Anti-Armenian drawing at Winchester High School prompts two students to take action
Posted on June. 21. 2024
BY LILLIAN AVEDIAN
On May 30, high school juniors Alex Kebadjian and João-Cameron Hopkinson delivered a presentation to their peers at Winchester High School in Massachusetts about why, in Kebadjian’s words, Mount Ararat is “more than just a mountain” for Armenians.
The presentation was the culmination of several steps taken by the students to repair the harm inflicted by an anti-Armenian incident on campus two months earlier.
On March 28, Kebadjian was leaving his morning class, when a classmate stopped him to point out a drawing on the whiteboard. “Look at that. What do you think about that?” Kebadjian recalls the classmate saying.
A mountain drawn in marker had a Turkish flag hoisted on its peak and the words “Ararat (In Turkey)” scribbled above it. In large, block letters, “ARMO” was written at the top of the whiteboard, along with “WELCOME Armos” further down with an exclamation mark and smiley face.
“I was surprised. It didn’t feel good. I felt kind of attacked, I guess. There was no sense in what he did,” Kebadjian told the Weekly.
While it was not the first time that this student had targeted Kebadjian for his Armenian identity, the drawing was an unexpected escalation. Kebadjian says that this student had teased him for months, deploying the term “Armo,” short for “Armenian,” in a derogatory manner and making light of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. This included jokes about Kebadjian’s family specifically, who descend from genocide survivors, including Karnig Panian, Kebadjian’s great-grandfather and author of the genocide memoir Goodbye, Antoura.
The teasing especially struck a nerve with Kebadjian, considering his deep involvement in his local Armenian community. He graduated from St. Stephen’s Armenian Elementary School in Watertown, Massachusetts, where he attends church every Sunday. He is also a member of the Armenian Youth Federation and spends his summers at Camp Haiastan.
“I come home and speak Armenian with my parents and grandparents. It always plays a big role in my life personally. My life is built around the Armenian community, and I think it’s going to stay like that,” he shared.
After a friend of Kebadjian reported the incident to the school administration, the student responsible for the drawing eventually came forward. The Winchester High School administration took prompt action, suspending the student. It reported a “possible hate incident” to the Winchester Police Department, and the school’s Dean of Student Life launched an internal investigation.
According to a formal report from the Winchester Police Department, the student told the administration that they had “no intention of being hateful towards others and was drawing it for students who were with” them.
“At this time no students have come forward stating they are threatened by the writings on the whiteboard,” the police report reads. The Winchester Police Department stated that there are “no charges pending” but forwarded the incident to the Director of Racial Justice Initiatives at the Middlesex District Attorney’s Office.
In a forthright message shared with students and their families, Winchester High School Principal Dennis Mahoney called the “hateful graffiti directed towards the Armenian community…unequivocally unacceptable.” “Winchester High School has zero tolerance for hate speech, hate symbology and or acts of bigotry in any format, period, and we condemn hate speech, hate symbology and acts of bigotry of any kind in the strongest terms possible,” Mahoney said.
The administration then approached Kebadjian and Hopkinson, who are co-officers of the school’s World Cultures Club, and asked them to organize a presentation about the significance of Mount Ararat to the Armenian community. According to Hopkinson, the administration said it is “worried that there is a growing trend of hatred, and we want to educate people about this so it doesn’t happen again.”
In the presentation, which the students called “Armenian Day of Awareness,” they explained that the “graffiti depicted a mockery of the sacred Mt. Ararat, demeaning it with a Turkish flag (making fun of the Turkish seizure of this biblical site in Armenia). It also contained a hateful Armenian slur written twice on the board, which is commonly used to demean Armenian-Americans.”
The presentation, which the school’s Armenian club helped craft, described Mount Ararat as a “sacred national symbol for Armenian heritage and aspirations” and a “symbol of the centuries long journey for independence.” It summarized the history of the Armenian Genocide, its continued denial by Turkey and advocacy efforts for genocide recognition.
The drawing is the latest in a series of anti-Armenian incidents targeting Armenian schools and churches. In September 2023, a note reading “Artsakh is Dead” and “Karabakh is Azerbaijan” was found on the community board at Kebadjian’s church, St. Stephen’s Armenian Apostolic Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. In July 2020, KZV Armenian School in San Francisco was vandalized with hateful, pro-Azerbaijan graffiti. Previously in January 2019, two private Armenian school campuses in Los Angeles were draped with Turkish flags.
This experience has been transformative for Kebadjian and Hopkinson. They are both still grappling with the complicated emotions triggered by the drawing.
“This was the first incident of this nature that I’ve witnessed, such a direct action of hate,” Hopkinson reflected. “It’s been pretty eye-opening. It’s been an unfortunate situation, but I’m glad we’ve been able to make the most out of a bad situation and educate people.”
“You hear stories about things like this a lot, lots of hate crimes on the news, but actually being on the receiving end is a completely different situation. It’s a lot more intense. I’m glad we were able to turn it around and do something positive with a bad situation,” Kebadjian concluded.