A student taking classes in the University’s School of Architecture and Allied Arts found an anti-Semitic message taped to her locker Thursday morning, according to an e-mail sent Friday by the school’s dean.
The incident closely followed a similar one in the office of the campus Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Queer Alliance over the last weekend in January, in which someone entered the group’s office and spray-painted a swastika on the carpet and obscured the screens of a computer and a television with spray paint.
In an e-mail sent to architecture students in response to the incident, Dean Frances Bronet said the University’s Department of Public Safety and Bias Response Team were “actively investigating” the incident.
“I cannot emphasize enough how reprehensible this act is,” Bronet wrote. “We are committed to making certain that our students are not targeted and that no member of our community will become another victim of this hateful behavior.”
University spokesperson Phil Weiler said the University will not release information about the incident until DPS finishes investigating it.
“The e-mail from Frances was the information that we’re sharing at this point,” Weiler said, adding, “There’s not a lot to say until the Department of Public Safety finishes its investigation.”
Weiler said he did not know in which building the incident had happened. Neither he nor Bronet’s e-mail gave the exact wording of the message in question, calling it “a handwritten sign containing an anti-Semitic slur.”
Bronet encouraged students to contact DPS with questions or information about the incident. The Emerald’s inquiries to DPS were directed to the University Media Relations office.
Ari Goodblatt, a director at the University’s Jewish Student Union, said he doubted the two incidents within the space of a week were a sign of rising anti-Semitism at the University.
The two incidents come amid weeks of protests against the Pacifica Forum, a discussion group that has invited speakers who deny the Holocaust and express anti-Semitic views. Goodblatt suggested the controversy influenced those behind the two incidents.
“I just think it’s the people who have been doing it, whoever they are, feeling like it’s the time to do it,” Goodblatt said. He added: “They know they’ll get publicity.”
University senior Cimmeron Gillespie, one of the leaders of opposition to the Forum, called the incident Bronet’s e-mail described “horrible.”
“These acts and the Pacifica Forum share one major overlapping thing, and that is that they’re both part of the climate now on this campus that is becoming increasingly
worrisome,” he said.
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