“Swastikas on Mountain View High School Campus Spark Investigation and Outrage”
After submitting her math quiz, Mountain View High School freshman Noa Levin was at her desk waiting for the bell when her friend noticed something alarming: swastikas had been drawn in pencil on the classroom wall.
“I started to shake a little bit,” said Levin, who identifies as a Conservative Jew. “I was in shock and disbelief. I was at a loss for words.”
This wasn’t the first time Levin had encountered such hate symbols on campus. A few weeks earlier, she had spotted a swastika drawn on the back window of a car in the school’s Back Parking Lot and reported it to Mountain View High Assistant Principal Marti McGuirk. After discovering the graffiti in her math classroom, Levin took pictures and informed her mother, who then contacted the school administration and spoke with Principal Dr. Kip Glazer on Monday night.
“We received reports regarding the presence of hate speech and anti-Semitic graffiti on campus this past week,” Glazer stated in an email sent to the Mountain View High community on Tuesday morning. “I am profoundly saddened and shocked to receive such reports, and the administration has been working to swiftly address them.”
Levin, who graduated from Georgina P. Blach Intermediate School in June, had already experienced similar instances of hate crime and anti-Semitism during her middle school years. Now, as a high school student, she feels an increased sense of fear over the implications of such incidents.
“Since October 7, anti-Semitic incidents have definitely been on the rise,” Levin noted. “High school has older kids with access to more things, and that’s just a lot scarier.”
In response to Levin’s report and other hate crime incidents on the Mountain View High campus, Principal Glazer organized a Zoom meeting early Wednesday morning to address the situation with Mountain View High administrators and educators.
The meeting was attended by approximately 50 individuals, including Mountain View-Los Altos Unified School District Superintendent Eric Volta, two MVLA board trustees, and Associate Superintendent of Personnel Services Leyla Benson.
Following the incident, four teachers and one counselor reached out to Glazer, volunteering to serve as a “safe person” for Jewish students. These teachers have also opened their classrooms to Jewish students as a safe space during lunch or Tutorial periods.
“I think that’s what we need, to have everybody rally around,” Glazer said. “We need to ask, ‘How do we individually support each other and promote positivity?’”
