UC Santa Cruz Chancellor George Blumenthal released a campus-wide email on March 17 that condemned the swastikas but did not mention the explicit threat. In his email, Blumenthal also mentioned anti-Semitic graffiti which had been discovered at McHenry Library March 14.

An email was released exclusively to the Porter College community March 18 that mentioned both the threat of violence on April 20 and the swastikas. UCSC director of public information Jim Burns addressed the reasoning behind the distribution of the email to only a portion of the campus community.

“Whenever we discover graffiti of a threatening nature … we consider an appropriate security and communications response,” Burns said. “That doesn’t mean that we decide that communicating broadly about the specifics of each threat is always the best course of action.”

The university has not released details on what precautions it will be taking in light of the threat. Steve Clark, deputy chief of the Santa Cruz Police Department (SCPD), said that though it is typical for the SCPD to be privy to threats, it was not informed of this particular threat.

Courtney Burt, a third-year Porter College community assistant (CA), was surprised that Porter College was the only college on campus to receive the information about the violent threat.

“Porter is the only one privy to the knowledge?” she asked. “The whole school knew about the other [threat], so why doesn’t the whole school know about this one too? That’s not fair. Idle or not, it’s a threat.”

Burt also expressed concern with the possible implications of alerting the entire campus community to such threats.

“Then again, we also lose a lot of resources with the school taking it seriously,” she said. “I mean, there’s money that does go into covering this.”

Though the graffiti found in Porter comprises two distinct parts — the threat and the swastikas — Ali Rawson, a third-year Porter student, asserted that the two are related because Adolf Hitler’s birthday also falls on April 20.

“Yeah, I think [the threat] could be a hate crime too, against Jews in particular,” Rawson said. “Having swastikas on Hitler’s birthday, it’s really insulting.”

The Santa Cruz Sentinel mentioned the graffiti in a March 16 article on the current investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). UCSC Hebrew lecturer Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who filed the complaint, said that the Sentinel article may have provided the necessary motivation for the university to send out the email addressing the swastika graffiti.

“Three days went by before the chancellor said anything,” she said. “Had it not been for the Sentinel article, he might not have mentioned it at all. Chancellor Blumenthal’s response was too little too late.”

OCR is investigating an allegation that UCSC permitted anti-Semitism and created a hostile environment for Jewish students. Jim Bradshaw of the U.S. Department of Education Press Office confirmed the nature of the investigation, though he could not comment on specifics.

Rossman-Benjamin spoke of her concerns with how the university handles incidents of anti-Semitism, and cited the delayed response to this particular incident as an example of the university’s questionable priorities in dealing with hate crimes.

“I’m very sensitive to the double standard the UCSC administration takes in response to anti-Semitic acts in comparison to say, anti-African acts,” she said. “The chancellor sent out an email condemning the graffiti on Thursday, but the first graffiti was found on Monday. Why wait three days?”

On the Web

At ucsc.edu: Read Alison Galloway’s advisory and learn more about resources available to the campus community. [Link]

Story updated on 01/13/2011 at 12:53am

Graffiti threatening violence, found in a campus bathroom, has prompted an investigation by the UC Santa Cruz administration and police. The graffiti was discovered in early December, before students left for winter break.

Administrators issued an email advisory to the campus community Jan. 11 alerting students and faculty of the discovery of the graffiti, and asking them to be alert for suspicious behavior. Recipients were warned that the message threatened violence on Jan. 18. Exact details were not included.

UCSC director of public information Jim Burns said the administration has no plans to release further details.

Sam*, a UCSC student who lives on campus, was informed about the graffiti by a UCSC staff member on Jan. 6. Though he was asked not to share the details of the threat, Sam has since told “quite a few people,” he said.

Burns confirmed that “members of the campus’ senior leadership team were among the people informed,” before the e-mail advisory was sent out.

In an interview conducted prior to the release of the official alert, Sam said that though he understands the university’s position, he was concerned for students’ safety. He decided to alert his peers of the threat as they had not yet been informed by the university.

“I don’t want to interfere with any investigation, but this is too important,” Sam said. “Of course, it is in the administration’s best interest [not to tell], but I don’t think the university’s best interest and the students’ best interest align in this case. I think the best thing is to tell people.”

He said a university staff member informed him about the threat and included details not disclosed in the advisory e-mail. Sam said, in the message, discovered in a men’s bathroom on the first floor of the Social Sciences 2 building, the individual threatened to harm a finite number of students before hurting themselves.

Burns and executive vice chancellor Alison Galloway declined to comment on specific details of the message beyond what was included in the advisory e-mail.

The graffiti message was removed shortly after its discovery. Jim Durning, supervisor of the UCSC Paint/Sign Shop, said that after threatening graffiti is reported, protocol requires police officers take a picture of the message and members of Durning’s staff are called in to remove it. Durning confirmed that a member of his staff did paint over the message after they were called to do so.

When it was discovered, certain aspects of the message were detailed enough to warrant the administration’s concern, Galloway said.

“The information we had, had enough specificity in it that we were concerned and thought we should take it seriously,” Galloway said. “That doesn’t mean that it is a legitimate threat — it could be a number of things. But we felt we had to treat it as if it was a serious concern. So we’ve been trying to … reach out to find out who this individual will be and if we can offer some help, offer some intervention.”

UCSC interim police chief Ava Snyder said that an investigation has been ongoing since the graffiti was discovered by a student Dec. 2. Though the FBI was contacted for consultation, it is not investigating the incident.
While the UCSC Police Department’s plans for next Tuesday cannot be revealed, Snyder said that supporting law enforcement agencies have been notified in case assistance is needed.

As of press time, the administration has no plans to close campus on Jan. 18, said Jim Burns, UCSC’s director of public information.

“We are planning for campus to be open,” he said.

Though the graffiti was discovered in early December, the administration did not send out an advisory until Jan. 11. Galloway said that in withholding the information, the administration hoped to avoid causing unwarranted panic.

“Obviously, the ideal for us would have been to have found the person already and not have to worry about exposing people to the stress of hearing this on our campus,” she said. “But we haven’t been able to do that, so we felt we really had an obligation to the campus community to let them know … that something could happen. And they should be prepared.”

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Additional reporting by Arianna Puopolo.
*Names have been changed.