While Parker students finished up their E period classes on Tuesday, March 7, the students at Chicago Jewish Day School–a Jewish community just 5.4 miles away–evacuated their building after receiving a bomb threat. The Chicago police responded to a call at around 9am, and the school’s 200 pupils left the premises as surrounding roads were completely blocked off.

“I was very surprised that this kind of thing would happen to us,” Jake Aks, a sophomore at Jones College Prep and member of Emanuel Congregation, where Chicago Jewish Day School is located, said. “I heard other synagogues getting threats, but I never would’ve thought it would happen to mine. I had never thought about something happening so close to me, but now that it has, I know that there is definitely a possibility of more hate crimes and threats like this.”

790 miles across the country, just five days later on Sunday, March 12, the Louis S. Wolk Jewish Community Center in Rochester, New York was evacuated for the second time in less than a week after a bomb threat was reported. The JCC in Rochester was one of the many Jewish Community Centers to receive a bomb threat that Sunday, on the Jewish holiday of Purim.

“This is really scary, and I know that something like this could happen to any Jewish community,” Parker freshman Adele Lowitz, a member of Solel Congregation in Highland Park, said. “It’s ridiculous. We cannot let this happen anymore.”

There have been 35 anti-Semitic hate crime incidents in New York City this year–a 94% increase from the same time last year, according to the New York State Department.  And Jewish populations haven’t been the only minority groups targeted–in just the last weeks, mosques have been vandalized and set on fire; two men were attacked by an anti-gay, knife-wielding man; and a Sikh citizen in Washington state was shot in his own driveway.

“I have been seeing things and have wondered if Trump’s election has brought some more radical fringe types out of the woodwork who feel more emboldened or entitled to sharing their ideas of hate, if they feel that this is the moment,” upper school history teacher Kevin Conlon said. “As a history teacher, we talk about how hate has driven movements in the past, where you put your own people at the top, and everyone else is below.”

Conlon understands such hate crimes as important to Parker.  “Human rights and civil rights are a very important thing for us, and we talk about it in our classes, we see it in our Morning Ex’s,” Conlon said. “I imagine it’s an item of discussion in a lot of Parker families. I know there are a lot of Jewish families at Parker and there’s probably an awareness of hate crimes against Jewish community centers.”

When Obama took office in 2009, there were more than 200 incidents within the first two weeks of his presidency–the majority of them directed at African-Americans.  And yet this is just a fraction of the hate crimes that occurred in the aftermath of this year’s election, according to ATTN.

Ever since Donald Trump entered the White House, the number of hate crimes has spiked across the country. As white supremacists celebrated his victory in November, there were almost 900 reports of harassment and intimidation across the country in the ten days following the election, many of the harassers invoking Trump’s name during the assaults.

Lowitz said, “I think Trump’s presidency has increased hate crimes and triggered people to express their hateful thoughts that have translated into actual threats.”

On Friday, December 9,  Trump said he was surprised and saddened that his supporters were using racial slurs and making threats.  On November 22, he stated that he had no idea why white supremacists could have been “energized” by his campaign. In late February he asked for them to stop.  

“I would sure be glad if he would come out and make a statement condemning those people, but I feel like he’s not because he may alienate his base of support,” Conlon said.  “Maybe I’m being a cynical person saying that, but in the past, leaders and presidents have stood up and condemned acts against other groups.”

Lowitz agrees. “Trump needs to repair the damage he has caused and needs to let people know that this behavior is not okay,” she said. “The hateful rhetoric of his campaign has given a rise to these hateful crimes and threats. Until he takes responsibility, hate will continue to increase, and there will be a new sense of fear.”

But with this sense of fear comes a sense of responsibility, for some, to stand up to these hate crimes.

“Any group that is targeted,” Conlon said, “is an opportunity for everyone to say, ‘That’s not right, I’m going to attend a rally, I’m going to talk to my friends about it, write to my congressperson to ask what measures are we taking to protect vulnerable citizens or to improve security of everybody. Vigilance is important.”