Jewish student’s lawsuit describes years of anti-Semitic harassment at elite NJ school
By Elizabeth Rosner
New York Post
March 6, 2020
A Jewish student filed a federal lawsuit claiming her elite New Jersey high school, the Marine Academy of Science and Technology in Middletown, NJ, failed to protect her from “endemic anti-Semitism.”
The plaintiff — who filed anonymously, and who The Post is identifying only by her first name, “Paige” — filed suit in U.S. federal court in Trenton against the Monmouth County Vocational School District, the school board and four teachers, alleging she suffered anti-Semitic harassment during her three years attending MAST.
When she enrolled as a freshman in the fall of 2015, a fellow classmate mocked her last name, calling it “Jew Fray” as a teacher laughed, the suit alleges.
During her sophomore year, she observed students reading Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler, she alleges. MAST’s curriculum did not include any studies relating to World War II or the rise of Nazi Germany that would require a student to read the book, the suit alleges.
On numerous occasions during lunch, she saw students “drawing images of swastikas in their notebooks and on school lunch tables.” School officials did not act, according to the suit.
The harassment allegedly took a turn for the worse during Paige’s junior year in April 2018. Her classmates went on a school field trip to Sandy Hook Beach to participate in a mandatory beach cleanup.
A fellow MAST student texted a group of 17 students — including Paige — a photograph of another MAST student lying on the beach, smiling, next to the words “I H8 JEWS” scrawled in the sand, the suit alleges.
A student in the group text message suggested the photo should be featured as the yearbook cover.
Paige immediately told her parents and her father got in touch with school officials to report the photo and subsequent text messages she received, leading her to be labeled as a “snitch” by classmates.
School officials looked into the photo and suspended the two students responsible for the photograph for four days, and the student who suggested that it be featured as the yearbook cover was also disciplined, receiving a two-day suspension.
Overnight, Paige’s classmates began “engaging in a large-scale and explicitly coordinated campaign of retribution,” the lawsuit says.
A fellow student allegedly placed a rock in close proximity to her desk with the word “Adolf” painted on it.
At the end of the school year, Paige’s parents filed a complaint with the state attorney general’s division of civil rights, saying that she had been subjected to anti-Semitic conduct and harassed for reporting it.
Paige dropped out of MAST with a 4.0 grade average at the end of her junior year.
The two boys involved in the photograph won school awards and were accepted into Cornell and New York University.
But when news broke of Paige’s complaint — and the state attorney general announced an investigation had found the Monmouth County Vocational School District had broken New Jersey’s anti-discrimination law — the two boys’ college admissions were rescinded.
According to the suit, Paige was planning on applying to Tulane University but was discouraged not to since she had switched schools before her senior year.
She applied and was rejected from the University of Pennsylvania, Emory University, Northwestern University, and the University of Virginia.
Paige told The Post on Thursday, “I’m forever saddened that this happened to me, but I have grown to accept that my family and I did the right thing by reporting it. I am trying to move forward but this will always be something I carry.”
Her lawyer, Eric Hecker, wrote in the suit, “She did not go to her senior prom. She did not walk in a graduation ceremony. Her adjustment to college has been very challenging. Her sense of self-worth has been severely compromised.”
Hecker told The Post, “The school officials do not appear to appreciate the seriousness of their failure to provide an appropriate educational environment, so now a jury will decide whether they broke the law.”
Albert J. Rescinio, a lawyer for the boy who sent the photo, told The Post in a phone interview that the photograph was “not intended to say that they [two boys] disliked Jewish people — it was not taken literally.”
His client, whose admission to Cornell was rescinded, “is doing the best he can. He is keeping the low profile, trying to gather is life together and move forward,” he said.
The two teen boys “thought it was a funny, tongue-in-cheek, sarcastic act. Jokes are not intended to be taken literally,” he said.
“The District providing a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students that is free from harassment, intimidation and bullying and all forms of bias and discrimination,” Timothy McCorkell, the superintendent of the Monmouth County Vocational School District, told The Post when asked for comment.
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