Swastika in Mizzou bathroom: Hoax or hate graffiti?

Skeptics questioned whether or not a swastika in a Mizzou bathroom was true. But it also became part of a discussion on how to combat anti-Semitism at US colleges and universities.

|
(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
A member of the black student protest group Concerned Student 1950 gestures while addressing a crowd following the announcement that University of Missouri System President Tim Wolfe would resign, at the university in Columbia, Mo. on Nov. 9. Few paid attention when a black student started a hunger strike at the University of Missouri to protest racial strife on campus. As soon as the football team supported that hunger strike by refusing to practice for or play in the school’s lucrative NCAA games, the university’s president and chancellor were forced out and changes were discussed.

In recent days, conservative media outlets have raised questions about the validity of reports that a swastika was scrawled on a bathroom wall with feces in a residence hall bathroom at the University of Missouri. 

Because the swastika graffiti was considered a tipping point for students, whose protests on campus this week led to the resignation of university President Tim Wolfe, there has been speculation as to whether or not the swastika is fact or fiction. 

Skeptics of the incident, such as The Federalist’s Sean Davis, say the lack of evidence suggests the swastika was a hoax.

“While a mere absence of evidence is not synonymous with evidence of absence, the complete lack of any verifiable photographic evidence of the alleged poop swastika and the lack of any named eye witnesses raises serious questions about the veracity of a racially charged incident of vandalism that eventually led to the resignation of the University of Missouri’s two top administrators,” Mr. Davis wrote Tuesday.

The swastika was first reported by Residence Halls Association president Billy Donley, who Davis claims made up the incident to fuel liberal campus activists.

But a police report filed on Oct. 29 by a campus police officer called to a residence hall on Oct. 24 at 2:12 am, could lay such speculation to rest. “A swastika was drawn on a restroom wall by an unknown subject with feces,” wrote the officer, whose identity is censored from the report.

Before the police report confirmed the swastika suspicions, many on the Mizzou campus felt they had reason to believe the reports after a similar incident occurred this spring. In April, Mizzou freshman Bradley Becker was charged with second-degree property damage motivated by discrimination, a felony, after he admitted to burning multiple swastikas on a ceiling stairwell with the words "You have been warned."

But Mizzou is not alone in experiencing such hate speech on campus. In a 2014 survey published by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Trinity College, 54 percent of Jewish college students felt subject to anti-Semitism on campus during a six-month period.

Trinity surveyed 1,157 self-identified Jewish students at 55 university and four-year college campuses. 

 The data suggest there is under-reporting of anti-Semitism through the normal campus channels. One reason might be a belief that the authorities are not sympathetic to such complaints; another perhaps might be fear of worrying parents and family; or that some students simply are unaware of the process for reporting such incidents.

“We’re in a period of hysteria about words and symbols and an inability to understand the context in which words and symbols are used,” Wendy Kaminer, a lawyer and free-speech advocate, told the New York Times. Some advocates and educators, such as Ms. Kaminer, argue that universities must foster conversations about potentially disturbing and hurtful material, to better prepare students for respectful relationships post-graduation.

Mark Auslander, an anthropology professor at Central Washington University, tells the New York Times that he agrees.

Universities exist, he says, to forge “enlightened citizens and moral leaders who have the capacity to listen to each other and arrive at reasoned judgments, and to understand the relationship between hate speech and free speech.” 

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old man accused of making online threats against black students and faculty at the University of Missouri campus in Columbia is scheduled to make his first court appearance.

The Associated Press reports that Boone County's chief sheriff's deputy, Maj. Tom Reddin, says Hunter M. Park of Lake St. Louis is scheduled to be arraigned about 1:30 p.m. Thursday. Park is charged with felony making a terroristic threat.

Material from the Associated Press was used in this story.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Swastika in Mizzou bathroom: Hoax or hate graffiti?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2015/1112/Swastika-in-Mizzou-bathroom-Hoax-or-hate-graffiti
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe