Graffiti vandals were at work in Waterloo earlier this week – but in one case, it wasn’t run-of-the-mill mischief.

Rory Lyness was walking down Hazel Street on Wednesday when he noticed a racial slur spray-painted on his neighbour’s house.

 “I said to myself ‘This doesn’t happen here in Waterloo. It doesn’t happen here at Austin and Hazel,’” he said.

The people living in the house weren’t aware of the spray paint until they were told about it by their neighbours.

Mustafa Faraj received a text from a roommate with a picture of the graffiti, and left school to help get rid of it.

“It was shocking,” he said.

“In my six years of being in Canada, I have never experienced a similar occurrence.”

Faraj says he’s generally found Canada to be inclusive, and he hopes Wednesday’s vandalism was done by people who may not have understood how what they were doing would be perceived.

“I hope that’s really all it is … and there’s no deeper meaning behind it,” he said.

Trisha Abraham, one of Faraj’s roommates, says the vandalism felt “a bit purposeful” to her.

“You don’t really expect things like this to happen in such a student-populated area,” she said.

A second house in the neighbourhood was vandalized with spray paint around the same time. No racial slurs were used in that case.