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Kaylee Mahony, a sophomore influencer with more than 125K followers, known as Kaylee Marie or @Kayshmoneyy on TikTok, started a verbal altercation with the Students Supporting Israel club at the Spring Involvement Fair on Tuesday, Jan. 27, which also happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Freshman Ella Leon was tabling for SSI during the fair when the altercation happened.
“The main things she was saying was that rabbis eat babies, that we shouldn’t be allowed on campus and that we are dirty,” Leon said. “And that’s not right.”
Mahony is known on TikTok for her political posts, which are generally viewed as being anti-Israel, anti-immigration and anti-Democrat.
Leon also noted that the members of SSI were proudly wearing necklaces displaying their culture and that Mahony’s debate was not centered around Israel, but Judaism in general.
Student leaders with SSI said that they welcome all kinds of civil debate and interaction with students from different viewpoints, but that the debate with Mahony quickly grew heated.
It is unclear if Mahony started the argument with SSI because today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, or because SSI was tabling at the fair.
A member of the Committee on Student Organizations — the organization hosting the fair — approached the table after a few minutes of the argument. Two of the SSI members who were tabling explained that a COSO member encouraged Mahony to calm down and leave.
“The school is amazing. Josh Brandfon came and checked to see if everything was okay, because obviously it wasn’t really just any run-of-the-mill debate. It was just kind of bigoted,” said senior Tamir Shazo, another SSI member.
Brandfon serves as the senior director of student activities, student organizations and student center complex programs at UM.
The third SSI member running the table, Yonah, encouraged any students looking to debate to attend SSI’s “The World’s Biggest Zionist. Ask Me Anything.” debate scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 29.
“At SSI, we’re not afraid of genuine conversation. We welcome discussion from all opposing viewpoints,” Yonah said following the altercation. “That’s what a university is for. To be able to exchange and debate ideas. So if anyone reading wants to come and try for themselves, we welcome it.”
International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps that killed millions of Jews during the Holocaust.
The Hurricane reached out to Mahony for a comment late on the afternoon of Jan. 27 and has not yet received a response.
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Keira Faddis
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