Re: After investigation, Hanover police contest Beilock’s announcement of swastika
Last year, a swastika was found drawn on a desk in my high school calculus classroom. While it upset me, I did not feel particularly targeted as a Jewish student, nor did I feel it was an act of antisemitism; I just thought it was someone being intensely stupid and ignorant.
Now, the drawing of a giant swastika outside of a Jewish student’s dorm room is an entirely different story. There is no question of the intense antisemitism that motivated this act, nor whether it was targeted: it was smack-dab outside a Jewish student’s dormitory door.
The horror of the first antisemitic vandalization is why I am so concerned by the administration informing students that there was a second swastika drawn outside of a Jewish student’s room seemingly without proper confirmation. Antisemitism is a form of bigotry that feeds off of misinformation, victimhood mindsets and scapegoating; I am genuinely concerned that due to these false claims, the Jewish community at Dartmouth will fall into a boy-who-cried-wolf cycle.
It is true that nowadays, some claim antisemitism when it is not present, particularly when it comes to the discussions of Israel. It is also true that antisemitism is alive and well, and our liberal-arts-Ivy-League bubble is not immune to what has often been called the oldest form of hatred.
We have to be willing to hold both: the fact that a gross act of antisemitism occurred on our campus directly targeting a Jewish student and that we must be extra careful when it comes to this particular form of hatred to not mistakenly call things antisemitic when they aren’t. If we do, I truly fear that Jewish students at Dartmouth will come under further attack.
Letters to the editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
