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Police Investigate Attacks on Muslim Students at Two Universities Campuses Confront Hostile Acts Against Minorities After Donald Trump’s Election
(about 5 hours later)
Officials at universities in California said the police were investigating two attacks on Wednesday against female Muslim students, with officials describing one of the episodes as a “hate crime.” The fliers depicting men in camouflage, wielding guns and an American flag, appeared in men’s restrooms throughout Texas State University: “Now that our man Trump is elected,” they said. “Time to organize tar and feather vigilante squads and go arrest and torture those deviant university leaders spouting off that diversity garbage.”
The attacks, coming the day after the nation voted to elect Donald J. Trump, underscored the criticism he had faced throughout his presidential campaign from opponents who said his harsh anti-Muslim language was emboldening extremists. A year after students at campuses nationwide pushed for greater sensitivity toward cultural differences, the distribution of the Texas State fliers was just one of several episodes this week suggesting that the surprise election of Donald J. Trump is provoking a round of backlash on campuses.
On Wednesday night, San Jose State University police said in a campuswide email that they were investigating an attack against a female student. A man had approached her from behind earlier in the afternoon and pulled at her hijab, choking her and throwing her off balance, the email said. At the same time, universities are trying to address more generalized fears about the country’s future, organizing campus meetings and counseling sessions and sending messages to students urging calm.
“He caused me to choke, and my back arched,” the student, 19-year-old Esra Altun told NBC Bay Area on Thursday. “I tried to pull away from him. I fell on my knees. He didn’t say anything. He ran away as I hit the floor.” “A lot of Muslim students are scared,” said Abdalla Husain, 21, a linguistics major at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who is of Palestinian ancestry. He said some Muslim students on campus were afraid to go outside. “They’re scared that Trump has empowered people who have hate and would be hostile to them.”
No arrests have been made, but the investigation is ongoing, school spokeswoman Pat Harris said in an emailed statement. At San Jose State University in California, a Muslim woman complained that she had been grabbed by her hijab and choked. The police are investigating.
“We are, of course, very concerned that this has occurred on our campus,” she said. “No one should experience this kind of behavior at San Jose State.” At Wellesley College in Massachusetts, alma mater of Hillary Clinton, two male students from nearby Babson College drove through campus in a pickup truck adorned with a large Trump flag, parked outside of a meeting house for black students, and spat at a black female student, according to campus black student organizations.
The San Diego State University police said they were investigating a similar attack, which they described as a “hate crime.” After being ejected by the campus police, the two students bragged in a video that was widely viewed over social media.
A student who was wearing a traditional garment and a hijab reported that while she was walking to her car, two men — one white and one Hispanic — confronted her and made comments about Mr. Trump and Muslims, according to a police summary. Reports of hostility toward minorities were not limited to university campuses. In Durham, N.C., walls facing a busy intersection were painted with graffiti Tuesday night with the message, “Black lives don’t matter and neither does your votes,” according to local news reports.
The student reported that the men had grabbed her purse and backpack and had taken her car keys before fleeing. She was not injured. The unidentified victim alerted the police and led them back to the scene, discovering that her car was gone. Also according to local news reports, a baseball dugout in Wellsville, N.Y., was spray painted with a swastika and the message “Make America white again.” Another swastika, replacing the “T” in Trump, appeared on a storefront in Philadelphia, along with “Sieg heil 2016.”
In a joint statement, the university president, Elliot Hirshman; the vice president for student affairs, Eric Rivera; and the interim police chief, Josh Mays, said: “We condemn this hateful act, and urge all members of our community to join us in condemning such hateful acts.” Incidents were also reported at several high schools. At York County School of Technology in York, Pa., a video circulated of students carrying a Trump sign and yelling “white power” as they walked through the hall on Wednesday. “The whole situation is absolutely horrible,” someone posted on the PTA’s Facebook page.
“Hate crimes are destructive to the spirit of our campus, and we urge all members of our community to stand together in rejecting hate.” Students at Royal Oak Middle School in Royal Oak, Mich., chanted “build the wall” in the cafeteria on Wednesday, according to a statement by Shawn Lewis-Lakin, the superintendent, who said a video was shared on social media.
A third attack, reported on Wednesday by an 18-year-old Muslim woman in Lafayette, La., fell apart by midday Thursday, the police said. Throughout the week, social media has been flooded with threatening messages against minorities of all stripes.
“This entire story was fabricated; she admitted that to our detectives,” said Cpl. Karl Ratcliff, a spokesman for the Lafayette Police Department. The department is no longer investigating the report, he said. Racist episodes occur regularly at places throughout the United States, including college campuses. Mr. Trump’s election, though, seems to have worked as an accelerant.
