incident of anti-Semitic and racist graffiti since November.
A swastika was found a week ago in the sixth-floor girls bathroom at Lawton C. Johnson Summit Middle School in Summit, a Central Jersey suburb of some 21,000 about 25 miles west of New York City.
The six reported incidents involve swastikas at the middle school and Summit High School.
“We did go one month without, but I’m sad that I have to report this,” Superintendent of Schools June Chang said last week in his monthly remarks at the Summit Board of Education meeting, the TAPinto local news website reported.
The district has been providing ongoing educational programming about hate speech, according to TAPinto.
The Anti-Defamation League in a statement called the incidents “a sad reminder of an observable trend that the ADL has been tracking in New Jersey over the past two quarters.”
Did you know that only 2% of Forward readers donate to support our nonprofit newsroom? That 2% make it possible for millions to read the Forward without a paywall or subscription — removing any barriers to the full and fair Jewish story.
But while the Forward is free to read, it isn’t free to produce. Big stories — like deep dives into the antisemitism data, political scoops or reporting trips to college campuses — take months of research and fact-checking. All while we keep you informed of what you need to know each day.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Forward Publisher & CEO
