Two Northwestern University freshmen were charged on Saturday with hate crimes and vandalism after admitting to spray-painting offensive symbols on the walls of a nondenominational campus chapel, the Chicago Tribune reported.
Anthony Morales, 19 (at left), and Matthew Kafker (at right), 18, spent Saturday in jail and court, where they were reprimanded by Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas. “These allegations are disgusting to me,” she said during their bond hearing. “I don't know if any of you know how lucky you are to be at Northwestern University.”
Their bail was set at $50,000.
Police said the students were filmed by security cameras breaking into the chapel on Friday night. The next day after which they appear to have spray-painted swastikas, pictures of genitals, racist slurs against African Americans and Muslims, homophobic slurs, and the word “Trump,” according to the Tribune.
Both students admitted the vandalism in statements given to university police, the Tribune reported.
A university spokesman told the Daily Northwestern that the students have been placed on interim suspension, which bans them from campus, for what the University president denounced in an email to students on Friday evening as a “disgusting act of hatred.”
Photos:
Top: Northwestern's Alice Miller Chapel. Paradoxsociety/Wikimedia Commons
Left: Anthony Morales. Courtesy of the Cook County Sheriff's Office
Right: Matthew Kafker. Courtesy of the Cook County Sheriff's Office
