A California community is enraged after a photo of local high school students playing swastika beer pong went viral.
On Sunday, Mar. 3, several Snapchat screenshots began to surface on social media, featuring a collective of Newport Beach teenagers playing beer pong. But instead of the cups being placed in the traditional triangle formation, the high school students decided to shape their board in the form of a swastika. To add to their ignorance, they also posted a picture of them doing the Nazi Sieg Heil salute.
Despite the outrage, when one student was confronted about his part in the offensive photo, he expressed no remorse.
"My 9 yr old neighbor saw this on other kids accounts and showed her mom who showed the [grandma] and family," a person texted the party goer. "The [grandma] is crying because she lost all her family to the Holocaust... Hope u thought it was worth it."
"I did," the boy responded. "Sorry that [grandma] is overly emotional."
"I was completely appalled when I saw kids in my city laughing and having fun saluting Hitler around a big swastika," Jewish teenager Ava Ganz told the local ABC affiliate. "I couldn't just scroll past this on social media and let it happen. I decided to tweet out the picture. My tweet got attention quickly; people are outraged, rightfully so. I hope that one day these kids truly understand the deep hate they were displaying that night."
Now, members of the community are calling for the boys to be reprimanded by the school district for their actions. School district president Charlene Metoyer described it as a "serious situation."
"We have a concern both for the physical health of students who are underage drinking as well as the mental health of our students or their friends that thought this was an okay thing to do," Metoyer told CBS Los Angeles. "More should’ve been done to make sure the students recognize the severity of the symbols they were using. It is not something funny. It’s a very, very serious situation."
