BOSTON – Students from the Arabic Club at Medford High in the city of Medford, about a 15-minute drive north of downtown Boston, planned a “World Hijab Day” early this semester. 

The annual event was created to promote awareness and understanding of Muslim women who wear the headscarf as an expression of their faith. 

Anyone interested, students or teachers, could participate by wearing a Muslim-style headscarf during the school day. The girls could wear a hijab, and boys could put on a turban. Then there would be an after-school assembly for discussion. 

But soon after Hijab Day was announced, the Medford public got wind of it. And there was a wave of phone messages, emails and social media posts directed at school and city officials. 

The volume — and the tone — of the backlash took high school headmaster John Perella by surprise. 

“There was a whole spectrum of responses, you know, from mildly concerned to, you know, people that completely got it wrong. They missed the whole boat, to what we were trying to do,” Perella says. 

Perella says he partly blames himself for not being more thoughtful about notifying the community well in advance of Hijab Day. 

Nearly all of the complaints about Hijab Day directed at the high school were made anonymously, Perella says. But some of them were apparently downright angry. There were accusations that the administration had agreed to allow Muslims to proselytize in school, which Perella says was simply not the case. 

Ninth-grader Sophia Chalabi is one of a handful of students at Medford high who wears a headscarf to school. 

Chalabi said she’s never been the target of direct discrimination in Medford. But there was an awkward moment at school in the days after the Paris attacks last year, when everyone took part in a minute of silence for the victims. 

“There were people in my homeroom looking at me, and I was like, ‘Really?’ Chalabi says. “Don’t look at me. I wasn’t there [in Paris].” 

The superintendent of schools in Medford, Roy Belson, says he liked the idea of Hijab Day, too. But the whole public relations fiasco was a reminder that it really matters how these sorts of events have to be handled by officials. 

It’s not clear if Hijab Day will be on the calendar at Medford High School again next year. But one thing that’s come out of the community dialogue already is a plan at City Hall to host an Iftar dinner one evening in June during the upcoming Muslim holy month of Ramadan.