ARLINGTON, Va. — School officials and Arlington County Police are investigating after a middle school student was handed a piece of paper with a swastika on it by a classmate on Tuesday.
The incident happened at Thomas Jefferson Middle School on Tuesday, according to a letter sent home to parents by Principal Keisha Boggan.
"Intolerance is not acceptable," Boggan wrote in the letter, stating that the school had met "with the students involved as well as their families."
It's not the first time that schools around the DMV have seen the hate symbol in the last year. In November, the symbol was drawn on a desk at Silver Creek Middle School in Kensington, Maryland. And in March, swastikas were projected at Sidwell Friends School during an assembly, as well as racist usernames.
Doron Ezickson, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League which fights hate and antisemitism, said that the incident at Sidwell Friends wasn't necessarily new.
"Unfortunately, we've seen dozens of those incidents not just this school year in the DMV, at private schools, independent schools, public schools," Ezickson said. "There is something out in the atmosphere today that seems to be enabling hate, hate symbols, slurs."
