Antisemitism on Plattsburgh campus
December 16th, 2004
A student at Plattsburgh State University is charged with attempted murder as a hate crime after stabbing a fellow student, allegedly because he thought the victim was Jewish:
Prosecutors say a stabbing on a local college campus is a hate crime.
Police say Philip Robertson, 22, stabbed Jordyn Lavin behind a dorm at Plattsburgh State University in September.
According to court papers, Robertson went after Lavin because Lavin is Jewish.
Robertson is charged with attempted murder and assault as hate crimes, and is being held on $10,000 bail.
More details can be found in a campus report:
Plattsburgh State student Jordyn Lavin remembers walking behind Wilson Hall to smoke marijuana with his roommate, then feeling a knife pierce his back.
During a preliminary hearing Friday in Plattsburgh City Court, Lavin testified that his then roommate, Philip Robertson, accompanied him to a wooded area near the Saranac River the afternoon of Sept. 1.
Robertson handed Lavin a pipe and gave him permission to take the first hit, according to Lavin’s testimony.
“He walked behind me, and I felt pain,” Lavin said. “I could see the knife was in me.”
After that first stab wound, Robertson allegedly asked Lavin if he is Jewish, saying Lavin sounds like a Jewish last name.
Lavin replied that he is not Jewish.
Lavin and Robertson were apparently roommates and friends, so it’s hard to say what truly motivated this attack. Was this a symptom of the increasing virulent anti-Jewish sentiment on many college campuses, or an isolated incident of an unbalanced individual? Details are too sketchy to say at this point. But it’s certainly worth watching carefully.
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Robertson was just defending his legitimate rights – how could we expect him to share his room with a jew?
Kofi Anan.
Also, Plattsburgh itself, the whole Champlain area by the border, is kind of creepy, at least in my view.
I don’t know if other Montrealers back me up on this, but when I’ve gone down there to shop or am passing through on my way to NYC, I’m always struck by what a weird backwoods kind of place it is.
“… or an isolated incident of an unbalanced individual?”
How the hell did Robertson get college acceptance? Anybody with a normal IQ would have asked “Are you Jewish?” BEFORE stabbing his victim (and wasting some pretty good weed).