After turning in a quiz in her math class, Mountain View High School freshman Noa Levin was at her desk waiting for the bell to ring when her friend pointed something out to her: On the wall of the classroom, swastikas were drawn in pencil.

“I started to shake a little bit,” Levin, who identifies as a Conservative Jew, said. “I was sort of in shock, in disbelief. I was [at a] loss for words.” 

A few weeks earlier, Levin saw the same symbol drawn on the back window of a car in the school’s Back Parking Lot and reported it to Mountain View High Assistant Principal Marti McGuirk, she said. Mountain View High Principal Dr. Kip Glazer was only informed of this incident on Monday. After taking pictures of the symbols in her math class, she told her mother, who then reached out to administration Monday night and spoke with Glazer. 

“We received reports regarding the presence of hate speech and anti-semitic [sic] graffiti on campus this past week,” Glazer said in an email sent out to the Mountain View High community on Tuesday morning. “I am profoundly saddened and shocked to receive such reports, and the administration has been working to swiftly address them.” 

Levin, who graduated from Georgina P. Blach Intermediate School in June, was exposed to similar instances of hate crime and antisemitism throughout middle school. Now that she’s in high school, she said she’s more fearful of what such incidents could mean. 

“Since October 7, antisemitic incidents have definitely been on a rise,” Levin said. “High school has older kids with access to more things, and that’s just a lot scarier.”

In light of Levin’s reports and other hate crime incidents that have happened on Mountain View High’s campus, Glazer set up a Zoom meeting early Wednesday morning for Mountain View High administrators and educators to hear about the events from Glazer herself. 

Around 50 people were in attendance, including Mountain View-Los Altos Unified School District Superintendent Eric Volta, two MVLA board trustees and Associate Superintendent of Personnel Services Leyla Benson. 

Four teachers and one counselor reached out to Glazer and said they were open to serving as a “safe person” for Jewish students, Glazer said. The teachers also opened up their classrooms as an especially safe space for Jewish students to go during lunch or Tutorial. 

“I think that’s what we need, to have everybody rally around,” Glazer said. “We need to ask, ‘How do we individually support each other [and] promote positivity?’”

The investigation into Levin’s reports is ongoing. This is a developing story.