BY ALEXANDER ROLLE

In print | September 4, 2008

An offensive message was left outside the dorm room of a Palestinian student on Monday. The student, who wishes to remain anonymous, said that he discovered the slur written on the whiteboard outside his door at around nine in the morning.

He posted a request below the message asking the author of the comment to come discuss it with him, but the only response he received was another offensive comment.

The student who was the target of this attack feels that it was racially rather than politically motivated. The comment did not attack his viewpoints but his race: “This was an attack on who I am, what I was born into, who I’m proud to be,” he said.

It also challenged his image of the Swarthmore community. “It definitely changed what I think of Swat. I’d never felt this secure before, living in Palestine … but now I feel more threatened.”
Along with disgust toward the racial aspect of the act, many students reflected on its significance in relation to the college. “It just goes against everything the school stands for, including having a meaningful dialogue,” Sven David Udekwu ’09 said.

As part of Swarthmore’s commitment to this campus-wide dialogue on issues of diversity, the Intercultural Center was founded in 1992. Rafael Zapata, Assistant Dean and Director of the IC, was appalled by such an “atypical” display of discrimination at the school. “At Swarthmore, we do not shy away from difficult situations, especially here at the IC. Differences of opinion can be a wonderful opportunity for learning, as long as they’re open and respectful,” he said. “This kind of expression though is cowardly, absolutely cowardly.”

Some have used the term “hate crime” to characterize this incident. In many ways it resembles hate crimes that occurred several years ago, mainly targeting homosexual students on campus, as documented in “Sager fund turns 20 with ‘Boundaries of Queer,’” in the March 27, 2008 edition of The Phoenix. While hate crimes of that sort have since become much less prevalent, many have said that racism against people from the Arab world, and particularly against Palestinians, has received less attention on campus than other forms of discrimination.

Sarah Brajtbord ’11 is one of the founders of Free Palestine, a new student group on campus. Referring to the political controversy between Palestine and Israel she said that “the dialogue on these issues has been really quiet, almost non-existent. We’ve been trying to get the conversation going again. There’s been a pretty strong influence of pro-Israeli groups recently. What has been said has been pretty one-sided.”

While acknowledging that the Israeli-Palestine topic is not discussed as often as it should be, Zapata said, “Some of the most compelling dialogue has come from within the Jewish community.” While many students expressed their horror at this kind of intolerance at Swarthmore, some thought it might have been a drunken joke, especially given that the comment was probably written in the early hours of Monday morning. Joking or not, the comment left many appalled. “It is a big deal. Whether he [the author of the slur] thought it was amusing or not, it was hateful,” Rayan Khan ’10 said.

Along with the attempted assault of a female student living in Willets, many students are finding their impression of the security and openness of the Swarthmore community being challenged. “Coming into Swarthmore you don’t expect that kind of thing,” Augusta Christensen ’11 said.

Others were less surprised by a show of discrimination at Swarthmore. “It doesn’t surprise me at all. This is a place where if you deviate from the accepted thought, you will be discriminated against. Yeah we all look different, but after a while you hear people saying the same things,” Shaun Kelly ’10 said. “In a place that puts so much emphasis on ideas, diversity of thought has definitely been lacking.”

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