Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Students Band Together After Swastikas Found At San Francisco-Area High School

(JTA) — After swastikas were painted on the walls of a San Francisco-area high school, the students took a stand.

Days after the incident, hundreds of students came to Burlingame High School wearing red T-shirts or hoodies in red, a school color, to display “unity against hate.” They placed their painted handprints on banners reading “We are stronger than hate” and “Panther strong.”

The principal, Paul Belzer, described the graffiti painted in 10 different places as “anti-Semitic, homophobic and racist.” He said an investigation by the Burlingame Police Department and the San Mateo Union High School District is underway. No suspects have been identified.

“I am outraged,” Belzer wrote in an email to parents, J. The Jewish News of Northern California reported. “I feel our students and school, and our school’s values of integrity and community have been attacked.”

There have been other such incidents at the school, including in April, and at an intermediate and elementary schools in Burlingame.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.