Spring Break
Medal missing from statue
Mark Powell
Issue date: 3/5/07 Section: News
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Josh Weaver, a junior majoring in journalism, said that he observed students who were participating in a campus tour climbing on the statue dedicated to Carlos and fellow former SJSU student Tommie Smith.
One male student reached up and pulled on the bronze-colored tile causing the medal to come off in his hand, Weaver said.
"He started messing around and he pulled out the medal," Weaver said.
The student looked at the medal, Weaver said, and then attempted to place it back onto the statue.
According to Weaver, the medal stayed on the statue for a few seconds before falling onto the concrete platform causing it to break.
The students backed away from the statue in shock and the campus tour guide walked over to pick up the broken medal, Weaver said.
"I think that it's disrespectful to play around on the statue," said Sharmika Higgins, an SJSU graduate student. "Especially after what those two men went through."
The student was part of a group of 11th-grade students visiting from Lodi High School, according to an SJSU tour schedule.
Graduate student Maria Ramirez said that it was wrong for the students to be climbing around the statue but said that many younger students don't know the story of Carlos and Smith.
"They should have had respect," Ramirez said. "But they didn't know what the statue represented."
SJSU student Devika Singh was leading the campus tour at the time and said she felt the high school students weren't doing anything wrong.
"They were a really good group," Singh said. "Not doing anything crazy."
According to Weaver, Singh and several adults that were with the students did not try to keep the students from "climbing on the statue."
Singh said that the statue appeared to wobble while the students climbed on it, just before the medal fell.
SJSU junior Abhishek Kasturi, who was working as a campus tour guide that day said he later saw Singh in the Campus Tours office with the medal, which had been broken into three pieces.
Weaver said that Singh picked up the broken medal and set it on the statue platform. Singh walked back to the statue and picked up the medal again, Weaver said.
Singh said she brought the medal back to the Campus Tours Office in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library and called the Office of the President to report the broken medal.
The president's office called Facilities, Development and Operations officials to relay the information about the medal, Singh said.
"Someone from facilities came by in like two or three days to pick up the pieces," Singh said.
The medal was kept in the Campus Tours office until facilities officials picked up the medal, Singh said.
Singh said that a facilities official e-mailed her requesting information on how the medal was dislodged and to thank her for returning the pieces.
"I don't think people should be allowed to play around the statue," Kasturi said, "because it was built to honor John Carlos and Tommie Smith."
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