After Jewish students at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, were taunted with anti-Semitic slurs and pelted with fake blood, administrators encouraged them to "hide their Jewish identity to avoid being targeted," according to a federal civil rights complaint filed against the school on Thursday.
The students said pro-Hamas activists harassed them as they celebrated the High Holiday of Sukkot, holding a demonstration next to their religious ceremony and chalking "inflammatory anti-Semitic messages" near the religious service, "including ‘Go Away Nazis.’"
In other incidents, the activists disrupted a vigil for victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks by drawing a "Zio Corner" chalk circle around it and throwing red paint at Jewish students meant to represent the "blood of martyrs," according to the complaint. In response, Cal Poly Humboldt suggested that the students could avoid such incidents by appearing less Jewish, the complaint states.
"The message from the University to Jewish students is clear: downplay your Jewish identity on campus or hide to avoid being targeted because the University will not protect you," states the complaint, which the Brandeis Center filed to the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights alongside the Anti-Defamation League and StandWithUs.
The news comes one day after Trump’s Department of Justice launched a sweeping anti-Semitism investigation into the University of California public school system's alleged "pattern or practice of discrimination" against Jewish students. Cal Poly Humboldt, though, is not part of the UC system, suggesting that problems with anti-Semitism extend beyond the Golden State's primary university system.
Much of the anti-Semitic harassment at Cal Poly Humboldt appeared to target the campus Chabad, an Orthodox Jewish religious organization that serves as a community hub for Jewish students.
Zachary Mink, a Jewish senior at Cal Poly Humboldt, said he faced unrelenting harassment after writing an opinion column for the student newspaper about his discomfort with pro-Hamas activism on campus. He said the harassment was so intense that it drove him to hide his face with a mask and hoodie on campus, lodge a civil rights complaint with the school, and finish his coursework online.
"I told myself, I'm doing school online, I can't handle this," Mink told the Washington Free Beacon. "I couldn't complete assignments, just from the harassment I was experiencing by my peers I had to see every day."
In addition to Cal Poly Humboldt, the Brandeis Center filed similar complaints targeting Scripps College and the Etiwanda School District, both of which are based in California. Those complaints detail similar incidents. Jewish students at Scripps, for example, said they were criticized for wearing identifiably religious items, such as Star of David necklaces. Students viewed as "Zionists" were also reportedly barred from holding meetings or working at the student-run union hall.
"I stopped wearing anything that would identify me as a Jew. I regret not transferring to a school that takes the concerns of Jewish students seriously," said one student in the complaint.
At Etiwanda Intermediate School, meanwhile, a 12-year-old girl was repeatedly harassed by other students who hit her with sticks, joked about Nazi Germany, and told her to "shut [her] stupid Jewish ass up," according to the complaint. The school "had notice of this hostile environment, and failed to take reasonable responsive action to eliminate the hostile environment and prevent its recurrence," the complaint states.