Gettysburg College Trustee Bob Garthwait Wore Nazi Costume, Resigns After Yearbook Photo Surfaces

Bob Garthwait, trustee on the board of Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania, resigned Tuesday after a photo of him wearing a Nazi uniform during his college days surfaced online.

The photo was published in the 1980 Gettysburg College yearbook and was dug up by college student Cameron Sauers, a history major, who was going through the college archives as part of his research. The picture showed Garthwait donning the military uniform – with swastikas on his sleeves - at a fraternity event with "Hogan's Heroes" TV show theme, as he posed with a group of friends.

After the student newspaper, the Gettysburgian, published the image, Gettysburg College President Janet Morgan Riggs sent out an email to the student community, informing them that Garthwait decided to step down from the board of trustees and that the institute did not condone such behavior. The mail also included a statement from Garthwait, expressing his regret and embarrassment at having worn the uniform.

"My sincere hope is that our current students will learn from my poor judgment 38 years ago and be more thoughtful than I was about the impact of their actions on others. I extend my sincere apologies to the entire Gettysburg college community, and I humbly ask for your forgiveness,” his statement read.

He added that as a college sophomore, he "was not fully aware of the significance of those symbols."

Riggs said that she was made aware of the photo Sunday and immediately organized a meeting with the students involved in the publication of Gettysburgian the very next day. "Anti-Semitism clearly contradicts our values as an institution today, as it did when this photo was taken," Riggs said.

The disgraced trustee was the founder of the Garthwait Leadership Center on the college campus and had made several financial donations to the institution over the years. After learning about the photo, Gettysburg College Judaic studies professor Stephen Stern said he had urged the administration to return Garthwait’s money.

"The longer we hang onto the money, the longer and more conflicted the story becomes," Stern said.

Most of the college students expressed shocked after finding out about the photo from the college newspaper. “A name that’s pretty prominent around campus, I was shocked and not real happy about it,” said a student named Matthew Siegler, Fox43 reported. “The fact that’s it’s associated with leadership and building future leaders for our country and our campus, to have somebody who had his picture taken in that situation is a little bit shocking.”

Sophomore Hannah Labovitz told local newspaper Bluefield Daily Telegraph that Garthwait's resignation proved that the board of trustees took the matter seriously. "It wasn't just him — it was the school that allowed this to be in the yearbook and there were zero complaints when it was allowed to be published," Labovitz said Tuesday.

The news comes weeks after Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam faced backlash over a photo in his medical school yearbook which showed two students – one wearing a blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan costume. A few days later, the state's attorney general, Mark Herring, stepped forward to say that he had dressed in blackface in college.