By now, everyone on campus has heard about the alleged "bias incident" that occurred in Lewis Hall last week involving a dance group from the Korean Students Association (KSA) and a drunk freshman. Personally, I got multiple e-mails from friends and one from Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, and an invitation to a Facebook group (which at last count had 1,824 members), and I came across multiple Facebook "notes" about the situation.
I'm not going to rehash the story. It's been told many times, with input from both sides. My question, though, is this: What makes this a bias incident? Was there "bias" when the drunk kid started imitating the dance the KSA was doing? Maybe — they were, after all, practicing a dance for a cultural show and not just an average, mainstream dance for an average, mainstream show; if TDC were rehearsing and the incident proceeded similarly, I don't think it would be called a bias incident, and I doubt people would be quite so up in arms about the situation in general, but I'll get to that.
Was it a bias incident because of what the kid said? He allegedly employed racial slurs to verbally abuse the dancers after the physical altercation had ended, calling them names and telling them to "go back to China." I suppose this makes what up until then would have been considered merely a fight or, depending on which side you fall, assault, into an incident of racial bias. I know what you're thinking: Well, duh. But think — what do the kid's words after a fight have to do with the apparent motivations for the fight?
Before the violence began — we're not sure who made the situation physical, although I'm inclined to believe the KSA members as they corroborate each others' stories and they were sober — there was no mention of race or ethnicity. According to the Daily, the freshman allegedly called the dance "gay," but most of us have been in groups where using that word as a placeholder for "stupid" or "bad" is common. That doesn't make it acceptable, but it happens all the time, and the student body doesn't get up in arms over something like that. In any event, no epithets were uttered, and no racial threats or comments were made before the violence began.
With these facts in mind, I find it hard to call what happened a bias incident; there was bias, and there was a conflict, but they seem somewhat disjointed. I'm really disconcerted by the focus on comments that were made at the tail end of the incident as a whole when a lot occurred beforehand that's worthy of our attention. All signs point to serious physical violence with injuries sustained on both sides. And then — afterward — a drunk freshman allegedly said something stupid and yes, offensive, inappropriate, "biased" and totally unacceptable. I'm not here to defend this kid who, for the record, I don't know and have never met. I don't know any of the people involved, for that matter.
The real issue here isn't racial insensitivity. It's not "bias," no matter how you define the word. We should be talking about violence and resorting to violence as a solution to our problems. My biggest worry is not a stupid comment that was obviously hurtful enough to raise a ridiculous furor at Tufts. Tufts people love an uproar, but apparently we also like overlooking the real issue. There's no evidence the attack was motivated by racial anger or "bias," but it's obvious that both the freshman student and the five KSA members thought it totally acceptable to use violence to solve their dispute. I don't want to discount the danger and perniciousness of racism, but it's more worrisome to me that violence has so pervaded our school and our society that we find a racial slur more notable than a serious violent conflict.
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Will Ehrenfeld is a junior majoring in peace and justice studies. He can be reached at Will.Ehrenfeld@tufts.edu.
