Students at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, say recent agreements with the U.S. Department of Education to resolve a discrimination complaint against the school “falls far short” of what is needed to combat the rise in campus antisemitism, according to Fox News.
The Education Department announced on Jan. 2 that it had agreed on a resolution with Rutgers regarding a Title VI complaint, which included nearly 300 reports of Jew-hatred filed between July 2023 and June 2024.
The university must take certain actions to comply with the federal resolution, including issuing a statement declaring that discrimination is not tolerated on campus and reviewing past reports to determine whether further action is needed.
“The university is being let off the hook,” said Camilla Vaynberg, vice president of Rutgers Students Supporting Israel. “It’s a promise that we had before.”
She added that the measures are unlikely to result in meaningful change and may not even be enforced after Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers, steps down. (Holloway announced in September his intent to resign at the end of the current academic year.)
“This settlement falls miles short of what needs to happen to address the issues of antisemitism at Rutgers,” said Ben Stern, a sophomore who is majoring in political science. “A lot of what Rutgers agreed to involves ‘statements’ and ‘reviews,’ but they have been stating and reviewing things right and left since Oct. 7, and yet the rate of antisemitic incidents at Rutgers continues to rise.”
In one incident reported to the university, a social-media post encouraged violence against an Israeli student and provided information on how to find them. In another report, a Jewish student’s dorm room was vandalized with a swastika drawn outside their door and their mezuzah defaced.
“The Biden administration has proven once again that it doesn’t give a damn about antisemitism in America,” said former Rutgers Hillel director Andrew Getraer, adding that “it’s not a coincidence” that the administration released the university agreements two weeks before leaving office.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, recently criticized the “toothless agreements” made with several universities.
“It’s disgraceful that in the final days of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Education is letting universities, including Rutgers, off the hook for their failures to address campus antisemitism,” he said. “These so-called resolutions utterly fail to resolve the civil rights complaints they purport to address.”