Tufts University Korean American Students Settlement Agreement with Assailant

 
Tufts Korean Student Associaton
 
For the last week, the thirteen members of the Korean Students Association (hereinafter KSA-13) and the perpetrator of the 04.09.09 hate incident spent many hours trying to come to an agreement between the parties as an alternative to an administrative disciplinary hearing. The period was filled with anxiety and tensions as the students and community members involved were preparing for end of semester final exams and other commitments alongside negotiations for this case. On April 24th, KSA-13 entered into an agreement with their assailant, Daniel Foster. The agreement was the result of countless hours of painful discussion and tense negotiation between the parties and their attorneys.
 
In the end, Mr. Foster issued a letter of apology admitting to the fact that he uttered racial slurs, spat at, and threatened to kill the thirteen Korean American students. The Settlement Agreement between the parties also detailed that Mr. Foster had accosted the students. The Agreement stipulates that Mr. Foster’s letter of apology will be published in the Tufts’ school newspaper, and that he be placed on suspension status for the upcoming Fall 2009 semester. On April 25th, the Tufts administration signed onto this suspension. Additionally, the Agreement requires that Mr. Foster not join any fraternity for the duration of his studies at Tufts; enroll in Alcoholic Anonymous classes and other related therapy sessions; and enroll in anti-bias/anti-hate programs. The administration has declared that Mr. Foster will need to demonstrate that he has learned from this incident before readmission to Tufts.
 
Ever since the incident of April 9th, KSA-13 and members of the Asian American community and their allies at Tufts have been berated publicly by others suggesting that they had “overblown” the incident. In fact, an anonymous comment posted on the Tufts Daily school newspaper website stated that “…this whole thing is making me sick. We can’t let those chinks do what those negroes did”. The comment stayed on the website for over twenty four hours even after administrators and the website designers were informed immediately of the racist comment.
 
Upon the signing of the Agreement and issuance of the apology, KSA-13 requested that Tufts President Bacow issue this apology via university email. The university legal counsel, acting as spokesperson for the President’s Office, stated that the President’s Office “only issues emails relating to a university wide issue” and that this would establish a bad precedent. In response to the comment, KSA-13’s attorney, Andrew Leong, retorted “This is a university wide issue!” referring to the overall campus climate that has allowed for such hate incidents to happen in the first place and the impact that it has on the entire campus community. Although the Dean of Student Services has issued an email to the campus announcing his concurrence to the Agreement, the President’s Office has remained, to this date, silent on the general matter of the racial climate at Tufts.
 
Although the letter of apology and the Settlement Agreement resolves the immediate hate incident between the private parties involved, it does not address the longstanding neglect on the part of the Tufts administration in properly dealing with issues regarding a campus climate that breeds repeated hate and bias incidents, in providing an intellectual, learning environment that educates and promotes awareness on social and racial differences, and intolerance towards bigotry. We urge concerned public members to express your insistence that Tufts should address this long term defect by sending an email to the President: bacow@tufts.edu. As one member of the KSA-13 exclaimed after the signing of the Agreement, “the last thing that we would want is to have another Tufts student become victim to yet another hate incident and be neglected by the administration like we have.”
 
(The links to the letter of apology by Mr. Foster and the Settlement Agreement may be found at http://www.tuftsdaily.com/freshman-admits-to-racial-incident-with-ksa-me...)
For further information contact Robert Siy, +16174609916, or Jenny Lau