“Beat the Jew”
Updated 11:00 PM:
La Quinta High School is a “California Distinguished School.” That means it’s been recognized for its “exemplary and quality educational programs.”
Recently, though, La Quinta has earned recognition of another kind. About 40 students from the school have been playing a game called “Beat the Jew.”
According to Michelle Mitchell in the Desert Sun:
The chase game involved a runner — called a “Jew” — and groups of people chasing in cars — “Nazis.”
“The objective for the Jew is to run down Hwy. 111 to a specified checkpoint before the Nazis can catch up to him, tackle him down and capture him,” according to a Facebook page that was taken down on Friday.
La Quinta High School is a magnet school located in a culturally diverse resort city. La Quinta has been described as America’s leading golf destination.
Although the school was recognized as a school of distinction in 1999 and 2003, it did not meet AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress, a measure of meeting certain standards set by California) in 2009. The student body is 53% Hispanic, 41% White, 3% Asian and 2% Black.
None of the reporting on this story indicates the ethnic background of the students involved.
Schools aren’t normally held responsible for what students do on their own time. But there are some nagging questions about student participation in this game. It’s hard to see how the students didn’t realize what they were doing because, according to Principal Donna Salazar, “tolerance” and Jewish history are already part of the curriculum:
The school’s educational programming includes Holocaust simulations for 10th grade history students based on the book “French children of the Holocaust”, reading the Holocaust memoir “Night” for freshman English students, Holocaust survivors speaking to students every year, and annual field trips to the Los Angeles Museum of Tolerance.
Principal Salazar seems to be trying to figure out what else that school can do:
Many of the students have been to museums of tolerance in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and teachers work hard to make historical events such as the Holocaust hit home with students, she said.
“If the education doesn’t matter, what’s the missing piece?” she asked.
If education about these issues “doesn’t matter,” as Salazar says, and the school can’t take legal or punitive action against the students, what should be done? That’s the question the principal is grappling with:
“Not saying we don’t have an obligation to teach tolerance and respect,” Salazar said, adding that the school does not have access to student phone records and cannot determine if any planning or similar activities happened at school.
“I would love to be able to do something,” Salazar said about creating more consequences for the students involved.
Salazar asked the students to take down the Facebook page about the game:
“They claimed that this was just a game and it really has nothing to do with targeting Jewish people. I’m surprised that they don’t see that when you start using these labels that it’s offensive.”
Desert Sands Unified School District Superintendent Sharon McGehee said that all the students who played the game were willing participants. Students weren’t reprimanded because the game did not take place at school. Because all who played did so willingly, there is no criminal offense.
Tom Tucker at the local news station reports:
Rabbi Shimon Posner of Chabad of Rancho Mirage is calling for discipline and additional training for dozens of students at La Quinta High School who were involved in the game “Beat the Jew”….
“Where is the outrage? It is a breakdown in education”, said Rabbi Posner.
On May 28, Amanda Susskind of the Anti-Defamation League wrote a letter to the Desert Sun stating:
The proliferation of online social networking has led to the growing and troubling phenomenon of online hate and cyberbullying, which involves using popular technologies to harass and intimidate. These forms of intolerance can damage reputations and destroy lives. While the First Amendment protects most hate speech, we do not have to accept hate on the Internet as something that we are powerless to confront.
Rick Green, executive editor of the paper– in an editorial titled “Is it just me, or…,” asked the questions any of his readers– or the rest of us– must be thinking:
No other generation in our country’s history has been as exposed to matters of religious, racial and sexual tolerance as the kids of today.
World-class museums, compelling in-person presentations and an unprecedented sharing of the horrors of the Holocaust from newspapers, magazines and books to the Internet and Hollywood (who can forget “Schindler’s List”?) blanket our educational system. What happened to millions of Jews during World War II and Hitler’s reign of terror is more than dusty pages in history books.
So, how does something as atrocious as the off-campus chase game, dubbed “Beat the Jew,” happen?
What inspires a large group of kids — an estimated 40 — billing themselves as “Nazis” to pile in cars to chase down a solitary classmate they’ve labeled as “The Jew?” So elaborate was the “game” that a Facebook page was created, trumpeting the insensitive hunt down Highway 111.
I am not the only one lost for an explanation.
“This behavior is so offensive and inexplicable that it appears that everything we have been doing isn’t enough for every student,” Principal Donna Salazar told The Desert Sun.
The student responsible for informing the school administration about the Facebook page and the game had remained anonymous. But that’s changed. According to the local news station:
KPSP Local 2 has learned that the student who first complained about the game to school administrators was promised anonymity by an assistant principal. The students father says that promise was not kept, and the students name was revealed to a student or students who participated in the game.
After the students name was revealed, the students father says threats of harm were made against the teen.
The school district and law enforcement have now begun an investigation of the threats against the student.
H/T: Joy Tiz
[...] give a reason why students are subject to school discipline now when they weren’t earlier, my guess is that this time they met on school grounds. Categorized under: Education, Education [...]