This story has been updated.
For one Muslim student at the University of Connecticut, the last eight weeks could be summed up in one word: draining.
At least weekly, F.M. and her friends have faced verbal harassment on campus, she said, asking to only be identified by her initials out of fear of retaliation and harassment. They’ve been called baby killers and rapists, and they’ve been told to go back to their country, she said.
When asked if she feels safe on campus, she said she used to, but now:
“Definitely not.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas launched an attack that killed an estimated 1,200 Israelis, and another 240 were taken hostage. Since the attack, Israel has killed nearly 16,000 Palestinians while another 1.8 million Palestinians living in Gaza have been displaced in what many officials and experts are labeling a genocide. The war overseas has had effects in the United States, including a recent report from the FBI that said hate crimes have increased by 60%.
F.M. said there was a week where she refused to come to campus because of safety concerns. She now carries pepper spray on her keychain and refuses to walk alone on campus at night. Dressed in a hijab, F.M. is anticipating that something violent is bound to happen to her or one of her friends.
“If it happens to me, it happens to me, and hopefully, it would be the thing that would kind of put everything in perspective for the admins,” she said. “Something physical is not something that they could sweep under the rug.”
Similar sentiments have been felt across other campuses and student groups.
At Yale, some people have been moved out of their dorms, according to students. Sahar Tartak, a Jewish student on campus, said she’s had to file a police report for threats she received on social media, but she feels like not much has been done as a response. It’s also gotten to the point where she’s stopped checking her Twitter messages and requested the university to provide personal security, she said.
“It’s not comfortable knowing that people who live near you — know your face, and name and have said pretty bad things,” Tartak said. “I only go to my classes, my dorm and Jewish spaces on campus. I don’t walk alone at night. It has not always been like that, and now it is and not just for me.”
Tartak said she received threats that said things like “we’re coming for you,” and is one of the students that Yale officials have offered to remove her from her dorm for safety reasons.
For two months, young activists, whether leaning pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, have held demonstrations that have been met with resistance from college administrators who have worked to balance the rights of free speech and assembly with tense dialogues that can cross the line into hate speech or safety threats.
Conflicts between student groups and their colleges’ administrations have taken place across the country, most notably in New York, where Columbia University banned a few campus organizations, Massachusetts, where a couple of universities are dealing with antisemitism on campus and receiving backlash for how its been handled, and California, where protests have escalated and students say they feel unsafe.
In Connecticut, organized campus protests and demonstrations have generally remained peaceful, but many students, especially those with some type of personal investment in the war, told The Connecticut Mirror that isolated incidents and university rhetoric have made them reconsider how safe their campuses are and whether officials are doing enough to denounce certain behavior while ensuring that proper action would be taken if safety is compromised.
“At Yale, we encourage a learning environment of respectful and open dialogue on even the most challenging topics,” a Yale spokesperson said in an email to the CT Mirror. “We understand that building strong communities and relationships provides the foundation needed for students to engage in difficult conversations. We are committed to the ongoing work of helping students cultivate stronger relationships with one another and become more skillful at constructive dialogue. Faculty, staff, and administrators from across our campus are working to support students in this endeavor.”
In early November, leadership from the governor’s office, various law enforcement agencies and campus security officials met to discuss “proactive” efforts centered on federal and state resources available to the institutions, including additional training, outreach with student leaders and social media monitoring.
The state’s Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection Commissioner Ronnell Higgins said no specific incidents of harassment, threats or hate crimes at Connecticut colleges were brought up during the meeting and that to date, no campus has raised a flag of concern regarding hate crimes, speech or harassment.
Since then, however, students have been cynical about leadership efforts and remain adamant that they feel as if their concerns are being overlooked.
A closer look at incidents at Yale and UConn
Within days of the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, most universities issued a statement denouncing the violence while offering resources for students. Campus activism followed shortly in several forms, including open letters from faculty members, op-eds in college newspapers, demonstrations, protests and speaking events.
These efforts typically mourned the loss of life, urged universities to take a stronger stance on the war or called for a ceasefire. Demonstrations among Connecticut college campuses generally remained peaceful, but the aftermath often meant individuals faced backlash, threats or some type of harassment, students said.
