By Justin Hsieh, Staff Writer
After photos of Newport-Mesa Unified School District (NMUSD) students posing around a swastika made of party cups while performing Nazi salutes first went viral over the weekend, they have since made international headlines and become the center of a national storm of backlash.
The first to respond to the incident were students and administrators at NMUSD. District superintendent Fred Navarro, school board president Charlene Metoyer, school board vice president Martha Fluor and the Newport Harbor Associated Student Body all released statements on Sunday condemning the incident. Newport Harbor High School (NHHS) principal Sean Boulton released a statement on Monday.
“Over the past few years, all Newport-Mesa schools have worked tirelessly to eliminate prejudice, hate and bullying and continually work toward true tolerance and equality,” said Boulton. “We are obviously not there yet, but the journey continues… We must and can do more.”
Many students at NHHS wore blue on Monday to show solidarity with the Jewish community.
“I’m very glad that we are all making a statement that the vast majority of us believe that this is disgusting,” NHHS senior Sam Quattrociocchi told the LA Times. “Some people at the party thought they were making an edgy joke, and they were completely wrong.”
Starting Sunday evening and continuing Monday, local leaders took to Twitter, Facebook and official press releases to comment on the incident, denouncing the students’ actions and the attitudes they represented.
“There is no place for hateful symbols of swastikas and Nazi salutes in our community,” said Costa Mesa Mayor and former NMUSD trustee Katrina Foley in a statement released Monday. “While we take seriously and object to this hateful activity, I discourage vilification of these teens. Instead, we need to seriously address why teens in our community might think these types of hateful symbols are acceptable or funny and worthy of selfies.”
Newport Beach Mayor Diane Dixon, Rep. Katie Porter (D-45), Rep. Harley Rouda (D-48), Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris (D-74), and State Senator John Moorlach (R) all also released statements condemning the photos.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not they thought it was funny,” said Rouda in a press release on Monday. “When we joke about Nazism, its history loses meaning – and we cannot forget that history. These students must learn that hate has consequences, and their parents and our school district must redouble their efforts to teach them.”
Local Jewish leaders also became involved. Rabbi Peter Levi, regional director of the Orange County / Long Beach chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and Newport Beach Rabbi Gersh Zylberman both spoke to the press on Sunday about the incident.
“The bottom line is that swastikas and Nazi salutes are never funny,” said rabbi Levi. “The goal is not to be reactionary when a school has such a horrific incident, but to be constantly talking with young people about hatred, about bias, so that the students themselves would’ve never let this happen.”
Members of the broader Jewish community also spoke out. Los Angeles Holocaust Museum President Paul Nussbaum personally invited the students who attended the party to come to the museum to learn something about the “symbols of hate” that they posted. The Jewish Voice for Peace organization and Auschwitz Memorial Museum both commented on the incident on Twitter.
As the story spread throughout the Internet, it rapidly gained national attention. Prominent attorney Michael Avenatti tweeted about the incident on Sunday. The story has since been covered by the Washington Post, National Public Radio, USA Today, the Guardian, the Independent, and the Times of Israel.
Newport Beach and Costa Mesa community members met in the NHHS auditorium for a community forum on Monday night. Over 500 people attended the meeting, where school administrators and local Jewish leaders addressed the causes of the incident and the need for change.
“I pee next to swastikas on the wall in the school’s bathroom,” said NHHS senior Max Drakeford, whose grandmother survived the Holocaust. “I work on desks with swastikas etched on them. We need to focus on ourselves as a community. We’ve become so desensitized to anti-Semitism because it happens so often.”
Drakeford and other community leaders referred to the recent rise in anti-Semitism in the United States, an issue that the Newport-Mesa incident has brought to public attention in the past few days.
“The community is concerned about this type of incident because it doesn’t happen in isolation. We’re only months since the terrible attack, the massacre at the Pittsburgh synagogue,” said rabbi Zylberman on Sunday, referring to the mass shooting in October that killed 11 and injured seven.
The ADL reported a 57% jump in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States from 2016 to 2017, the largest single-year increase ever. California had the second highest number of incidents in 2017, after New York. Nationwide, there was a staggering 94% increase in anti-Semitic incidents in K-12 schools from 2016-2017.
“I grew up in this country and I’ve experienced anti-Semitism,” said Newport Beach mother Danielle Staffieri at the meeting on Monday. “It’s time we address this as a community. I’m proud to see so many people standing up for what’s right today.”
Cecilia Nguyen and Karen Phan contributed to this story.
