Anti-Semitic Intruders Target Online Meetings Of Winnetka Schools

WINNETKA, IL — Anti-Semitic interlopers interrupted multiple online meetings convened by Winnetka schools last week by, school officials said. At least two such incidents were reported to police for criminal investigation by administrators at New Trier High School and Winnetka School District 36, which have transitioned to remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

The first incident reported to police last week occurred on March 31 during a Google Hangouts Meet session of an eighth grade class at Carleton Washburne School. According to school administrators, two unidentified visitors joined the meeting and began using anti-semitic, hateful and racist language.

In a letter to parents later that evening, Principal Andrew Fenton and Assistant Principal Ben Horwitz said the voices sounded to be adolescents.

"As soon as the incident occurred, the teachers moderating the video chat acted quickly to end the conversation, and many students implored those making the hateful comments to stop," they said. "This appears to be an isolated incident, as there is no other evidence that this type of interruption occurred in any other live video sessions in the District."

The administrators said it appeared that the intruders had obtained a video chat link from an authorized participant. Fenton and Horwitz said Google had been contacted and asked to assist in the district's investigation. They urged parents to contact them with any information that could help identify the perpetrators.

"We will also continue to work with our technology department and partners at Google to ensure we keep the highest privacy standards in place for our remote learning," the principals told parents.

Another similar incident occurred on a different teleconferencing platform two days later, according to police and school officials.

During an optional video conferencing session focused on mental health for student-athletes at New Trier High School and Loyola Academy featuring the mental health counselor of Loyola University student athletics as a guest speaker, someone took over the speaker's screen, displayed a pornographic photograph and drew at least one swastika.

"Multiple students also have reported hearing someone shout anti-Semitic and racist slurs including the n-word," Athletic Director Augie Fontanetta told parents. "While the speaker tried to shut down the session as quickly as possible, the damage was done."

About 200 student athletes were in the session at the time, he said. Fontanetta said New Trier would no longer allow meetings with students to be hosted outside of the school's computer system, which has safeguards in place such as restricting access to users without a school email address and tracking the use of student accounts.

"We know that these incidents are happening around the country, but that does not excuse the fact that in this case we did not use New Trier’s established protocols for hosting a Zoom meeting with students," he said. The practice of interrupting online meetings on the platform has become known as "zoombombing."

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On Friday, Denise Dubravec, principal of New Trier's Winnetka campus, and Paul Waechtler, principal of the Northfield campus, told students they had identified students "who used aliases to disrupt classes, including some serious incidents of racist, anti-Semitic speech and imagery."

The principals warned students not to share passwords or links to school material. Consequences for returning students could be enforced in the fall, they said, and seniors could face exclusion from prom or graduation, which has not yet been postponed or canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Superintendent Paul Sally said there had been a "few incidents in which uninvited participants used racist and anti-Semitic images or slurs" but the vast majority of New Trier students had been working hard and following the rules during "hundreds if not thousands" remote learning sessions.

Sally said hate speech, harassment and pornography would be reported to law enforcement.

Brian O'Connell, deputy chief of Winnetka police, described the incidents as "computer hacking into a platform by someone who is unauthorized to gain access," according to the Chicago Tribune, which first reported the incidents.

"These are not incidents of 'hacking,'" Sally told parents, "But rather incidents in which students share Zoom class links or passwords with others inside or outside New Trier."