Within a month at Yale, the words “Death to Palestine” and two other messages were written on a whiteboard outside a dorm. A correction to an op-ed written by Tartak in mid-October triggered threats to the editor-in-chief at the Yale Daily News, who had to be relocated from her apartment. Doxxing trucks that had images of Yale students and their names, labeling them as antisemites, drove around campus for a few days.
Yale’s Muslim Students Association and Yalies For Palestine, student organizations who held demonstrations on campus, did not respond to interview requests. It’s unclear if there were additional incidents of harassment that have not been reported.
Hassaan Qadir, a junior computer science student at Yale, said he hasn’t received direct harassment, but he knows female classmates who have been verbally harassed for wearing hijabs outside.
He added that tensions remain high between student groups.
“I’m good friends with a lot of Muslims. I’m also good friends with a number of Orthodox Jews and people who have very different views,” Qadir said. “It’s very strange and unfortunate to see people that I know actually just hate each other and say these extreme things about one another having ever met one another.”
Tartak said that campus feels “equally hostile, if not more,” now than in early October.
“I sit in my university dining hall and I wonder how many people in this room want me dead. The answer, really, is just not zero,” Tartak said. “My mom is constantly worried about my safety and security.”
Some Jewish students said that they haven’t faced threats against their community as a whole but that attacks have been directed toward more vocal students, which in turn may have had a chilling effect for some people. Other Jewish students also believe the interpretation of what a threat is may differ based on a spectrum of beliefs.
At UConn, the student group Students for Justice in Palestine has received a number of threatening voicemails, which they’ve posted on their Instagram page and reported to campus police. F.M. said other social media posts compared the group to the KKK. Over a dozen students who are part of the Muslim Students Association attended and some spoke at the December Board of Trustees meeting and shared an email they’ve received that praised the death of thousands of Palestinians, encouraged the rape of women and called the students “Nazi scum.”
“If any of your students have family members who were killed in Gaza, I will volunteer to fly over there to [expletive] on their loved one’s corpse before burial. Let me know,” the email read.
E.I., another UConn student who asked to be identified by her initials, called the email “really, really disturbing,” and said it, and other accounts of Islamophobia across the country, have made her fearful of wearing her hijab.
“I was never scared of wearing a hijab, but after everything that’s been going on, this is the first time that I have been scared and kind of concealing myself. If it’s cold outside, I’ll just conceal it and wear a hood now,” she said. “It’s weird because I never would have thought that I would be scared to wear it.”
Hodaya Naor, an Israeli foreign-exchange student who’s active in the Jewish community on campus, said she hasn’t faced any direct threats to her safety, but some actions she called insensitive and antisemitic have “made it difficult to be here.”
“[I confronted two or three students at a rally] and they basically laughed at me when I told them how many hostages Hamas had taken and when I told them about my family, friends and people I know that got murdered and are missing,” Naor said. “I remember that one of them, when I told them there’s at least 240 hostages, he was like, ‘That’s not enough.’”
“Sometimes I don’t feel safe because I see what’s happening in other universities, and it feels like it’s only a matter of time for extremists to feel they can do the same thing here,” Naor said. “It feels like a ticking bomb.”
UConn’s Bias Reporting System recorded over 45 incidents since Oct. 6, including reports of swastikas drawn on campus. It’s unclear if the incidents were directed toward Jewish or Muslim students.
“Those who report the incidents are not required to disclose those levels of details about themselves,” a spokesperson from UConn said. “In fact, we encourage people from all backgrounds to be aware of such behaviors and report them so the University can review and address them, and provide support and resources to those who are affected.
“A review of the reports received under the bias reporting system shows that since Oct. 7, many involve concerns over comments and actions related to race and ethnicity, including toward and regarding Muslim and Jewish students, and people of Palestinian and Israeli descent.”
UConn said its support is “tailored to the specific individual and/or location of the incident,” and if incidents occur in a certain space, officials try to hold gatherings to provide support.
“During any conflict, one of the most important roles a university can play is to invite people to come together; make a space for dialogue; and help one another to learn and understand the relevant history, dynamics, and roots of the conflict,” a spokesperson from the university said. “As a community, we must listen to and support each other.”
