A suspicious fire on Dec. 7 prompted a school-wide evacuation of Grant High School. But it wasn’t the only incident that took place. Social studies teacher Marta Repollet and some of her students spent hours decorating their classroom door for a competition among teachers days before. They arrived at school that morning, only to see most of their work torn down.

Irene Santiago-Chavez, 17, senior (pictured):“Originally when I saw it all torn down, I thought maybe they were just cleaning up. But a side of me also believed that it was vandalized…It’s really disappointing…We’ve all put (in) our hard work to represent something, whether it be something like Christmas or something cultural…It’s not very appreciative when someone tries to destroy our hard work...During that fire alarm, I did see like one person on the side, upset, crying, scared; like do you not realize how you are endangering and frightening other students of this school?”

Marta Repollet, teacher:“We came in that morning and we were…very upset. We thought we had been targeted because of the cultural theme of our door and that really made us even more upset, because you know, we’re here trying to contribute to the diversity of the school and to get that kind of response is kind of disillusioning. I just assumed it was just some random nonsense. It’s just negative.”