Originally published in print in April 2026. View print issues here.

Recap

This school year, several incidents on campus have prompted discussion about Branham and placed it in the spotlight of international news outlets.

On Sept. 19, 2025, Branham went into shelter in place during fourth period, and first responders assisted with a medical emergency after a student reportedly fell from a two-story science building. Principal Beth Silbergeld sent out an email soon after the shelter in place was lifted, reassuring students and parents that the individual who required medical attention was stable, discouraging the spread of rumors as well as offering mental health resources. There were no other official statements made about the situation from administrators.

Less than three months later, Branham gained notoriety nationwide after students formed a Nazi swastika symbol with their bodies on the football field on Dec. 3 and posted a picture of it on Instagram, captioned with Hitler’s Reichstag speech.

As the post circulated quickly online, news of the incident spread to students, friends and family overnight.

It wasn’t long before media organizations picked up the news. The Jewish News of Northern California covered it as well as many other outlets, including The New York Post, Reuters, NBC News, ABC News, The Guardian, The Times of Israel, The Los Angeles Times, SF Gate and The San Francisco Chronicle.

Elected officials like Senator Dave Cortese commented on the situation. In the same week, the sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live (SNL) parodied the situation during its “Weekend Update” segment.

Amidst the headlines, Branham students led a walkout in support of students who were affected by the antisemitic incident. NBC Bay Area aired a segment about the walkout.

The incident also spurred misinformation spread by news site JFEED, which published a story online naming “District Superintendent Kristen Coniaris,” “ADL regional director Sara Goldschmidt” and “council chair David Pine”  — none of these people exist or are on the board of the Campbell Union High School District.

In February, a video spread online of an administrator on campus saying a racial slur during a confrontation with students. The administrator has not been seen on campus since the incident.

The video was featured on local news outlets like NBC Bay Area and KRON 4, and it did not reach national news.

Impact:

For some Branham students, simply mentioning their school sparks questions about incidents that occurred on campus this school year and circulated widely outside the Branham community: a student who fell near the science building, the formation of a human Nazi swastika and a widely circulated video involving an administrator.

Oftentimes, with little confirmed information — such as in the case of Branham’s shelter in place after a student reportedly fell from a two-story building — people speculate about what happened and try to fill in the gaps of the story.

While representing Branham at the Santa Clara Valley Model United Nations conference, junior Alex Wray was approached by a student from a different school who recognized Branham from the incident.

“He said, ‘Oh, is that the school where the girl jumped?’” Wray said. “That’s kind of alarming to know that’s what people recognize when they hear Branham.”

Wray’s experience exemplifies how incidents on campus have influenced the way others perceive the school. Students report that the topic of widely publicized and recognized incidents often surface off campus, where students may stand out due to their affiliation with the school.

For some, these interactions create a sense of discomfort or hesitation when identifying where they go to school, even if their personal experiences on campus have been positive. Wray explained that these conversations can feel especially uncomfortable when they involve sensitive incidents.

During the same conversation with the student at the Model United Nations conference, Wray tried to change the subject.

“For the privacy [of the student who fell], it’s just very strange to bring up,” Wray said. “I tried to steer away from the topic and talk about other things related to the debate.”

Similarly, Branham’s reputation has also followed junior Maurvi Pathak outside of school and affected how others perceive the environment at Branham.

“After the antisemitic [swastika] incident, I had a friend from Leigh text me, and she was very disturbed about it,” Pathak said. “She’s like, ‘I had no idea that the culture was like that.’”

Additionally, people have reacted to seeing Branham on TV.

“We’ve gotten so much media attention,” Pathak said. “I was at work the other day, and my boss told me they saw our school on SNL, so that’s not really the best rep[utation] to have.”

Freshman Gal Aicler, who is a Jewish student, observed a shift in the atmosphere at Branham following the Nazi swastika incident.

“I felt like it was not a safe place to be,” Aicler said. “More people were thinking of who’s Jewish and pointing it out.”

Wray adds that Branham has a special place in his heart, but the school’s reputation has changed the way he talks about it.

“I love my school, and I love going here, but it did change how I tell people [that I go to Branham],” Wray said. “I only tell them when they really insist on asking, and I try to refrain.”

In addition to the Nazi swastika incident, information about the assistant principal uttering a racial slur spread quickly. Freshman BeAnte Amare, who is a member of the Black Student Union, thinks the back-to-back incidents have exacerbated Branham’s negative image.

“Especially coming back from the swastika stuff, different schools look at Branham as this bad high school, but if they come here, they’ll see it’s very welcoming and a nice school,” Amare said.

Additionally, social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have accelerated the circulation of information, amplifying reactions. NBC Bay Area posted a segment of their news report about the administrator saying the racial slur on TikTok, where it gained over 1.4 million views and 75,200 likes.

“I got sent the video almost five minutes after it happened because so many people have access to Instagram,” Pathak said.

Some students, such as Amare’s friend from Leigh, have become hesitant about attending Branham after hearing about the Nazi swastika and racial slur incidents.

“I was hanging out with my friends one day because they were thinking of transferring to Branham, and they were telling me how they don’t want to go to Branham anymore because it’s a very bad school because of those incidents,” Amare said. “I try to tell them Branham is still a great school, but it’s just those two incidents that make it bad.”

Aicler knows a student who chose not to transfer to Branham due to the Nazi swastika incident.

“One of my friends is in a private school but wanted to change [to Branham], but when his mom found out about this swastika, he didn’t change,” Aicler said.