UConn said it plans to offer courses on antisemitism and Islamophobia, in addition to discussions with faculty experts that will both be in person and livestreamed.
How are students interpreting university responses?
Some students who don’t have a sharp leaning regarding the war say that their respective universities have taken the right initiatives — usually with neutral statements and a more hands-off approach toward activism.
“I think the standards Yale has put out have been good. I think if they did more, it would make it worse,” said Ariane de Gennaro, a junior history major at Yale. “In terms of speech and what people are allowed to say, I feel like there’s not much the university can do a lot of times because it’s their responsibility to protect freedom of speech. … And I think we have to become comfortable with them being somewhat hands-off just because I think the alternative is much worse with shutting down all sorts of speech or shutting down one side.”
“I think, generally, Yale has done a good job with staying institutionally neutral for the most part,” said a sophomore computer science major who asked to stay anonymous. “They did condemn Hamas because targeting civilians is never OK, and they were good to call that out. But otherwise, I think they’ve done a good job protecting the rights of student and faculty free speech and free expression, even on things we think are disagreeable.”
But students who have been at the receiving end of attacks, or have a deeper personal investment in the conflict, say they feel as if incidents on campus have been brushed under the rug. They also feel that university leadership needs to be more vocal at both Yale and UConn.
“I met with somebody from Yale police, but they didn’t provide me with anything, and to my knowledge, they didn’t do anything to track down the people who [sent me threats], because these messages were sent anonymously. … I don’t think that any progress has been made or will be made,” Tartak said. “[As for the university itself,] it has a history of taking political stances. This is not a neutral university at all, and they are now claiming academic neutrality. … It is a disappointment to Jewish students. It makes us unsafe.”
“When we do go and report more serious incidents like the voicemails that we received, we just keep hearing that there’s nothing they can do about it. … It really sucks because when the smaller incidents do happen, like walking to the library [and being yelled at] — which I wouldn’t call them small but in comparison maybe they are a smaller incident — you just can’t really rely on the admin to do anything because they didn’t handle a much bigger issue,” F.M. said about UConn.
“The most disappointing part of it all is that the president hasn’t [added] anything to the conversation, and when your president remains silent towards the things that you’re facing, it’s complicity, and it feels like she agrees with them in that sense,” F.M. added. “It doesn’t make me feel like I’m a student at the school. They continuously say that ‘We’re one pack,’ but we’re really not. It feels like Palestinian students on campus are just an afterthought, and that we’re just here to make the school look good, but when it really comes down to it, [the administration] never stood up for us. They didn’t speak to us when everything [has been] going down. Nobody was there in our corner.”
Higgins said state offices, including the Division of Emergency Management and Homeland Security, the CT Intelligence Center and the Emergency Management Office have maintained communication through the weeks with campus security officials and law enforcement. He also said students “should feel campus public safety and police are vital resources.”
“Campus police and public safety should be proactive in availing themselves to students who wish to engage with them about their safety,” Higgins said. “Campus police and public safety must also endeavor to be highly visible to deter incidents and reduce fear and anxiety. A uniform doesn’t necessarily make some people feel safe, so campus police and public safety must remember this when responding.”
Aside from student demands for a clearer political stance or better efforts of reassurance from university leadership, several students, regardless of the side they’re on, agreed that there needs to be better access to mental health resources.
“When I watch the news, I sit there and I fixate on it for hours and hours because I’m just waiting to see somebody that I know because I don’t hear from them. I want to watch the news and see if they’re going to be there,” F.M. said, explaining that she’s a first-generation Palestinian-American and has dozens of friends and families experiencing the war firsthand.
“If you speak to anyone who’s a Palestinian student on campus, we’ve all fallen behind [in school],” F.M. said. “It just feels isolating. It feels like I’m going home and I’m dealing with so many problems and I can’t focus on my school and I don’t really have any resources to help me.”
At Yale, Tartak shared a similar sentiment about the struggle of balancing school and personal feelings toward the war.
“I came here this semester excited to learn, but I haven’t learned since Oct. 7,” Tartak said. “I can’t name a Jew that has done proper schoolwork in the past two months now.”