The ongoing conflict in the Middle East has caused controversy on Penn State’s University Park campus.
On October 7, there were demonstrations from Jewish organizations and the Students for Justice in Palestine group on Penn State’s campus. Just three days after, the Students for Justice in Palestine say their memorial on the HUB lawn was vandalized, and Penn State is encouraging everyone to have empathy for each other.
Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine say their memorial on the HUB lawn on October 10 was to remember those who have been killed as a result of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East. In a post on social media, which now has more than 10,000 likes, they showed clips of students vandalizing the memorial, and want the university to hold those students accountable.
“We would hope that the university is kind of transparent about the ways it’s going to work towards a campus culture where people feel included, where people feel safe, where people feel identified and seen, so short term that’s what we would like to see,” said Matt Parnell from the Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine.
Parnell says they have a good relationship with Penn State, who said in a statement that “this type of behavior has no place on our campuses or anywhere in our society.”
Penn State Hillel says Jewish students have been experiencing anti-semitism, and that there is no place for that on campus. They say no one was harmed during their vigil that was held on October 7th, but say that there were attempts made to intimidate Jewish students and divide the community.
“There’s been a lot of stuff going on at college campuses, so I think it was really devastating to see the truth of what terrible things occurred on October 7, then having people not understand or condemn Israel instead of Hamas and these terrorist organizations,”
Both groups say many students are scared to go on campus because of racist comments.
“How can we go about building a stronger, better community if we’re not naming the things that happened, we think it’s really important that that type of behavior is identified, people who engage in it are held accountable, so we can move forward with a campus community that is predicated on caring for others,”
Parnell says there haven’t been any conversations between their organization and Jewish organizations such as Penn State Hillel, and hopes that they will step in and make sure that vandalization is not allowed to occur on campus.
