The Hinesburg Police Department is investigating vandalism of student-made LGBTQ artwork at the town’s elementary school as a possible hate crime, the police chief said.
Hinesburg Police Chief Anthony Cambridge said about a dozen chalk drawings were defaced twice in the past week at Hinesburg Community School, which serves pre-K and K-8 learners.
The drawings were of Pride flags and other messages conveying support for LGBTQ rights made by students at Hinesburg Community School, police said.
Police are investigating the second incident, in which images were defaced sometime over the weekend with a dark, staining liquid. Officials estimate clean-up costs at $1,500.
In the first incident, during the school day on Friday, a pair of students were found trying to scuff out the images, according to an email sent to school staff from Hinesburg Community School administrators obtained by VTDigger. School administrators are handling that case.
According to the email, administrators believe a different set of students was involved on the weekend.
Cambridge said the department has identified three suspects in the case, but declined to say whether they are connected to the school.
He has pulled video from the scene and expects to make an arrest, or issue a citation, if the suspects are minors, “within the next couple of days.”
It’s unclear whether there may be any connections between the two events, he said, but “it’s concerning to me that there’s even two incidents in one week in the same location.”
The Pride flags and related LGBTQ images were chalked into the sidewalk and walls of the school by student volunteers, with staff supervision, “to show support for our entire HCS community,” according to an email sent on Tuesday from administrators to Hinesburg Community School families.
“In particular, the kids wanted to communicate that we embrace members of our LGBTQIA+ community,” administrators wrote in the email.
“Quite a few” images drawn by students in the display were not related to LGBTQ themes and were not vandalized, Cambridge said.
The department is investigating the weekend incident as a hate crime because of the targeted nature of defacement, he said.
“Any time an LGBTQ flag or anything of that nature is vandalized, it ups it to a hate crime,” Cambridge said.
Administrators contacted the Hinesburg Police Department shortly before noon on Sunday after discovering the liquid on the artwork, according to Cambridge.
Police believe the images were defaced sometime shortly after 5:30 Saturday evening, Cambridge said, according to a witness who saw the drawings intact around that time.
Cambridge said school officials’ $1,500 clean-up estimate includes calling someone in on Sunday to power-wash a brick wall that was stained by the dark liquid, plus other costs associated with clean-up materials and labor, which carried over into Tuesday.
Cambridge said school administrators didn’t want students to be hurt by seeing the vandalized artwork, and cleaned the sidewalk area as quickly as possible.
The drawings were on a sidewalk and wall by the southwest corner of the school, Cambridge said. They would be hard to spot for someone driving by, he said, but could be seen by a parent picking up or dropping off their child, or someone using the playground or tennis courts nearby.
In the email sent to staff, school administrators said “consequences have been assigned” to the students who defaced the artwork over the weekend, “and now our focus is on helping the two students learn from their actions.”
This incident comes on the heels of controversy involving a homophobic meme shared on Facebook by Al Barber, the fire chief of the Hinesburg Fire Department.
Barber issued an apology after meeting with the Hinesburg Selectboard. Barber later agreed to announce his retirement after a meeting with the town manager, but changed his mind the next day, according to emails between Barber and the town manager.
Hinesburg Community School administrators met with the student volunteers and their club advisers on Monday to give students the chance to share their feelings about the incident, according to the email sent to families.
On Monday afternoon, the school’s staff committee on diversity, equity and inclusion met to discuss the incident and potential next steps, administrators wrote. They also held an optional staffwide meeting Tuesday to discuss “healing and strengthening our school community.”
The Hinesburg Racial Equity Group, which includes some former students of Hinesburg Community School, said its members were devastated by the incident, and stressed that all families should feel safe and welcome in the town.
“We must all work to end hate in all forms,” the group wrote in an email to VTDigger. “This includes memes, microaggressions, vandalism, and violence.”
