{"id":175821,"date":"2026-04-25T13:25:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:25:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/175821\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T13:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T13:25:07","slug":"a-lower-merion-high-school-student-drew-a-swastika-on-his-body-and-showed-a-jewish-student-officials-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/175821\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lower Merion High School student drew a swastika on his body and showed a Jewish student, officials say"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">Police are investigating after a <a class=\"relative z-1 text-blue-mid hover:shadow-lightmode\" data-link-type=\"article-body\" href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/topic\/lower-merion\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lower Merion<\/a> High School student drew a swastika on his body Friday and showed it to a Jewish student at the school, and threatened another student in a social media video, administrators said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">Lower Merion School District Superintendent Frank Ranelli said in a message to community members that the video posted by the student after leaving school Friday didn\u2019t refer to the swastika incident earlier in the day, but \u201cit did contain concerning language.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">\u201cLet me be perfectly clear, using hate speech or displaying hate symbols is not and will not be tolerated in our schools,\u201d Ranelli said in the message, sent Friday night. He noted that district policy prohibits hate speech, and that students who violate it face consequences outlined in the district\u2019s handbook.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">Lower Merion administrators contacted township police, who are investigating, Ranelli said. He also said the student who drew the swastika and made the video would not be in school, \u201cpending a disciplinary hearing and due process.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">\u201cFurther information about the students involved will not be shared to ensure student privacy,\u201d Ranelli said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">Lower Merion has faced criticism from Jewish families in the district, who have <a class=\"relative z-1 text-blue-mid hover:shadow-lightmode\" data-link-type=\"article-body\" href=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/education\/lower-merion-school-board-race-2025-democrats-antisemitism-20250515.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.inquirer.com\/education\/lower-merion-school-board-race-2025-democrats-antisemitism-20250515.html\">accused it of not doing enough to respond to antisemitism<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"inq-p text-primary  \">In an Instagram post Friday about the incident, the Lower Merion Jewish Families Association called on families to \u201cdemand more from our administration and our school board,\u201d but thanked the district \u201cfor treating this incident with the seriousness it deserves and escalating\u201d to the Lower Merion police.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min Police are investigating after a Lower Merion High School student drew a swastika&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[183,185,184,186,78719],"class_list":["post-175821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion","tag-lower-merion-headlines","tag-lower-merion-news","tag-lower-merion-township","tag-lower-merion-student-swastika-investigation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}