It didn't take long, however, for students and school employees to spring into action to counter the graffiti attack. As the janitorial staff worked to remove graffiti, students in teacher Dan Stowe's world history class, working with students in Jenny Evans' art classes, put up banners on the outside of the school to cover the areas.

Students at Northport were crestfallen when they arrived for classes last Thursday morning to discover obscene graffiti on school building walls.

“We didn’t want the little kids going out to recess to see that stuff, so we put a banner up there first,” said junior Brayton Farr. While he was happy to help, he and fellow students Sophia Mosher, Jason Holland, Rose Petoskey, Betsy Shiner and Hans Muller were mystified about the attack on their school.

“It was really unexpected. I was very upset that someone did this to my school,” Farr added. Petoskey asked the same question that was on the minds of many students.

“Why would anyone do this?” said Petoskey. “It’s especially upsetting that it might be a student or students at our school who did this.”

The students who were discussing the incident in class recalled that long banners in support of Northport had just been created and used when the school hosted a Class D District basketball tournament a few weeks ago. The first location a banner was installed was the wall facing the school playground.

The students also used banners created by art students. In all, four banners were put on the school walls.

Shiner said she didn’t think it was students from another school district who committed the crime. “I can’t think of any event that has happened that would cause someone from another school to do this,” she said.

Petoskey emphasized that it isn’t a reflection of how everyone behaves at Northport. “This is not the entire school, it’s a small group. This has been shocking and upsetting,” she said.

“This is a good school,” Farr added.

The students were also concerned about how the incident would be presented in the media. Recent reports about the theft of money collected from ticket sales at the District championship game that happened two weeks ago were viewed as negative by the students. They said it seems like good news that occurs at Northport Public School often is published in the back sections of newspapers, while more negative news frequently makes the front pages.

Though the banners came down on Monday and the graffiti has been scrubbed and sandblasted away, students said putting up banners was one way for them to fight back. “We wanted to put out a positive message about our school,” said Farr.

Superintendent Tyrus Wessell said Tuesday morning the students were leaders in the effort to turn a bad situation into a positive. “Seeing our students do something like this makes me glad to be part of this community,” he said.

As of Tuesday morning, there were no traces of the graffiti left on the school’s walls. Wessell said through donations of private funds, the district may offer a reward for anyone who provides information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those who committed the crime. The details were not finalized on the reward offer as of Wednesday morning.

Stowe said it wasn’t difficult to guide the students in their efforts to take action. “These are all really good kids who wanted to do something to make the situation better,” he said.