CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) - A 9-foot-tall menorah at a University of Illinois Jewish student center has been damaged for a third time in less than a year, police said Tuesday, and the center’s rabbi believes school leaders need to take a stronger stand against the vandalism.
Two athletes have been suspended from competition, and campus police say they’ve issued a notice for one of them - a player on the softball team - to appear in court on a tentative charge of criminal damage to property. But no official charges have been filed over the incident, in which one arm of the aluminum menorah in front of the Chabad Jewish Center was broken early Sunday.
Surveillance video taken around 1 a.m. Sunday shows a man and woman approach the menorah, the woman unscrewing a light bulb on top of one arm and then breaking another arm as she tries to reach its bulb. She tries to repair it before the two walk away.
Interim athletic director Paul Kowalczyk said Tuesday that a softball player was indefinitely suspended from competition and a men’s gymnast from suspended from the team’s next two competitions, adding that both will write apologies to the center and will be required to perform unspecified community service.
“We are disappointed by the actions early Sunday morning of two student-athletes from softball and men’s gymnastics at the Chabad Jewish Center on campus and apologize for this unacceptable behavior,” Kowalczyk said in an emailed statement.
Champaign County State’s Attorney Julia Rietz said she is waiting on a report from police.
Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel said that “if the university would come out strong against it, these things would stop in a big way.” A spokeswoman for interim Chancellor Barbara Wilson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tiechtel added that he hopes whoever damaged the menorah will take responsibility.
“They didn’t realize the magnitude of what they did, probably, when they did it,” Tiechtel said. “(But) it’s more than just writing an email and an ’I’m sorry.’ What are they going to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again?”
David Kessler, a sophomore from Highland Park, said that whoever damaged the menorah probably didn’t do so out of animosity for Jews, but called for serious discipline.
“To them it’s like, ’Oh, let’s go mess with the Jews,’ it’s like a funny thing,” Kessler said, adding that the university should suspend whoever is responsible. “Those students just don’t have a place here, in my opinion.”
Police don’t believe the three incidents - Sunday, August and April - involving the menorah are linked.
No arrests were made in the April incident. A student at a Champaign community college was given probation in the second incident, saying he damaged the menorah while trying to steal it to give to a Jewish friend.
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