Anti-Semitic graffiti at Cal Poly fraternity condemned as hate crime: ‘It was shocking’
San Luis Obispo Mayor Heidi Harmon and other community members are condemning the anti-Semitic graffiti found just outside of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity house this weekend as a hate crime, the latest in a series of racist incidents involving Cal Poly students.
“Unfortunately, this is just the world that we live in,” the fraternity’s chapter president, Cal Poly student Noah Matlof, told The Tribune on Monday. “The question is, how can we educate people to make sure that it happens as little as possible? How can we improve our universities and organizations to make the community be a welcoming place for everyone?”
Matlof said he and the other members of the Jewish fraternity awoke Saturday morning to discover the graffiti painted just outside the back door of their main building off campus in San Luis Obispo.
Photos that Matlof shared with The Tribune show a swastika spray-painted on one section of the sidewalk in blue, with red markings scribbled over it. A second area that was vandalized just a few feet from the fraternity’s back entrance shows the word “Jew” roughly spray painted on the sidewalk spray painted over indistinguishable blue markings.
“As much as I would like to just chalk this up to some joke, or some practical prank here, this is a hate crime,” Matlof said. “The swastika, obviously, is a symbol of the Holocaust. And you know, taking 6 million Jews’ lives and putting that specifically on our doorstep, and not just randomly on a building somewhere, was not taken lightly by us. It was shocking.”
Alpha Epsilon Pi members have worked to clean the graffiti from the sidewalks — which the students painted over with white spray paint so they “didn’t have to look at it,” Matlof told The Tribune. Hours spent spraying the vandalized spots with a power washer have only partially removed one of the graffiti.
On Sunday, the fraternity created a GoFundMe fundraising campaign to cover the costs to clean up the vandalism and install security cameras on the house.
In less than 24 hours, the campaign had raised more than $14,000. Any funds gathered that exceed the original goal of $1,300 will be donated to Yad Vashem — the World Holocaust Remembrance Center — and the JCC Federation of San Luis Obispo of San Luis Obispo, according to a message posted on the campaign.
The JCC Federation said in a Monday news release that the funds will support Jewish educational and cultural awareness efforts with a Festival for Jewish Learning, a campus event lasting two to three days.
“On behalf of the Central Coast Jewish community, we pen this letter to state that we will not stand for any display of anti-Semitic rhetoric,” the JCC Federation said. “Instead, we work to ensure San Luis Obispo is a safe and welcoming community — for our Jewish students, community, and neighbors and friends of all backgrounds.”
SLO police investigate vandalism at fraternity as hate crime
San Luis Obispo Interim Police Chief Jeff Smith told The Tribune on Monday that the department still does not have any leads regarding the vandalism.
When police officers arrived at the fraternity house, the evidence had already been cleaned up, and no one witnessed the vandalism, Smith said.
Smith noted that similar-looking blue and red paint was used to vandalize other areas of the city near the fraternity house. Two street signs were painted over and hearts were painted on a nearby street, he said.
“We’re still asking that anyone in the community who may know something about this to come forward,” Smith said.
The San Luis Obispo Police Department has a hate crime investigator assigned to the case, Smith said.
In a written statement released on Monday, Harmon called the vandalism an “attack” on the fraternity and broader community, and ensured that the police department “will have every resource at their disposal to help bring these hate criminals to justice.”
“This was a hate crime — a clear attempt to make the Jewish students of our community more fearful, more anxious, and more vulnerable,” the San Luis Obispo mayor wrote, calling the incident “yet another act of white supremacy in our community.”
Harmon wrote that the “attack invites us all to ask: what can we do to narrow the growing divisions within our community; what healing must happen within ourselves before our community can repair the harms of the past; what must transform within us before San Luis Obispo can become the community of belonging we all long for.”
On Sunday, Cal Poly’s Student Diversity and Belonging released a statement denouncing the “acts of hate and discrimination.” The collection of campus community centers focuses on creating a “culturally rich environment” at the university, according to its website.
Cal Poly has history of racist incidents
Cal Poly has a troubled history of racist incidents, many of them involving fraternities affiliated with the university.
In 2008, a Confederate flag was hung above an entrance to the Crops House, a university-owned house where agriculture students are given subsidized lodging in exchange for work on the school’s farms, according to a New Times article.
During a party at the house in 2008, a racist sign was posted that read “no n***ers,” along with a similar slur against gays, according to the New Times article.
About five years later, Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity hosted a party attended by men wearing Colonial-era costumes and women wearing sexually explicit Native American-themed attire. That party prompted an investigation by Cal Poly officials, according to a 2013 Tribune article.
Additionally, a recurring “Free Speech Wall,” or “Hate Speech Wall,” has been erected by the Cal Poly College Republicans in recent years. The wall has included Islamophobic, homophobic and racist messages in 2015 and 2016.
Also in 2016, two students were suspended for vandalizing another student’s bedroom door with swastikas and racial and homophobic slurs, according to a Mustang News article that details Cal Poly’s history of racism and hateful incidents..
In April 2018, photos surfaced of members of the Lambda Chi Alpha and Sigma Nu fraternities posing for controversial photos, sparking protests.
In the Lambda Chi Alpha photo, one individual was in black face, and all were flashing gang signs. In the Sigma Nu photo, members were wearing clothing to make them look like Mexican gang members.
All non-cultural fraternities and sororities at the university were temporarily suspended after the incident.
Shortly after the photos were released, a Cal Poly professor posted on Facebook that he found racist fliers, graffiti and vandalism posted in university buildings.
And in November 2018, a belt allegedly tied like a noose was found in a Cal Poly residence hall.
The university continues to condemn acts of racism, discrimination and hate.
“Let us be perfectly clear: behavior that promotes any form of hate and seeks to make members of our community feel unsafe and unwelcome – especially in their own home – has absolutely no place in our community,” university President Jeffrey Armstrong and other officials wrote in a statement Saturday.
