Swastikas and other offensive graffiti were spotted at Lebanon High School and Seven Oak Middle School last week.

This is not acceptable.

Swift action was taken by both schools in dealing with the vandalism.

At Seven Oak, principal Ed Sansom said a maintenance worker cleaned up the vulgar drawings and words before he could even see them.

We hope it was also cleaned up before students could see it.

Lebanon High School was a different story. The damage was more extensive, with swastikas, "ICP" references and vulgar pictures found on the stands in Heath Stadium, in the shot-put circle near the southeast entrance ticket booth, on both ticket booth structures, in the school parking lot and more.

Police and school officials believe this happened over night, sometime early morning on Sept. 29. Most was cleaned up by the morning.

However, according to a Corvallis High School parent (see letter below), not all graffiti was cleaned up. Parents and students who were at the stadium for a freshmen football game were greeted by a swastika in the shot-put circle near the main ticket booth at the southeast end of the field.

This was two days after school officials believed that all of the graffiti was cleaned up.

On Oct. 5, two Lebanon Express staff members visited the southeast entrance to see if the swastika was still there. What remained was a white and pink colored backward swastika that was slightly visible. A box had been drawn around the swastika with sidewalk chalk to make it look like the square had purpose. The words "Go LHS" and "Win big" had been written in each quarter section of the box.

It was a clever way to cover up the graffiti, if the white and pink swastika behind it was no longer visible.

Unfortunately it was.

We brought this to the attention to Bo Yates, Lebanon High School principal on Oct. 5 and within hours paint solvent was poured on it and it was scrubbed with a wire brush.

Because the graffiti was done in spraypaint, the outline of it was still somewhat visible on Tuesday morning. A special sand blasting machine will have to be used on the paint and Yates said Tuesday morning it would be brought out as soon as possible.

The district's quick response to the graffiti is commendable, but they cannot clean up what they don't know is there.

Yates did not know who put the box around the swastika. Most likely it was someone who spotted the swastika and tried to cover it up on their own. The chalk outline may have worked at first, but after the rainy weekend the box started to fade while the spraypaint did not.

We urge the community to immediately report any and all vandalism to the Lebanon Police Department.

From there, officers can get in touch with the owner of the property and the graffiti can be taken care of quickly.

If the Oct. 1 graffiti had been reported when the Corvallis parents had witnessed it, we believe it would have been taken care of just as quickly as the other vandalism throughout the district.

The community is the eyes and ears of the police department. Lebanon needs to take a stand against graffiti and report vandalism and suspicious activity immediately.