Swastika discovered in Raymond, Residential Life responds

Aaron Biberstein Contributing Editor

Anita Varma Editor in Chief

A swastika was found on a first floor Raymond House wall last week. It was scrawled in pen and was discovered by a student Thursday, Feb. 9 around 3 p.m. This is the second instance of a swastika found on a dorm wall this year. On Nov. 23, students found three swastikas drawn on wall in Lathrop.
The student who discovered the Raymond swastika informed Abel McDonnell ’07, Raymond House president, of the symbol via e-mail.

“It’s terrible that it happened,” said McDonnell. “Whether its blatant racism or a sick joke doesn’t matter.”

Raymond House Advisor Laura Dicke was informed of the hate symbol by Raymond House Secretary Chloe Gutelle ’08. Dicke put a request for an emergency paint job to the Residential Operations Center (ROC) and Dicke called Campus Security. The ROC notified Buildings and Grounds (B&G) on Friday Feb. 10. Emergency service requests are supposed to be carried out within four business hours of receipt.

On Friday afternoon, McDonnell noticed that the racist symbol had not been removed. McDonnell met with Dicke who put in another service request, but the wall was not re-painted until Monday.
“The biggest issue here is the failure to respond,” said McDonnell. “The House advisor and staff of Res Life responded well, but somewhere between the ROC and B&G nobody bothered to put paint on the wall for four days. I hope they respond to future problems more quickly.”

Representatives from B&G could not be reached for comment.

Director of Residential Life Luis Inoa was troubled by recurrence of hate graffiti. “Its definitely concerning. I can think of few symbols that can have that kind of impact,” he said. “For [a swastika] to pop up twice on a small campus, in our houses too…this hurts the sense of security and safety you feel on campus.”

Residential Life is responding to the incident with the new “Not in My House” campain.

The campaign consists of posting signs and sending all-dorm e-mails when incidents of vandalism occur in the dorms.

“It’s not something that’s on-going, it’s more reactive,” said Inoa. “If something does happen, this way students will know that…we take these matters seriously. We want to take those icons seriously because we want students to take them seriously.”

The signs and e-mails distributed by the campaign will not be the same for every incident. Inoa noted that the signs will instead be specific to the kind of message that residents find objectionable or offensive.

Inoa explained that the signs would be specific to the incident. “[The signs would say] ‘In this house, this happened, and we will not tolerate it,’” said Inoa. “It’s very house-specific.”

While other colleges and universities have similar protocol concerning how to respond to acts like hateful messages on walls or vandalism with provocative icons, the new “Not in My House” campaign is Vassar-specific.

In terms of acts of harassment or violence between individual students, Inoa said that the Campus Life Response Team’s existing protocol for dealing with harassment will still be followed. The “Not in My House” campaign will be part of Residential Life protocol.

Inoa said that although the campaign consists of dorm-specific response to “bias-related incidents,” he foresaw the response being campus-wide. “We’re a very small community here,” said Inoa. “It’s not like the butterfly effect, where it takes a long time to feel the larger effect.”

In terms of student-involvement with the campaign, Inoa said students have been concerned about the vandalism in the dorms and have taken initiative by sending e-mails and organizing programs to respond.

“One thing that’s very unique, that I love about Vassar, is that [responding to acts of bias] is not just on ResLife,” said Inoa. “It’s a campus responsibility.”
Raymond House is also organizing a talk on racist iconography. The discussion will take place on Thursday, Feb. 16 at 8 pm in Raymond Parlor.