HANOVER — The Hanover Police Department and Dartmouth College Office of Safety and Security are investigating a swastika that appeared on the floor outside of a Jewish student’s dorm room Tuesday night.
The Police Department and college security responded after a student reported the symbol to police around 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, Capt. Mike Schibuola said Wednesday afternoon.
The symbol was marked in the carpet inside of Topliff Hall, a mixed-year undergraduate residence hall on East Wheelock Street, using an “unknown liquid” that may have been water, Schibuola said.
The department is investigating the incident as an act of criminal threatening. Hanover Police also contacted the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Civil Rights Unit, which investigates and enforces non-criminal civil-rights violations and hate crimes.
Police do not have any suspects as of Wednesday afternoon and do not know whether the perpetrator was a student. Schibuola said he does not believe there are cameras in the dorm and police were still confirming how the dorm is secured.
On Wednesday, Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock issued a statement condemning the “act of bigotry and targeted harassment at a person’s home.”
“Antisemitism has no place at Dartmouth,” she wrote. “Acts of bigotry—and all forms of hate—are deeply hurtful and stand in direct opposition to what each of us is working so hard to create at Dartmouth. This is not who we are.”
There have been other acts of antisemitism at Dartmouth in recent years.
A Dartmouth student was arrested in 2020 for shooting the lights out of a menorah on the Dartmouth Green using a BB gun. Hanover Police ultimately decided not to pursue a hate crime charge, citing a lack of evidence.
In 2023, Dartmouth officials found a swastika marked in dirt on the Dartmouth Green in the days following an event honoring Holocaust Remembrance Day.