Content warning: antisemitism and hate speech, mentions of Nazism and antisemitic symbols and messages.
Students at Culbreth Middle School returned from Thanksgiving break to a haunting message scrawled on the boys’ bathroom wall. The message—accompanied by swastikas—named two Jewish middle school students as “Nazi-boys” and stated that the vandal would “get [them] back.”
The wall was cleaned by a janitor after being reported to administrators. However, parents of targeted students say they were not notified by the school—only by their children.
The next day, the graffiti was back: same language, same bathroom, same students named, this time with the addition of “Watch your back.”
Parents reached out to Culbreth administration, calling on the school to investigate both incidents. A response claimed that footage from the narrowed timeframe would be reviewed and handwriting comparisons would be executed with suspected perpetrators.
“All we kept hearing [from Culbreth administration] was, ‘We’re trying to narrow it down from the video,’ but the video took eternity for them to review,” Jennifer Bienstock, a parent of a targeted student, said. “They were saying they had technological problems, so, when I wasn’t hearing anything, it felt like they were giving up.”
According to an anonymous teacher at Culbreth, teachers were not notified of the messages until three days after the initial episode, and that the information was mentioned in a “long list” of agenda items in a routine staff meeting.
Throughout this time, the parents say their students struggled with anxiety, fear and restlessness and even considered moving to a new school.
“I don’t think they’ve thought for a moment what it’s like for these boys to go to school every day knowing there’s someone out there threatening them,” Bienstock said. “Even knowing there could be another message on the wall tomorrow is a pretty crappy feeling to walk around with.”
Bienstock emailed both Superintendent Nyah Hamlett and the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools’ (CHCCS) school board in frustration; however, Bienstock said she only received a response after filing a claim with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
In early January, parents formally met with Hamlett; Dr. Rodney Trice, the district’s Deputy Superintendent for Teaching & Learning, Systemic Equity and Engagement; Trilce Marquez, the district Coordinator of Instructional Equity; and District Communications Officer Andy Jenks.
“We focused on what we want to see from [the district] moving forward,” Bienstock said. “We got a very good perspective on some of the programming they’re working on, but it sounds like they’re working on a program from scratch—zero, nothing.”
The administrators outlined their efforts to train teachers in identifying microaggressions and antisemitic behavior.
“We felt a bit encouraged by the fact that they recognized the need for a bigger, widespread program,” the anonymous parent of the other targeted student said.
The parents said they were even more discouraged after a month of silence from the district and no updates on any of their initial claims. Then, another instance of graffiti manifested on the bathroom wall, this time reading, “It’s your turn,” “Watch your back,” and “I’m going to make your life a living hell.”
The parents said they were only notified of one suspected student being interviewed directly by disciplinarians—still no district-wide or even staff-wide notification of the incident; still no substantial change.
“When something like this happens, you don’t just talk to one or two kids. You need to notify everyone that something happened so anybody who may know something can speak up about it,” Bienstock said.
Bienstock said that frustration with the school’s and district’s handling of the situation fueled parents to speak at the district’s School Board Meeting on February 14.
In the public forum, Bienstock requested that school leadership use advisory classes to explain and denounce the actions while asking for students’ help in identifying perpetrators and for a district-wide notice to be sent to all parents to notify them of these incidents.
Bienstock was accompanied by Jill Simon, Culbreth’s PTA President and 12-year CHCCS parent. Simon, along with other CHCCS parents, has kept an ongoing list of “insensitivities, inequities, microaggressions, and antisemitism that has impacted our families,” which she sends to the school board annually.
“All of CHCCS is complicit in the direct threats that are happening at Culbreth,” Simon said. “Each individual incident can feel gaslit and brushed under the rug as if it’s no big deal and just ‘middle schoolers being middle schoolers–except when you look at a list of all of these small things that have been unaddressed or left to float by without action,” Simon said.
The district stated that they were in complete agreement in the fight against hate speech, yet declined to publicly comment on these specific events.
“Current CHCCS leadership is unable to speak to these events and whether they’re being described with all available context, but to debate that would be missing the larger point, which is that we are in complete agreement that in school and our larger society there should be no place for antisemitism, bias and hate speech,” Jenks stated. “We must condemn, confront and eliminate it to the best of our collective abilities.”
Days after the public comments, the district emailed a message to parents and staff—but omitted students—with the subject “Condemning hate speech, bias and prejudice in our schools.”
The memo assures that staff are undergoing training in “proactive measures, such as advisory lessons in both elementary and secondary schools, and responsive measures, such as restorative practices, are two additional strategies that we use.”
The message goes on to denounce hate speech and “inspire students and staff toward social justice action, which is a core value of CHCCS”; it also links to the Anti-Defamation League website, the organization that Superintendent Hamlett declined to meet with months prior in her initial email response, according to parents.
CHCCS staff received another email exclusively for staff, again linking the ADL website, as well as a directory of Equity Coaches by school. Attached was an infographic made by the district as a guide to responding to incidents of hate speech in schools.
The infographic highlights measures that—according to the parents—the administration initially failed to execute, including “ensuring that guardians are aware of what occurred.”
“I felt like it was a beautiful statement, but it does not resemble the experience we had or the response that we received,” Bienstock said, “so, if they follow through on that, well, fantastic, but I’m a little jaded.”
The ADL H.E.A.T. (Hate, Extremism, Antisemitism, and Terrorism) Map reported a significant increase in antisemitic incidents in North Carolina over the last five years, from 30 in 2017 to over 132 in 2022. In the 2022 figure, eight incidents involved vandalism, while 16 involved harassment.
At Chapel Hill High School, students have taken up efforts to create the school’s first Jewish Student Union (JSU).
“Giving Jewish students a place to celebrate our culture is important and liberating, especially during times when Jewish pride is bashed,” Daniela Davis, senior co-president of the JSU, said. “It may be hard for others to recognize repeated antisemitic microaggressions faced by Jewish students—from ‘harmless’ Holocaust jokes to normalizing a Christmas-only holiday time. I urge students and teachers to think about the effect that your comments and actions have on others.”
Junior Sydney Bienstock, one of the targeted student’s sisters, is also a member of the Chapel Hill JSU.
“We moved two years ago from New York, so I think it was a big change and a big shock,” Bienstock said. “It was really sad for me because my brother was so scared to go to school, and I’m so upset that anyone would want to hurt him.”
The parents of the students continue to prioritize the safety of their children and ask the district to do the same.
“Each [instance], no matter how seemingly small, exposes Jewish children to exclusion and opens the path for others to act in a bolder, more threatening manner,” Simon stated in her public comment. “Please share with us the burden of carrying these injustices.”
