High school senior Che Blair works on his homework during lunch. It's a distraction, but really because there’s only one thing classes at Newport Harbor High School are focusing on right now.

• Picture of Swastika formed from plastic cups at teen party has gone viral
• Incident has generated national headlines and widespread social media outrage
• Students involved have deleted social accounts as school district holds meetings to discuss incident

“We’ve been talking about it in class, teachers asking questions about it, what this means for our generation that we take things like this as a joke,” he said. 

He’s talking about a picture posted on social media over the weekend, showing students playing beer pong around a makeshift swastika, some even doing what appears to be the Nazi salute. As you can imagine – it’s gone viral.

Making it worse? “They put fake apologizes out, after they were like 'lol just kidding’,” said Blair. “When they posted that they definitely didn’t think it was going to lead to this."

This – meaning national headlines and widespread outrage on social media. So much backlash that Blair says many of the students involved deleted their own social media accounts.  

“I know a lot of those kids, they’re not Nazis, they don’t actually feel that way. They made a dumb joke, they weren’t thinking they made a bad lapse in judgement,” he said. 

It’s a lapse in judgment though that has a lot of people concerned. Just blocks away from the school, we spoke with a mom who has her own teenager.

“It starts at home. At my home, racism is not tolerated, bigotry is not tolerated. I’m shocked there are families who have not taught their students that,” mother Allie Carpenter said. 

“As time moves on, people become disassociated with history. People need to be more educated with what that symbol meant, what it caused,” Blair said. 

Now, amid the headlines about their school, students want to show that one bad picture shouldn’t ruin the reputation of the whole bunch.  

“For the students that do stand with the Jewish community, wear blue to show that we don’t feel the same way as the kids in that photo,” he said. 

An act of solidarity, as the school now turns its focus toward moving forward together, perhaps with more lessons on tolerance.   

Students say that those involved were not just from Newport Harbor, but three schools in the area. Newport-Mesa Unified School District is holding a meeting about the incident Monday night at 6:00 pm at Newport Harbor High School, and then another Thursday evening at 6:00 pm at Corona del Mar High School.