Why don’t the other teachers clean up the antisemitic graffiti?

When I unlock the classroom for my 8.30am class, it’s cold outside and the Year 10s rush in. I see the swastika scrawled in green marker on the whiteboard and hurriedly clean it off (with relief, I realise that this time it’s erasable), before I start the lesson. It’s lucky that I’ve done this job for so many years that I can competently run on autopilot. Because I can’t do anything else, right now: my frontal lobe is offline.  

I know that some kids draw that symbol because it makes them feel big. They might not completely understand why it’s a threat, but they know it is a threat, and that gives them swagger. They have marked some territory, they have sent up a stink bomb of offence, they have transgressed.  

Before October 7, 2023, I saw this type of graffiti only occasionally at the large government school in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs where I work, and it seemed like a relic of an old kind of hate that was not part of Australia’s present. Lately, the swastikas are multiplying.  

One day in 2024 I noticed one of these hateful symbols etched into the back of a chair in our school theatre. I photographed it, reported it to maintenance, and moved on with my day. 

Then, in December 2025, still-reeling from being up all night poring over news sites and grieving over the massacre at Bondi, I happened to sit in a staff meeting right behind the same chair. There it was, the slightly misshapen swastika, still etched in, still not removed.