College campuses should be environments free of racism and hate, which is why recent anti-Semitic incidents on our own campus have been so shocking. The incident itself is deplorable and has no place on this campus. To see such vulgar acts of hate and ignorance exhibited within our own community should be shocking to us all. Yet our administration decided that it was not worthy to share these incidents with the greater campus community. The only reason most students outside of Sellery residence hall have now heard about the aforementioned incident is because of a few widely shared Facebook posts from earlier this week.
A Jewish student returned to their dorm Jan. 26 and found their door covered in pictures of swastikas and Adolf Hitler. The student reported the incident to the Hate and Bias Incident Team, which handled the rest of the investigation. From all accounts, it sounds as if the perpetrators viewed this action as a prank, and somehow due to either ignorance or naiveté, did not understand the impact of posting such images. Even though the action was meant as a prank it was still offensive to many students who heard about or saw the posted images.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where people feel the need to be offended about everything. But sometimes there are incidents that occur that we should be outraged about. While the student involved did not feel offended by the actions, others within the dorm and Jewish community on campus did. The administration failed to reach out to these students and did not seem to grasp how these students felt about the incident. The reality is that if these individuals in Sellery would not have shared their pictures, the greater campus, and more specifically the Jewish community, would never have known about this ignorant act. To me, it’s appalling that administration did not find it necessary to alert the campus about this occurrence.
By not informing the greater campus community, administration made the decision that this case wasn’t worthy of action. That’s wrong. It should not be the administration’s call to make, especially when the incident was so explicit. Obviously there were students who felt that administrators failed to truly deal with and engage with students who witnessed this action. For some reason that I cannot explain, those involved with the process did not find it necessary to engage with more than just the specifically targeted individuals. Our administrators engage with a variety of social justice causes on campus and it baffles me as to why this anti-Semitic incident was not taken more seriously. It’s their inconsistency on matters like this that’s concerning to me.
Administrators have decided to highlight certain social justice movements on this campus. It’s hard to find a multicultural event on campus where Lori Berquam or some member of the administration is not present. But, when an anti-Semitic incident happens, they are nowhere to be found and have only appeared since students exposed their blatant hypocrisy in this matter. I just don’t believe that if this was another oppressed group on campus that administration would have handled this incident so casually.
Ultimately, the administration failed the Jewish community on this campus. While isolated, the incident should have been a teaching moment for the entire campus community. The university would not be having this discussion right now if not for the Facebook posts that went viral over the past week. The response now from the university is necessary and appropriate. But the problem is that it came two weeks late and would never have occurred without students speaking up about the incident. The university and its administrators need to realize that they cannot pick and choose which social justice causes they are going to promote. Hopefully in the future the administrators will find ways to reach out to specific communities, especially when they are targeted by such ignorant and hateful actions.
Charlie is a senior majoring in journalism and economics. Do you agree with him that UW administrators handled this situation poorly? Should the university do more in the future when handling situations like these? Please send all comments, questions and concerns to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
