“Threatening, racially charged and antisemitic messages” directed toward Walt Whitman High School and its principal were sent to the school’s student newspaper on Sept. 26, according to a letter to the Whitman community.
The letter, written by Whitman Principal Gregory Miller, did not specify the messages’ content and said they were never made public because all messages are reviewed by newspaper editors and staff.
Whitman staff members contacted the Montgomery County Police Department, Montgomery County Public Schools Office of School Support and Improvement and MCPS Systemwide Safety and filed “appropriate reporting forms for this matter,” according to Miller’s letter.
He added that school administrators, staff and student leaders from the newspaper have worked to create additional safeguards.
“Those measures include adjustments to the comment and contact features on the newspaper’s website, which will better protect our students from exposure to harmful content,” Miller wrote in his letter.
The submission of comments and inquiries to the newspaper will now include enhanced protections that prevent anonymous submissions.
In his letter, Miller pledged his commitment to fostering a safe, inclusive and supportive environment for all Whitman students.
These antisemitic messages are the latest in a series of similar incidents at Whitman High School in Bethesda. In December 2022, vandalism reading “Jews Not Welcome” was spray-painted on the entrance sign of Whitman, and one day later, several Whitman staff members received an antisemitic email message from an unknown sender.
In February 2023, Whitman students alleged that two student members of the debate team had threatened Jewish students during an off-campus team trip.
In December 2023, after the start of Chanukah, a student found a drawing of a swastika on a desk at Whitman.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to creating spaces with students and teachers to actively combat antisemitism and hate in all its forms,” Miller, then the interim principal, wrote in a letter to the community at the time.
At least show the threatening messages if you want people to believe it happened