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SALT LAKE CITY — University of Utah police are investigating after they say at least one vandal broke into the campus’s Carolyn and Kem Gardner Building, which is currently under construction, and spray-painted the building with racial slurs and other tags.
Police found racially insensitive slurs spray-painted on one section of the building, other symbols tagged elsewhere, and random spray-paint up and down the stairs, University of Utah Police Chief Dale Brophy said. He did not go into detail of what the slurs said.
“It was definitely racially insensitive, there’s no doubt about that,” he said. “It was definitely inappropriate and it shouldn’t have been anywhere on our campus and it shouldn’t be anywhere in our society.”
No description of the vandal, or vandals, was provided. The vandalism was discovered Monday morning, Brophy said.
An exact damage amount was still being tallied as of Tuesday.
“There was a large section of the flooring, up some stairs that were covered with the graffiti,” Brophy said. “If we need to remove all of that, it’s going to take somebody quite some time to do that.”
The department is in the process of installing close to 100 more security cameras on campus, Brophy added. He did not say whether any of the current cameras caught images of the apparent vandal. He noted the cameras may not be a cure-all for solving campus vandalism cases, but they could provide vehicle and other descriptions.
Brophy also declined to release images of the vandalism because he said doing so may jeopardize their ability to apprehend the vandal.
Construction of the Carolyn and Kem Gardner Building began in 2016. The building is set to house the university’s College of Social and Behavioral Science, as well as other associated centers and institutes, according to the university. It will replace the old Orson Spencer Hall.
Contributing: Paul Nelson
