What is going on with Santa Clara University? The Jesuit college to our south has been host to two incidents of hateful vandalism recently, the latest a particularly disturbing one in which a swastika and racial slurs were painted inside an elevator using human blood, and homophobic and transphobic slurs were written elsewhere in the same building. Two students have been apprehended for the act, which was caught on surveillance video seen above and subsequently leaked to the public via YouTube something which the university also says it is investigating, as KRON 4 reports.
The incident occurred in the Casa Italiana dormitory building, and the video appears to show one student, apparently injured and bleeding on his leg, using his blood to deface a poster in the elevator. The second student also participates in painting on the poster.
Elsewhere in the building, on a bulletin board, anti-gay slurs were found.
"Such actions violate our value of solidarity with all persons, based on our shared humanity," said university president, Rev. Michael Engh in a statement to students, according to the Chronicle. "I encourage you not to stand idly by and ignore what has happened, but to discuss openly why such attacks of hatred are reprehensible.”
The Santa Clara Police Department has taken over the investigation, and the university says that disciplinary action against the students, who have been identified, will be taken.
ABC 7 spoke with several students on the campus, one of whom, Kayla Goldsmid, told the station, "I was really disgusted by thinking that people at Santa Clara would do something like that. And my brother is gay, and the homophobic thing really hit home."
The incident comes shortly after a campus art installation memorializing 43 student teachers who disappeared in Mexico in 2014 was defaced and kicked by multiple students, as shown in surveillance video here.
