| posted
26 Apr 2000; dated 06 Apr 2000 Hi
everyone,
My name is Peter Van Do and I am the President of the Asian Student
Union of SUNY-Binghamton. I would like to thank all those who
replied giving us your support. Some of you have already heard from
me and some of you haven't. If you are confused, read further and
you will understand soon. Below is a condensed and
"cleaned" version of what I have been sending out to most
of you in the past few days.
There was a anti-Asian hate crime committed on our campus Feb. 27, 2000.
The victim is a Korean-American freshman second-semester transfer student. He suffered internal-bleeding and a fractured skull. Now he has
short-term memory loss. The SUNY-Binghamton administration did not inform or contact the victim about his rights as a victim of a
hate crime, did not inform his parents, directly, of what happened to son,
and they issued a statement two weeks after the incident to the student
body after our organization was publicly informing the students that the
assault was racially motivated. Did they think the Asian community would
be "passive" about this?
We need your help.
1) please inform all you know about this crime
2) contact the media about this. especially the national and NYC metro
news sources. We want to get alot of attention to SUNY-Binghamton's administration.
3) contact the SUNY Board of Trustees in Albany. They are in charge of
the whole SUNY school system. They are also the bosses of the SUNY-Binghamton administration. I don't know the contact info for the
SUNY Board of Trustees. I will try to find out later and send you all
the info. If anyone of you can actually find this info out please send
it to me.
4) contact the SUNY-Binghamton administration of your concerns and discontent. I have included their email and mailing address below in the
email.
5) give us your insight and advice from your own experiences. What
worked and didn't. Below is a summary of what we have done including the
facts and opinions of the incident. A respected person informed me of a
case at UConn-Storrs. One of outcomes was an Asian American Cultural
Center in a new edifice built just for it. What did they do?
6) inform all you know (especially Asian Americans) that no incidence is
too small to report. The National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium has an Incident Report Form and another one geared directly
for college students.
We need to report and document these injustices more. We, the Asian Student Union, are tired of being invisible.
For more info contact the Asian American Legal Defense and Educational
Fund in York at:aaldef@worldnet.att.net
We are also thinking of having an inter-collegiate rally against Hate
Crimes across the nation that go unheard. Tell us what you think.
I am sorry for giving most of you a "tag-team" run with the emails. I am
no longer able to use my school email account due to the possibility
that the administration is reading and deleting my messages sent and
received. I was booted out of my account last night. I was only on for 5
minutes trying to obtain some of your email addresses. And I tried using
my yahoo account, but I hate it and I found out sent messages to most of
you were cut off.
So now I am at excite as: crazyvando@excite.com. With excite I can also
recieve faxes and voice messages. My Voicemail: 1-888-Excite2, ext.
291-348-7977.
Again, the full and updated story is included below. We hope to hear
from you all soon. Sorry for the long email. This is very important to
us.
In hopes of solidarity, Peter Van Do
Asian Student Union President
**********************************************
In the very early morning hours of Februrary 27th, 2000, four Asians
were assaulted by three Caucasian Binghamton University (SUNY) wrestling
team members outside Onondaga Hall in College in the Woods dormitory
community.
As reported in the Press and Sun-Bulletin, three Binghamton University
undergraduates, Chad W. Schott, Nicholas W. Richetti, and Christopher M.
Taylor are all facing prison time and have been charged with second degree gang assault, a felony, for allegedly attacking four Asian
students. Most seriously injured was John E. Lee, who suffered a fractured skull. The newspaper reports that the Asian students were
taunted with racial slurs, and that the three students who have been
charged, all members of the BU Wrestling Team, have been suspended from
the university.
Though this is clearly a race issue, the Binghamton administration and
student newspaper (Pipe Dream) have done absolutely nothing and have
said nothing in regard to this matter being racial. Not one person representing the university bothered to visit the hospitalized victim,
and not one person has condoned the heinous acts of the wrestlers. Now
we all know politics and money rule the world. And everyone knows this
school is investing an overabundance of funds into the athletic program.
An incident such as what happened two weekends ago of course will deter
more money from the state government and benefactors. Perhaps this is
the reason why this is so "hush hush."
Or maybe the administration believes nothing will come out of this since
Asian Americans have been known to be "passive" and "quiet" when it comes to matters of justice and politics. But we cannot condone this
type of behavior, and we cannot turn the page on this. The attack could
have happened to anyone. It is time now to do something about this, and
time to make ourselves known that we do not and will not tolerate injustice to our race, or to any human being. Let us not shy away from
this and be perceived to be week and tolerant of abuses. JUSTICE must be
served! Make yourself be heard. This is something that impacts you and
everyone else.
DO NOT ALLOW OTHERS TO TREAD ON YOU.
Also, please let the administration at Binghamton know that this sort of
behavior will not be condoned, by e-mailing them.
|
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