The woman had claimed that two men, one of them wearing a white “Trump” hat, had hit her with a metal object and robbed her of her head covering and wallet. University officials had notified the campus of the attack in an email on Wednesday. But the police said that at least some reported incidents on campuses were fake. A Muslim student at the University of Louisiana in Lafayette who said she was attacked Wednesday by two men — one wearing a Trump hat — recanted her story on Thursday, admitting she had made the whole thing up, the police said Thursday.
After the election, universities also reported campus graffiti referring to Mr. Trump and some of the themes he has espoused. At Canisius College in Buffalo, in what officials said began as a prank, a black doll was photographed hanging from a curtain rod in a dorm room on Tuesday night. “One student created a meme with language about ‘Trump fans’ and sent it to friends,” a university statement said.
New York University’s Muslim Students Association said on its Facebook page that students at the Tandon School of Engineering awoke on Wednesday to find “Trump” scrawled on the door of their prayer room, adding that they are “realizing that our campus is not immune to the bigotry that grips America.” “It’s evident that what may have started as a thoughtless, insensitive prank earlier in the evening in the elevator degraded into a very offensive, inappropriate act later that night,” said the statement by President John J. Hurley.
In Wisconsin, the beating death in October of a Saudi student, Hussain Saeed Alnahdi, 24, who had been enrolled at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, is still unsolved. He was attacked outside a pizza restaurant, and the killing shocked the university campus where the 9,600 students include a tight-knit group of 142 from Saudi Arabia. Just last year, students protested racism at campuses across the country. In many cases, universities responded with sympathy, and the protesting students believed they had won the battle, at least partially. They began to worry that all their work was fruitless with this week’s election success of Mr. Trump. To many students, Mr. Trump is the champion of anti-political correctness, the embodiment of the opposition to “safe spaces.”
Gay, lesbian and transgender students were also concerned, said Patrick R. Grzanka, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Tennessee. “Our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students are deeply concerned about Trump,” he said. “After enduring months of homophobic and transphobic rhetoric during the campaign, many of us — sexual minorities and gender nonconforming individuals — are asking ourselves, What happens next?”
Liberal-leaning college students around the country, in a state of shock over the election’s outcome, gathered in spontaneous protest marches at some campuses and, at others, asked university leaders to schedule meetings across the campus to reflect on the results.
Tennessee was among a large array of universities — public, private, liberal and conservative — that held meetings for concerned students.
“Join us for a moment of reflection and gathering of solidarity,” the Office of Multicultural Students wrote in an invitation on Wednesday. “Counseling center staff will be available.”
The University of Southern California invited students who had concerns about the election to attend a meeting on Wednesday. About 100 showed up, said Michael Quick, the provost.
“We’re hearing a lot from our students, particularly our Muslim students, given the rhetoric of the campaign,” he said.
“Given the feeling of many students from last year who expressed concerns about diversity and inclusion, now they’re feeling tremendously marginalized,” he added.
Stanford University, in a note signed by its president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, said it would offer “supportive resources and opportunities to gather together” in the wake of the divisive election season.
Columbia University scheduled what it called a “post-election conversation and reflection” for its students Wednesday afternoon. Earlier in the day, graduate journalism students at Columbia requested a meeting with faculty members.
At Wellesley, which was founded as a safe space for its entirely female student body, the supporters of Mr. Trump driving around campus have rattled students, and administrators have sent a flurry of emails to students this week in response to the episode, which is being investigated by the university police.
Wellesley could be considered ground zero for the culture of political correctness that Mr. Trump has criticized; in recent decades, it has introduced guidelines for appropriate language and other protections for addressing racial and religious minorities and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.
After the election, even colleges that are unaccustomed to clashes over race or religion are struggling to address student safety concerns while fostering free speech. When administrators at Texas State University in San Marcos, which has a mostly minority student body of more than 38,000, learned Wednesday that protests in the campus quad were growing tense, President Denise M. Trauth tried to head off conflict by releasing a statement to students.
“Our aim should be to better understand that which causes divisions among us and to work toward strengthening our bond as a university community. Constructive dialogue is the best way to achieve this goal,” she said.
But by late afternoon, the pamphlets depicting men wearing military clothing and bearing arms were already circulating on campus and social media. Denise Cervantes, 20, journalism major and editor of the student paper who is Latina, said she was spat on by a male student wearing a Trump 2016 shirt, who told her she did not belong there anymore.
“I didn’t realize that it would get this bad all of a sudden,” Ms. Cervantes said.
Thursday evening, Ms. Trauth issued a stronger statement labeling the pamphlets vandalism and saying, “Threats absolutely have no place on our campus or in a free society.”
Protests continued throughout the day, and students expressed concern about the atmosphere on campus moving forward. “This is only two days after, and I’m worried that we’re going to see other people doing these things and thinking it’s O.K.,” said Emily Sharp, 21, a communications senior.