Letters

Without Accountability, Carmel Schools Will Be Plagued By Hate Incidents

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Recently, a swastika was found carved into a table at Carmel High School and, not long before, another swastika along with the name “Adolf Hitler” were found written on the school’s tennis courts.

This is just the latest in a string of Carmel Central School District hate incidents, most notably a series of racist TikTok videos discovered earlier this year in which middle school children staged a school shooting against students in the form of a video game. The students responsible for those videos have yet to be expelled from school or charged by authorities.

On top of such degeneracy, parents and other district residents have spent the last several years waging a war against trans and LGBTQ+ kids, campaigning for book bans and showing up at Board of Education meetings to voice their beliefs that transgender children and anyone who supports trans rights are sick and depraved.

Is it any wonder, then, that children in Carmel continue to spew racist, antisemitic, transphobic and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments and feel empowered to plaster the school in hate symbolism? While the district has taken steps to address discrimination thanks to the efforts of parents and organizations like Community Alliance for Empowerment (CAFÉ), the lack of any real accountability for offenses like these will continue to embolden the perpetrators, who, let’s not forget, are merely acting out lessons learned from their parents. Since parents are the root cause of such behavior and are unlikely to discipline their kids for such acts, the schools and law enforcement must step up and conduct thorough investigations, followed by strict punishment that will deter future culprits.

Eileen McDermott
Putnam NY Pride
Brewster

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