10-year-old Muslim student finds threatening notes in her cubby: 'You are a terrorist'
A 10-year-old Muslim girl found threatening notes in her cubby.
A student at Hemenway Elementary School in Framingham, Mass., found a note in her personal storage bin Nov. 9. The note read “you are a terrorist” in a childlike scribble.
School administrators were made aware of the accusation and began checking backpacks. “We put safeguards into place, obviously, coming into school yesterday morning,” Principal Elizabeth Simon said during a news conference on Nov. 14. “But unfortunately, another note was found in her cubby when she went to go get her things.”
The second note read, “I will kill you.”
Tuesday, after both notes had been found, the school held a meeting at which board Chairman Adam Freudberg called the incident a “discriminatory hate crime,” according to the Boston Herald.
During Wednesday’s news conference, the school identified the recipient as Maimouna, a fifth-grader. A representative from the Islamic Society of Framingham and youth director at the local mosque confirmed that she is 10 years old. Simon described her as “a wonderful student and well-liked by everyone.”
Except one student, apparently.
“I honestly am heartbroken,” Simon said. “This is not just a one and done. This is something we live every single day with every single student, trying to make them feel respected and included,” she said. “My staff is devastated that this happened at our school because we pride ourselves as being an inclusive, warm, caring community, and I do feel that we are, but obviously, we have someone who is not feeling respectful and is not respecting the rights of others, so I’m sorry.”
Boston Herald reported that Simon visited each classroom urging the culprit to come forward with an apology and sent an email to parents “condemning the incident.”
“There’s absolutely no place for hate in our schools,” Framingham schools Superintendent Robert Tremblay said during the news conference. “This is not a Framingham problem. This is not a Hemenway problem. This is a pervasive problem around hate that we have to take a stand on and address.” They are investigating the situation and trying to figure out who left the notes. “We are taking this very, very seriously. We don’t imagine that this is an imminent danger to the school, safety is our priority and we’re going to continue to make that our priority.”
Mayor Yvonne M. Spicer also commented on the upsetting incident. “Hatred and discrimination will not be tolerated in Framingham,” Spicer said in a statement. “I am dismayed by this latest act of bigotry and will do everything to ensure the safety of our students and residents.”
Tremblay is disturbed by the likelihood that the culprit is under the age of 10. “When you think about a child who is in fifth grade, that kind of hate, where does that come from?” he asked Wednesday. “This is not an innate feeling a child would have.”
Some of the students at Hemenway don’t even know what a terrorist is, which Simon discovered when she went around the school to discuss the notes. “Some of the students didn’t know what a terrorist was, so we had to explain that,” she recalled. “I did explain to them that this is unacceptable. And I said, ‘It would be upsetting for any of us to receive that note, but the fact is Maimouna is Muslim, and sending that note to a Muslim student becomes a hate crime.’” She then had to define a hate crime.
Simon confirmed that although the school has dealt with bullies in the past, it has not had “something that was such a targeted, hateful message.”
For the community, unfortunately, it’s not the first time. “Through my work on the ground and with the community, I have noticed an uptick in identity-based incidents that involve young Muslims,” said Sumaiya Zama, the director of Community Advocacy and Education at the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Massachusetts chapter. Zama is acting as an advocate for the family. “We need to pay close attention to this.”
Jamaal Siddiqui, who says he is Maimouna’s uncle, described his usually cheerful 10-year-old niece as “quiet,” according to the MetroWest Daily News. “She’s upbeat, she’s always outside playing in the cold, and she’s refraining from doing that because she’s scared. And she has all the right to be scared,” Siddiqui said.
Even so, Maimouna attended school Wednesday. “She is here and participating, but I’m sure it’s very hard, it has to be,” Simon said during the news conference. “She’s coming to school with a positive attitude,” said the representative from the Islamic Society and mosque youth director. “She doesn’t want the bully or whoever did this to win. She doesn’t want to seem weak. She knows what she stands for and what she believes in is correct.”
At school, her classmates had more notes for her. “Every student wrote her a note,” Simon said. “I said, ‘Even if you don’t know Maimouna that well or you’re not best friends with her, it’s important that you write something that lets her know that you stand against this type of act.’”
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