Students are calling for further action from the school district after multiple instances of racist and antisemitic graffiti were found in a bathroom at Belmont High School (BHS) days into the new school year.
“At Belmont, it’s not shocking that this would happen, but I think I was just like, ‘It’s five days into the school year, can we catch a break?’” said Mary Folorunso, a junior at BHS.
On Sept. 4, school officials received a report that a racial slur was carved into a bathroom stall. On Sept. 8, the district received another report that a swastika and a racial slur had been drawn on a bathroom wall.
“This report is deeply disturbing and unacceptable,” Superintendent Jill Geiser said at the Sept. 8 School Committee meeting. “This is a symbol of hate that absolutely has no place in our schools. The schools are a place where students, staff, and families need to be able to feel safe, and this type of symbol undermines that.”
According to High School Principal Isaac Taylor, the staff will work with Belmont police to conduct “a thorough and balanced investigation to hold the persons found responsible for this accountable for their actions and impact.”
“We have been working on building a positive school culture over the past several years and see these kinds of incidents as undermining that effort,” Taylor said. “We will continue to address this proactively through curriculum, community conversations, and classroom work, as well as respond to individual incidents by identifying those responsible and holding them accountable.”
For many students, however, the graffiti is another reminder of a pattern of racist, antisemitic, and homophobic language they say can be heard and used by students. Last school year, there were repeated instances of racial slurs graffitied in bathrooms, as well as a report of an antisemitic slur shouted after an assembly on antisemitism, according to a February newsletter from Taylor.
Folorunso, along with fellow juniors Ganza Masozera and David Klimasmith, began organizing student-led conversations around discrimination at the high school late last year. Folorunso said they were spurred to action after receiving an email from a fellow classmate detailing discriminatory language they overheard in recent months.
“I kind of took it upon myself to be like, ‘When will enough be enough?’” she said. “If admin is trying, but the students still aren’t feeling a change, when do we, as students, try to help ourselves?”
The initial conversation attracted about a dozen students, who shared experiences of discrimination and its impact.
However, the students said the conversation has not sparked the change they hoped for, something they attributed to the approaching end of the school year and what they felt was a lack of support from administration.
Now, the students said it’s more evident than ever that action is needed.
“I feel like we’re taking a kind of defensive approach to anti-racism,” Klimasmith said. “We’re waiting until something happens and then playing off of that instead of actually taking an active step.”
In an interview with The Voice, Taylor said district administration plans to go into classrooms Oct. 1 to address the incident with students.
“We’re going to hit every classroom with a clear message for students,” he said, adding that they have “robust” plans and materials.
Folorunso said she hopes to restart the organized conversations again after another report of graffiti. While conversations won’t solve anything overnight, the students said they hope they will kickstart action to combat discrimination.
“Obviously it’s nice to talk about this, but we don’t want to have to in a sense. We don’t want to have these circumstances,” Masozera said. “It’s really just a point of inspiration for a lot of these students, and just the growth in terms of awareness and inspiration for action is just exponential when you get those to happen.”
It wouldn’t be the first time students took action to combat discrimination, Klimasmith said, referencing the 900-student walkout that took place last year in protest of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detentions nationwide.
“The vast majority of Belmont students want to take active action against things that they see as unjust,” he said.
Calls For Increased Communication
Community members are echoing students’ calls for hands-on action when it comes to combating racism and antisemitism in the schools.
“It’s almost like everybody, in different ways, is saying, ‘Well, this is something that happens all the time.’ But it’s not normal,” said Didier Moïse, president of Belmont Against Racism (BAR). “There is nothing normal about it. There is nothing normal about physically threatening language to kill a minority group or drawing swastikas on bathroom stalls.”
In a letter to Geiser, Taylor, School Committee Chair Meghan Moriarty and district leadership, BAR demanded more transparency and urgency when communicating about discrimination in the schools.
“The people responsible for these acts must be held accountable. But accountability cannot stop with identifying the individuals who wrote the words and this symbol of hatred. BHS leadership also has a responsibility to communicate honestly and transparently with the community, to recognize the impact these incidents have on students and families, and to demonstrate through its actions that this kind of hatred will not be normalized,” the letter stated.
Moriarty echoed her remarks from the Sept. 8 School Committee meeting in response to the letter from BAR.
“I meant what I said at our School Committee meeting: we have a responsibility to make sure every student knows they belong. I hear the concerns raised in this letter, particularly about the impact these incidents have on students and families. Belmont Against Racism has been an important community partner in this work, and we make more progress when we approach one another as partners and keep our students at the center,” Moriarty said in an email to The Voice.
In particular, the letter criticized the subject line “BHS – Information” that was used for the email to both students and parents. BAR argued the generic language can make the email easier to miss and minimizes the issue.
“Horrible things like racism and antisemitism, or any other forms of bigotry, those things tend to flourish when people who are in a position to call them out sort of minimize them, or when they’re obscured, or treated like something the broader community doesn’t need to learn about, doesn’t need to address or confront,” Moïse said.
Responding to the criticism, Taylor said the subject line is standard practice for the high school.
“I think subject lines can often be misinterpreted or alarming to people who are maybe concerned about safety and the safety of their child,” he said. “It’s certainly something that I am happy to review and review with the district in terms of how we subject line messages like that.”
Students also said the issue can seem to disappear or be brushed off once an announcement is made and an assembly is held. However, under federal and state privacy laws, schools are limited in how they can communicate about matters regarding a student.
“It’s gonna look like nothing’s happening from the outside,” Klimasmith said. “I did not know that until I was told that, and I feel like most other students don’t know that.”
Even still, Moïse said the district has a responsibility to ensure families and students of color feel safe and secure within the confines of BHS.
“We’re not invisible. I mean, we’re not going anywhere,” Moïse said. “We are real people. We are real students. We are real parents. We are caregivers. Real families, and we are real members of this community. We deserve better than a generic message.”
