Anti-Semitic Graffiti Stirs Campus Unrest

MOORPARK — Since March the graffiti has appeared on the door of her Moorpark High School classroom: swastikas, anti-Semitic slurs, even a threat to blow up her car.

But as the school year closes, police still have not found the perpetrator who left a succession of hateful notes for first-year teacher Tracy Ganzer.

And some teachers and students want to know why, especially when officials have arrested and suspended a group of seniors whose crime was digging a trench in the school yard as part of a senior prank.

Senior Melissa Weaver said she is upset that a good teacher has been persecuted and no one has been held accountable. The school’s administration seemed at first to have ignored the problem, she said.

“It’s not right,” Melissa said. “Ignoring it is just as bad as doing nothing.”

Teacher Guy Aronoff chastised the school for letting the anti-Semitic graffiti problem fester for weeks before calling police.

“I don’t think we’ve done a good job facing up to this,” Aronoff said, adding that Ganzer is leaving the school to take another job. “We’re losing a good teacher.”

Principal John McIntosh refused comment Tuesday on the school’s vandalism problems.

The anti-Semitic graffiti began appearing in March and has included profanities, ethnic slurs and death threats. Most of the graffiti--first in pencil, then in ink--have included swastikas.

“That sign alone is an indication that this person hates Jews,” Ganzer said. “People need to be aware that there are people out there like this, and it’s wrong. It’s hurtful.”

In the other instance of vandalism, a group of students were caught last week digging a trench on campus, into which they had planned to pour concrete to form the letter “D,” the initial of their informal social club.

The trench was part of a long-running--but unwelcome--tradition of senior pranks at the school. The students were arrested by police, then released to their parents.

The school’s handling of both crimes has provoked debate on campus. Some teachers complain the students who were caught with cement and two-way radios were shown too much leniency.

Although they were suspended five days, some of those days involved in-school suspension designed to allow the students to take their final exams and graduate.

Others say the punishment is appropriate for a stupid though not particularly vicious act.

Police have been investigating the anti-Semitic graffiti but have yet to come up with a suspect.

The San Fernando Valley branch of the Anti-Defamation League has contacted Moorpark High School regarding the problem. The group said it may hold educational seminars at the school on bigotry and ethnic prejudice.

Melissa said while some of her fellow students have been appalled by the anti-Semitic vandalism, others have not fully understood the significance of a swastika on a Jewish teacher’s door.

“A lot of them know what’s going on, but the sad thing is they have no comprehension,” she said. “They don’t know what anti-Semitism is.”