Hall High School has been faced with repetitive vandalism in school bathrooms in recent months.  Administrators have continued to condemn these incidents, citing that racist and homophobic graffiti has been found on multiple occasions.

These incidents of graffiti haven’t only been news within the Hall High School community, they’ve now expanded to the general Hartford area. Recently Jesse Leavenworth, a reporter and editor at The Hartford Courant since 1987, published an article in The  titled, “Racist graffiti repeatedly found in bathrooms at West Hartford high school” detailing the recent vandalism in the Hall bathrooms.  In the article, Leavenworth quotes the email sent out to the Hall community by administration on April 7 multiple times. Leavenworth also reached out to Superintendent Tom Moore seeking additional information, but Leavenworth writes that, “Superintendent Tom Moore and school officials did not respond to requests for more details.”

The West Hartford Police have also been notified and are looking into the incident. Leavenworth says in the article, “Police Chief Vernon Riddick said Wednesday afternoon that officers are investigating, and that no arrest had been made yet.”

On April 6, 2022 the West Hartford Newspaper released an article online. The title of the article was “Hall Administrators Adress Racist Graffiti on Bathroom Walls”. The article talked about recent events at Hall and how the administration is handling the situation. There was an email sent home to families addressing the graffiti . The article went on to explain how the administration does not stand for this behavior and will continuously search for who did this. The school pointed out that if anyone needed to talk about the current situation they would provide resources to help. In the letter home to families the administration said, “As a Hall community, we are committed to creating an environment where every student feels safe, respected and supported”. 

The Schools administration has made it clear that this needs to be a community effort to make sure something like this does not happen again. Hall has already taken steps to prevent this from happening again. So far they have locked bathrooms, made every student sign out before using the restroom and posted teachers by bathrooms to see who goes in and out. A quote from the article states, “ensure students use the bathrooms wisely,” there will be increased monitoring by adults, and some bathrooms will be closed to use.” The recent events have not been taken well by the Hall community and it is clear the administration will not rest until they find who has done this.

From the administration side of the topic, on April 7, Hall principal Dan Zittoun wrote in an email to students saying “We want to reiterate, any member of our community who is found to be committing these acts will be held accountable, up to and including expulsion.” The Hall administration has been adament on ensuring culprits are held accountable. “Because of your vigilance in reporting, we have been able to eliminate all unacceptable graffitti, including a homophobic slur and religous imagery.”, Zittoun wrote in the same email. 

According to the Assistant Principal Sarah Issacs “Not that I know of.” She is talking about the vandalism since the email Dan Zittoun sent out a couple weeks ago. Then she started talking about the “need for just having adults and students know about it so people could come together and report on it.” This is a smart move by the administration, so that people are knowledgeable and able to talk about it and notice it in the community. Mrs. Issacs while talking about the vandalism said, “This is not going to happen here.” By this she means she doesn’t want the vandalism to continue at the hall and that this community has to try harder to prevent these sorts of things from happening again. 

A way they are trying to tackle this issue is by assembling a team of teachers to come together and find different ways of stopping the vandalism and making this school a safer place for everybody.

On the afternoon of April 8th our group of journalists went around asking our fellow peers about their thoughts on the recent vandalism that has been taking place.  We looked for a wide variety of students who would be affected by the recent bathroom shutdowns. 

We asked several different questions and for the most part every student had close to the same answer about the topic.  When asked the question “What are your thoughts on the recent vandalism that has been occurring at Hall?”, senior Anabel Dease (She/Her) responded by saying “I feel like the administration isn’t doing enough to actually figure out who did it.  They are just saying that they are and haven’t really done any action besides lock the bathrooms.”.  This response was relevant in every answer we received.  

As most of the vandalism that is being reported is in the boys bathroom we asked a male student another question about the issue. When asked “Have you personally seen any of the vandalism that has been occurring?”, a senior by the name Thomas Redden ( He / Him) had this to say.  “I actually have not seen anything, but I’ve seen many pictures and videos all over social media about this, and it’s just not okay.”  The Hall community is based on equality and a sense of community, but in recent events it seems we have gone down a different path and a couple students have spread a shadow over our school and harmed our reputation.  Our final question asked was “What do you think the punishment should be for the person found guilty of these actions?”.

When asked this question,senior Marie Moemeka said “I think maybe, removal from a sport they do They could be temporarily removed from their sports team or suspended, something like that”. 

Hall High School is a great school in most aspects but does have its flaws.  We hoped this article shed some light on the issues that arent as publicly spoken about.