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Racist, Anti-Semitic Statements Rock Lake Oswego High School

Students and administrators grapple with hate and indifference.

By Beth Slovic

A commenter on Lake Oswego High School's Class of 2017 Facebook page suggested seniors "create a club called Ku Klux Klub and find every black kid and sacrifice them," according to the Nov. 8 edition of the student newspaper, and for weeks no one challenged the statement.

"What's worse, the post?" the newspaper asked students, "[O]r the silence that followed?"

Now administrators are grappling with the Nov. 1 discovery of the post, said to have been made by a former student and a separate, earlier incident at the high school, where students were said to have been laughing while photographing a poster in the school cafeteria that depicted Nazi extermination of Jews.

Principal Rollin Dickinson addressed the incidents in a lengthy letter to parents Monday, before President-elect Donald Trump's victory reportedly set off a spate of racist attacks in Oregon schools and elsewhere.

And Superintendent Heather Beck followed-up with her own extensive response:

Willamette Week