Swastikas, racist messages found in Calif. college dorm
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Two students at a Northern California university scrawled swastikas and other hate speech in residence halls, the campus president said Thursday.
The swastikas were found Tuesday at two separate dormitories that mostly house first-year students at San Jose State University.
In the first incident, one of the students took name tags from doors, and post-it notes and formed a swastika on a door in a public area in Washburn Hall. He allegedly wrote an antisemitic message, and posted a photo of it on Snapchat, CBS San Francisco reported.
Next to one of the swastikas was scrawled “Admit One Jew,” President Mary Papazian said in a statement emailed to all students Thursday. She said police have identified the student responsible and “determined that this act, while bias-based, targeted no one in particular and is not by definition a hate crime.”
The other swastika was drawn on a white board in a common area of another dormitory. The white board was described to police by the student responsible as a “joke board,” said Papazian, adding that this incident remains under investigation and police were confident the two cases are not related.
“Very sad seeing that,” said SJSU student Natasha Sondeno to CBS SF. “Just for the fact that I came just for the diversity and seeing other people being so hateful to different races like that I, I’m not a big fan of that obviously. I don’t think anyone is.”
A university spokeswoman, Pat Harris, said the school was considering sanctions against the students that could result in expulsion.
Officials didn’t release the identities of the students involved to preserve student confidentiality, the statement said.
Papazian said she was disheartened and outraged by these “profoundly hurtful acts” but hoped the campus would learn from it.
“Together, we can use this difficult moment to grow and learn how to be a fully inclusive and welcoming community,” she said in her statement.