Investigation Launched Over Columbia U. Janitors Who Were Trapped in Occupied Building During Protest
“were both left injured as well as traumatized from the scourge of anti-Israel unrest that engulfed the Ivy League school and have since been unable to return to work as a result”
This is one aspect of the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, which was glossed over by the media if they even mentioned it.
The New York Post reports:
Columbia janitors claim they were illegally forced to scrub swastikas then were attacked, trapped by anti-Israel mob as civil rights probe launched
Columbia University is facing a new federal investigation over allegations from two janitors who claim they were unlawfully forced to scrub off swastikas spray-painted on campus before later being attacked and briefly trapped by an anti-Israel “mob” during the takeover of Hamilton Hall last spring.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), a federal agency tasked with enforcing civil rights laws in the workplace, has opened a probe into complaints from Lester Wilson and Mario Torres, who were forced to fight their way out of Hamilton Hall nearly a year ago, The Post has confirmed.
Both men are making claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, alleging that they faced retaliatory harassment at the institution for “reporting antisemitic and racist conduct.”
“We welcome the EEOC’s decision to open an investigation into Mario’s and Lester’s charges of discrimination,” former US Attorney General Bill Barr, whose firm Torridon is representing the two men, told The Post.
“Columbia has a legal and moral obligation to protect the civil rights of its students and employees. It must be held accountable when it fails to do so,” Barr, 74, who attended Columbia University and lived through the riots of the late 1960s there, added.
It is not fully clear when the EEOC commenced the probe, but records seen by The Post show that the agency was working on the investigation last month.
Wilson and Torres, who had worked at the school for over five years, were both left injured as well as traumatized from the scourge of anti-Israel unrest that engulfed the Ivy League school and have since been unable to return to work as a result, according to the complaints they filed last October.
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Comments
Janitors are so far below the elevated status of well to do students, that nobody cared about them. The Administration certainly could not be bothered.
It is illegal to scrub swastikas? Who knew?
It’s “illegal” to remove them when they’re evidence of a crime or vandalism against university policy. That one bit of bad wording has been noticed all over.
Wondering that myself. Maybe they’re supposed to be documented first for investigation & incident tracking and they were ordered to be erased instead to make sure the incident wasn’t reported? Just speculating.
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