High school incident sparks national attention

Student’s turban set on fire; Sikh group demands action

By Anthony Coppola and Vic Monaco, Staff Writers
   HIGHTSTOWN — A national Sikh organization is calling upon the East Windsor Regional School District to take immediate action after a 16-year-old student’s turban was set ablaze during a fire drill last week.
   Schools Superintendent Ron Bolandi says confidential aspects of the incident lead district officials to believe the act was not hate-related but the penalty handed out to the alleged assailant was “extremely harsh.”
   ”The student has been dismissed from school and will not be permitted to participate in any school functions. He is gone forever,” he said at Monday’s school board meeting.
   Garrett Green, 18, a senior at Hightstown High School, was charged by borough police May 5 with arson and criminal mischief, according to police. Mr. Green allegedly lit the victim’s turban on fire with a cigarette lighter while he was wearing it. The victim was not injured, according to police. The Sikh Coalition, based in New York City, issued a press release Monday recommending the high school conduct an assembly to explain to the student body what happened, include information about Sikhs in its social studies curriculum and have teacher-led discussions regarding the issue in homeroom periods.
   Neha Singh, advocacy director and staff attorney for the coalition, said Monday that the group has been “interacting a lot” with district officials since the incident.
   ”Essentially the response from the school has been encouraging,” she said. While he said he doesn’t think the recent incident was hate-related, Mr. Bolandi says more needs to be done to educate the community about ethnic and racial tolerance, especially in the wake of several incidents of hate vandalism.
   ”The community has got to raise hell about this,” he said Monday. “For example, we have kids wearing confederate flags in the school district. I have to stop throwing kids out of school who do these things and their parents tell me they didn’t really mean it.”
   Mr. Bolandi said, generally speaking, local leaders are fearful of publicly discussing such issues because of the “stigma” it can attach to a community. East Windsor Mayor Janice Mironov said she is not concerned with a stigma but about striking the right “balance” in reacting to such incidents. “I’m not about hiding it or unwilling to confront or address it,” she said. “But to the degree that that the goal of the individual is attention, too much focus potentially can serve to increase the incidents or encourage the behavior.”
   For much more on this, please turn to Friday’s edition of the Herald.