An indication on the campus of George Washington College in Washington, D.C., the place a Torah belonging to an on-campus fraternity was vandalized in what officers are calling an antisemitic assault.
Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
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Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
An indication on the campus of George Washington College in Washington, D.C., the place a Torah belonging to an on-campus fraternity was vandalized in what officers are calling an antisemitic assault.
Saul Loeb/AFP by way of Getty Photographs
A Torah belonging to a George Washington College fraternity was desecrated over the weekend, fraternity and college officers mentioned.
Members of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity and high college authorities have condemned what they’re calling an antisemitic assault.
“Our total chapter is outraged and saddened by this blatant act of antisemitism and violence towards our brothers,” the chapter on the Washington, D.C., college said in an Instagram post.
It is unclear who perpetrated the vandalism, which included injury to cupboards and a smoke detector, along with the Torah. Town’s Metropolitan Police Division is investigating the incident as a attainable hate crime, in accordance with a police report shared with NPR. The college’s police division can be concerned within the investigation.
“I condemn antisemitism and all types of hatred, discrimination, and bias in our neighborhood,” GW President Thomas J. LeBlanc said in a statement. “The desecration of the Torah scroll is a direct and severe act of hate, and an assault on Judaism and the Jewish individuals.”
Laundry detergent was poured on a Torah contained in the on-campus fraternity home, chapter president Chris Osborne told CNN. He told The GW Hatchet, a pupil newspaper, that different spiritual texts saved within the residence’s basement had been unhurt, although a Bible was moved. (NPR reached out to Osborne for remark however didn’t instantly hear again.)
Fraternity members additionally mentioned scorching sauce was smeared on the kitchen counter and the fireplace alarms had been ripped out of the partitions, the newspaper reported.
Tau Kappa Epsilon, a males’s social fraternity, says it has greater than 225 “lively chapters and colonies” within the U.S. and Canada. Osborne estimated that a few quarter of the fraternity’s members are Jewish, in accordance with the GW Hatchet.
Crowds turned out for a rally earlier this week to point out solidarity with the fraternity, which said it was continuing to work with officials “to deliver justice to the GWU neighborhood.”
College authorities additionally introduced they had been rising police patrols across the fraternity home and had despatched a number of GW employees members to remain there.
