Quarry Plaza at UC Santa Cruz (Photo/Wikimedia Commons)
Quarry Plaza at UC Santa Cruz (Photo/Wikimedia Commons)

Swastika is UC Santa Cruz’s 11th anti-Semitic incident this semester

A swastika was quickly removed at UC Santa Cruz after it was spray-painted in white near a remote parking lot over the Dec. 9-10 weekend, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

Without getting into details, the Sentinel article also noted that 11 incidents related to anti-Semitism have been reported on campus so far this academic year.

The article did point to an incident last May in which an Israeli Independence Day event “was disrupted by members of the Afrikan Black Student Alliance, who tore down an Israeli flag and yelled expletives and anti-Semitic insults.”

In the spring of 2016, UCSC established a “Report Hate” website on which students can alert campus authorities to incidents they’ve seen or heard; 49 such reports were received during the academic quarter that began Sept. 23 and ended Dec. 15, the Sentinel reported.

The Forward’s college guide to the best colleges for Jewish students puts UCSC far down the list, at No. 161, ahead of only 10 other schools.

An email from UCSC officials sent to students last week read “This incident is distressing to our Jewish community and to the campus community as a whole. To come just before the first night of Hanukkah and during finals week, when students are focused on marking the holiday and concluding their academic quarter, only further contributes to high stress levels.”