By Eileen O’grady
THE CONCORD MONITOR
Two male students at John Stark Regional High School are accused of violating the civil rights of a Black student by writing threatening messages and racist graffiti inside a school bathroom last spring.
The Civil Rights Unit of the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office filed an enforcement action against the two Weare 17-year-olds, whose names were not released due to their ages. Their race was also not released. The state says the students’ actions violated the civil rights of a Black classmate at the school.
The civil complaints, which were filed in the Northern Judicial District of the Hillsborough County Superior Court, accuse the students of damaging property inside a bathroom at John Stark Regional High School in Weare by writing and carving threatening, racist symbols and messages.
One of the students is accused of drawing swastikas and carving a threatening message that incorporated a racist slur beside the name of a fellow student, who is Black. The civil complaint alleges that the graffiti was motivated by the victim’s race.
The other student is accused of writing a threatening message about Black people and the name of the white supremacist hate group Ku Klux Klan.
John Stark Regional High School, which has an enrollment of 614 students, is 90% white, according to N.H. Dept. of Education data.
The Civil Rights Unit will be required to prove the accusations against the students at a hearing. For civil rights violations, the maximum civil penalty is $5,000.
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