A skeleton being used as a display at Bellingham High School was posed giving a fascist salute and decorated with a Nazi swastika in a “hateful and antisemitic” incident last week, school officials said.
It remained in view for a day until school officials were notified, according to a statement from Principal Martin Atkins about the Oct. 2 incident that was emailed to parents, students and staff on Oct. 6.
Details about the antisemitism weren’t explained in Atkins’ email, but were provided by school district spokeswoman Dana Smith. “Bellingham High School administrators spent several days investigating this incident and selected appropriate responses,” Smith told The Herald in an email.
It was not immediately known how many students were involved or whether they were disciplined. Smith told The Herald that information could not be shared because of federal privacy laws. School administrators learned of the incident on Tuesday, Oct. 3, and “removed all the images,” Atkins said in the email to parents, which Smith provided to The Bellingham Herald.
“On Monday afternoon this week (Oct. 2), a couple of our students decided to add hateful and antisemitic images and poses to the skeletons in our senior homecoming hallway decoration,” Atkins said in the email. “In fact, someone must have seen it prior to us learning of it and removed the most offensive bits prior to administration being informed,” he said.
Several incidents involving the swastika and Nazi ideology have been reported in Bellingham over the past several years, and police have made no arrests.