Thursday, May 9, 2024
Some Oklahoma college students facing antisemitism on campuses Jared Rosenblatt Staff Reporter
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A small digital camera is a gift your senior will enjoy for years.
What to buy for your favorite graduating senior Bella Casey News and Lifestyle Assistant Editor
challenging than it was to get your degree. Stumped on what to get your favorite senior for graduation? Check out these graduation gifts your senior won’t receive from anyone else. Graduation is only days Buy an experience away. A gift doesn’t have to come It’s almost time to celwrapped in fancy paper with a ebrate the achievements of your gift tag on it. Buy your senior friends, partner or family. Maybe an experience. Book a campsite, you want to treat yourself to a buy tickets to the zoo or plan a graduation gift. Sometimes, buy- day trip to Beaver’s Bend or the ing the perfect gift can be more Wichita Mountains. This is a
great way to make memories and spend time together. Memory book If you’re feeling sentimental, make a scrapbook or memory book of your senior’s favorite college memories. Tape photos to the inside of their favorite childhood book, or order a small scrapbook online and fill it with photos. This makes for a gift your senior can keep forever and display on their coffee table or in their room. See Senior on 5
From East Kenya to Central Oklahoma Professor’s math skills lead him far from home Alex Palmer II O’Colly Contributor
has been his favorite subject said. “He is calm and respectful. since elementary school. He hardly talks much though, he Njuki is teaching Elemen- is a gentleman I should say.” tary Statistics at OSU as a part Kongyir saw immense of his assistantship. potential in Njuki, and after Prior to OSU, the key point completing his masters at MiMath fuels Kelvin Njuki of his academic and professional ami University, Njuki applied just as water fuels the Seven for a PHD. in the department of Forks Dams where he grew up in journey would take place back home in Kenya after completing statistics at Kenya. OSU under his advice. A steady love for problem his undergraduate studies. Njuki had a friend who was “Professor Njuki is hardsolving and a load of ambition from Kenya and doing his mas- working,” Kongyir said. “He brought Njuki ters in math at Miami University has very high ambitions and he more than 8,500 miles of Ohio. He was impressed with works hard to achieve them. away from home chasing his Njuki’s academic success and Although Njuki would dream. “I had a friend there from applied him to Miami so he may rather let his success do the talkcontinue his studies in statistics. ing for him, he believes himself my village who was doing his Upon arriving in Ohio, to be realistic in his expectations masters in math,” Njuki said. Njuki met professor Benedict and view of self. “He got the news that I did really Kongyir, who is a Njuki said that his time well in my undergraduate, so member of the department at OSU has awoken him to the he asked for my documents and of statistics at OSU. extremes a math field can reach. went to apply for me.” “I met Professor Njuki for “In my PHD I’ve done Before his time in Stillthe first time in Ohio when he like four courses from the math water, Njuki grew up in a place department and they have really with rich culture and food. Math and his friends came to visit a friend in Youngstown,” Kongyir humbled me,” Njuki said. See Kenya on 7
There’s a saying amongst the Jewish community, “never again.” That saying was made following the Holocaust, where more than six million Jews were killed. The backdrop for the Holocaust was the rise in antisemitism and propaganda Hitler used to slander jews at every turn. What we are seeing today on college campuses may echo the past. “It’s hard to walk around campus with our Star of David’s around our neck,” said Sophie Rubinowitz, a University of South Florida student. “I and a lot of other students have been terrorized by the amount of anti-Israel students we have on campus.” Antisemitism was up 337% between the months of October to December 2023, compared to the year prior, according to the AntiDefamation League. This is following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the response by Israel, which led to the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War. Pew Research’s poll results showed that 18-29 year-olds view the Palestinian side more favorably than Israel, which contrasts heavily with the rest of the age groups. Across college campuses in the U.S., students are protesting against Israel for their offensive response against Hamas and on the Gazan civilians. These protests have made some Jews feel unsafe due to rhetoric used. Sayings like “from the river to the sea” have been used as examples of dangerous rhetoric against Jews. The argument made by the protestors is that the saying is not anti-Jew but anti-Israel. Sarah Grisowold, an assistant professor of history at OSU, says it is hard to distinguish whether the saying is antisemitic or not. “‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ is a complicated situation dating back to the 1920s and 1930s of land being promised to two peoples; Arabs and Jews,” Griswold said. “But for Israelis and Jews, that can mean the idea of “from the river to the sea” can be the eradication of the State of Israel and Israel would cease to exist.” There are varying forms of antisemitism. It could depend on rhetoric, meaning or calls of violence. There is not one form of antisemitism but a spectrum of it. “It’s been very, very different in history,” said Alan Levenson, Schuster-
man Center Director for Judaic and Israel Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “Jews have sometimes represented capitalist manipulators, you know, and on the other hand, they’ve also represented being Bolshievk or Communist.” Levenson has never experienced something like this before. “There’s never been anything like this on colleges and universities, never,” Levenson said. “There was certainly plenty of antisemitism in the 1920s and 1930s but, that was not something that was happening on college campuses but was happening in the neighborhood and in the workplace.” The argument for or against the protests and whether or not they are antisemitic comes down to opinion and context. “I have gotten my mezuzah taken down that I put outside my dorm room,” said Allison Perilman, a University of Oklahoma student. A mezuzah is a piece of wood usually inscribed with jewish lettering or Torah verses that Jewish people put on their doorposts. On Feb. 29, when Perilman was returning home from dinner, she noticed that her mezuzah was completely gone along with her command strip. Perilman alerted OUPD about the incident and OUPD told her they couldn’t do much about it as there were no witnesses. “These things are all recorded and sent to the local FBI,” said Kasi Shelton, the Executive Director at OU Hillel. “We try to make sure that the students know the reporting procedure and I think a lot of them don’t know what to do or say to report things, so we’ve done trainings to help identify hate speech.” Hillel International is the largest Jewish campus organization in the world and operates at 850 universities around the world. Hillel has a reporting procedure for when antisemitic events happen. Carter Cagle was part of the Lambda Chi Alpha at OSU, when he started to face antisemitism in his own frat house. “People would start drawing swastikas on things in my room,” Cagle said. “They would steal my mezuzah, my Stars of David, my tallit, like I would find them in trash cans or just in random places around the house. Cagle is no longer part of the fraternity and is now president of OSU Hillel. Some OSU athletes have also been harassed. See Antisemitism on 8