Pathak observed that other schools in the district didn’t receive as much or any media attention for other recent incidents, such as drug overdoses. She theorizes that Branham’s repeated media coverage is a result of having already stepped in the spotlight of news outlets during the Nazi swastika incident.

“It’s really not just Branham,” Pathak said. “This is part of a much larger, systematic problem. Some schools get recognized far more for it, and I think that we’re one of those schools that are in that unfortunate zone of reoccurring incidents.”

Principal Beth Silbergeld addressed the video of the administrator saying the racial slur in an email sent to parents on Feb. 25, where she provided context for the incident, shared that the San Jose Police Department determined there was no evidence for assault or hate crime and added that Branham takes “incidents involving racial slurs, disrespect toward staff, and the recording of individuals without consent very seriously.” No other official statements regarding the video were made by administrators.

One day after information about the incident first began to circulate, Pathak witnessed her classmate say the n-word. Pathak emphasizes the importance of acknowledging and openly addressing issues in order to help students understand the impact of their actions.

“High school is [a place] where a lot of people’s morals solidify, and I think that really carries with you through adulthood if you’ve seen people persist with an action and face no consequences,” Pathak said.

Branham Pride:

Branham students say their sense of school pride has shifted following recent media coverage of incidents involving their campus and community.

Junior Alex Wray expressed that the heightened attention has created a depiction of Branham that does not fully reflect students’ experiences. However, it has also changed how some students view their own community.

“It’s not a bad school,” Wray said. “But a lot of things have happened in rapid succession that have made it seem a lot more dangerous and not accepting and hateful than it actually is.”

Wray described that before the recent coverage, Branham’s reputation seemed fairly ordinary within the community.

“I would have described it almost as minimal,” Wray said. “There wasn’t anything crazy awesome or out of the ordinary about Branham.”

The recent headlines created a complicated mixture of pride and disappointment for some students. Sophomore Parker Higley, an active member of ASB, has remained closely connected to school events and student life, even as perceptions of Branham have shifted.

“I’m still a proud Branham Bruin as an ASB student,” Higley said. “But I am ashamed and a little astonished that those things happen at our school, and it definitely changes my perspectives.”

Higley explained that while the incidents have been difficult to process, they have not completely diminished his connection to the school. Instead, he said it reshaped how he views Branham’s identity.

“I still have pride in my school despite what happened because I know that there’s a lot of good that goes on in the school,” Higley said.

Principal Beth Silbergeld explained that the focus on negative incidents often overshadows positive aspects of the school’s community.

“[There are] amazing things that happened at this school that no one knew about,” Silbergeld said. “It’s unfortunate that what goes noticed by larger media are situations that are really terrible.”

As students try to move on from these news making headlines, Higley said that the good things that happen on campus outweigh the unexpected events that have happened.

“I was really surprised to see it at my school. I am pretty happy with the other students that walked out and spoke up about it,” Higley said. “It doesn’t represent our school as a whole, and I think there’s a lot of good that happens at the school that should be noticed.”

Reactions:

As information about the events at Branham has spread, people have responded with mixed reactions.

Many students, including sophomore Parker Higley, were contacted by concerned family members.

“They heard about it, and they don’t even live in California,” Higley said. “My barber had actually heard about me speaking out during a walkout and thought I was an activist.”

Higley led a chant during the Branham walkout in support of Jewish students after the Nazi swastika incident, shouting “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community. No hate.”

Many students’ reactions about the antisemitic incident were shocked, but more students like Higley were blindsided by the outpour of news coverage that covered the incident.

“I was surprised that those things happened at my school,” Higley said. “It’s not something that you see super often, and definitely not something that makes national, local or even international news.”

Principal Beth Silbergeld expressed that it is her job to make sure incidents like these are handled so they do not happen again.

While future families coming to Branham might worry about the student culture, Silbergeld said that these one-off incidents on campus do not represent Branham as a whole school.

“Future and current students need to understand this is a very large campus with over 1,800 students and more than 120 adults that work across the campus, so lots of different experiences take place daily,” Silbergeld said.

A parent who requested anonymity said over text message that adults need to teach students the right thing to do.

“Kids make mistakes. It’s their job to make mistakes, and it is the adult’s job to teach them how to correct the mistake with compassion and empathy, so hopefully one day, they will become useful members to their community,” the parent wrote.

Despite the prevalence of the rumors and international media coverage, the parent said that the incidents are not a cause for concern for the near future of Branham as a school.

“I was surprised that the [social media post] actually made it into the mainstream media,” the parent said. “I thought it was unnecessary because whilst it seems significant to the school and its members, I did not feel it was that significant to a large city such as San Jose.”

Although opinions regarding appropriate punishment for the students involved with the Nazi swastika post were mixed, the parent was satisfied with the way Campbell Union High School District conducted its investigation.

“The actions of those students were offensive and hurtful to others within the Branham High School community,” the parent said. “But, those students are young minds and their actions are a consequence of their upbringing and environments.”

Additionally, in an interview with NBC Bay Area addressing the video of a confrontation between an assistant principal and students, parent Vanessa Grijalva suggested that teachers should receive more education about handling situations like the one in the video more appropriately. Silbergeld said that administrators would hear those suggestions and head into the summer.

“I’m definitely going to be really thoughtful about what our professional development looks like next year as well as our continued work for this year as a staff,” Silbergeld said. “We’re not going to wait until next year [in] developing skills to strengthen our cultural consciousness.”

Illustration by Kailey Fu/Bear Witness