Beatings Of Maryland Jewish Frat Members Investigated As Hate Crime
(JTA) — Two members of the historically Jewish Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity at Towson University were victims of a possible anti-Semitic attack.
The fraternity members were walking near the campus when the two assailants began shouting “F***| the Jews” and called them by an ethnic slur, the Baltimore Sun reported. The assailants then began punching one of the fraternity members in the face. One of the victims recognized the assailants as Towson students.
The police report said that the victim “believes the assault was motivated by his religious beliefs,” according to the newspaper. The assault reportedly is being investigated as a hate-bias incident. The victims have a year to press charges.
In a statement emailed Tuesday to the Towson community, President Kim Schatzel called the incident “deplorable.”
“Towson University does not tolerate acts of hatred, bias, racism or discrimination of any kind on our campus or by members of the TU community,” she wrote. “All reports of hate-bias are taken seriously and are thoroughly investigated. Any student found responsible for such conduct is subject to sanctions including suspension and expulsion from the university.”
Towson is a public university with some 22,000 students located less than 10 miles from Baltimore.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO