SU once again confronts anti-Asian hate crimes with emails, not action

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What we’ve seen in the past few weeks is disturbing: a concerning increase of reported anti-Asian hate incidents both on Syracuse University’s campus and across the country.

About two weeks ago, notes with racist language targeting Asian students were found in several university buildings. On Feb. 28, two people allegedly used anti-Asian language toward an SU student.

And on Tuesday, in Atlanta, a white man shot and killed eight people — Hyun Jung Grant, Xiaojie Tan, Daoyou Feng, Paul Andre Michels, Yong Ae Yue, Suncha Kim, Delaina Ashley Yaun and Soon Chung Park — in three spas. Six of the victims were Asian women.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board condemns the racist attack in Atlanta and all forms of anti-Asian hatred and violence. We call on Syracuse University to combat anti-Asian hate incidents on our campus and confront the ways its inaction has contributed to the rise in hate incidents against Asian community members seen throughout the pandemic.

Yet again, we find ourselves condemning racist acts of hate on campus, and once again, we find it absurd that we have to be doing so. So the question is, what more is the SU administration going to do to reprimand this racist violence besides sending out a strongly worded email about their disappointment and reactive solidarity?

It’s hard to say if we’ll ever get an answer. When it comes to hate incidents, SU does the bare minimum to prevent them from occurring again. It’s almost as if they consider racist attacks on their own students to be inevitable and unpreventable.

We saw this on March 7, 2020, when a flyer about the coronavirus was vandalized with racist language against Chinese students. We saw this a few months ago, when an SU professor referred to the coronavirus as “Wuhan Flu” and “Chinese Communist Party Virus” on a course syllabus. Professor Jon Zubieta was only placed on administrative leave, and in September, he was working with a national campus free speech group to seek reinstatement at the university.

Anti-Asian hatred is here, on our campus. Without taking proactive action to prevent this violence, the university is complicit in perpetuating it.

As the number of reported anti-Asian hate incidents on campus are increasing, SU still thinks that sending out a three-paragraph statement of condemnation and solidarity is the solution. It’s tiring for SU students to have to keep reiterating the call to action for SU to do better. But we continue having to do so because statements continue to be sent out without actions to follow.

We’ll say it once again: we don’t want statements or investigations, we want action.

The statements are recycled, getting weaker with every hate incident they feel the need to condemn. Statements addressing on-campus hate incidents and systemic racism and police brutality seem copied, pasted and mildly tweaked at best. Chancellor Kent Syverud’s statement on anti-Asian hate is no different.

Contrary to their complicit beliefs, SU administrators are the ones responsible for correcting the systemic racism that occurs on their campus. While they may not be directly responsible for the anti-Asian violence that happens across the country, they do need to be held accountable for contributing to the national inaction that led up to the deadly attack in Atlanta.

These reused statements give off the strong impression that the administration sees these hate crimes as something marginalized community members need to actively deal with while the majority-white administration can just sit back and send out a quick, three-paragraph email. The administration’s inaction speaks louder than its words.

And while there may be “ongoing investigations,” into hate incidents on campus, we are still waiting for solutions to come out of them. There’s little point to these investigations if they fail to make the Asian American and Pacific Islander students and faculty on campus feel any safer than they were before.

The administration’s privilege and complicity is glaring when all it does is send out a short message of solidarity. We call on the administration to take initiative and make systemic changes.

The first step to doing so is to listen to their students. It’s a simple concept that can create substantial systemic change. Asian American and Pacific Islander students are extremely underrepresented on this campus.

If administrators truly cared about the violence against their community members, why don’t they listen to those most affected? Listening to them — and more specifically, creating forums to foster an environment of growth — would help alleviate their feeling of being unheard.

The second step is to have concrete results come out of these so-called “investigations” into hate incidents. It’s hard for students to have faith in DPS when these investigations are repetitive and result in little to no systemic change. And it doesn’t help that DPS is rarely willing to admit that these racist acts are more than mere “bias-related incidents.”

Beyond these two steps, SU can do even more. More solutions that go beyond implementing a SEM 100 course that considers a white female scientist as reflective of diversity, that go beyond recommending that students reach out to the Barnes Center at The Arch for counseling. These resources are the bare minimum and are never catered to the students who need it the most.

Put simply, by not already taking these steps and acting unprompted, SU is letting down its Asian American and Pacific Islander students and faculty members.

SU administrators: If you care about ending systemic racism and anti-Asian violence on campus, it isn’t showing. It’s past time to acknowledge that you are responsible for remedying the systemic racism prevalent on campus.

We, The Daily Orange Editorial Board, are directly calling on you, SU administrators, to do more. Because once again, we don’t want statements. We want action.

The Daily Orange Editorial Board serves as the voice of the organization and aims to contribute the perspectives of students to discussions that concern Syracuse University and the greater Syracuse community. The editorial board’s stances are determined by a majority of its members. You can read more about the editorial board here. Are you interested in pitching a topic for the editorial board to discuss? Email opinion@dailyorange.com.