After a busy week of work and classes, my sister, a first-semester freshman at Rowan University, walked to the parking lot and found a swastika keyed into her car.
This is completely unacceptable. Public Safety did nothing. The Dean of Rowan did nothing. The fact of the matter is, cameras should be placed in parking lots to prevent these crimes from happening. Both campus police and public safety agree that cameras are a necessity on college parking lots, and they have been fighting for them for a long time.
At many schools, freshman are either not allowed to have cars on campus, or the lot in which they can park their cars is extremely far away from most academic buildings. The average American spends about $33,560 on a car, so why are students paying a couple hundred dollars to have their car a mile away from their buildings without any camera supervision? Cars are expensive, repairs on cars are very expensive. The keyed swastika on my sister's car is too deep to be buffed out, causing repairs to cost at least $500. Why are schools just overlooking this? It's not like they don't have the money.
This negligence needs to end.
This swastika fiasco is a hate crime. It's property damage.
A couple
of weeks prior to this event, someone stole the magnets off of her car.
Why?
I don't know.
What could they possibly want with a Maryland state flag magnet in the shape of
a crab or a sleep-away camp magnet?
Now someone did this.
My sister believes that this is not just a hate crime aimed at Jews, but she seems to think that this expensive damage of property was because of the "Coexist" sticker she has on the back of her car. That's almost worse. This sticker is supposed to symbolize religious freedom, tolerance, and understanding.
This needs to end. Cameras need to be placed in all parking lots at schools, and authorities need to be more careful in monitoring what is happening while no one is watching. People aren't paying over $40,000+ tuition to attend a school where their car could get keyed or hit by some drunken college kids.
*Mic drop*
