Korean Student's Door Defaced with Slur, Students Share Demands and Bemoan Slow Response
by Brianna Quinn '23, Reporter
Photo: Signs of protest currently hang inside of Gordon’s student center.
On October 26th, the slur “dog eater” was written on a whiteboard outside of a Tavilla apartment where three Korean students live. Over a week later, on November 2nd, Dan Tymann (Executive Vice President for Campus Life) informed the student body of two racist incidents that had occurred on campus, but did not share details of this specific incident.
The next day, President Michael Lindsay sent an email responding to the November 1st incident, where a t-shirt was defaced with the words “F**k N******”. It was not until November 10th that Tymann sent an email directly addressing the “dog eater” incident from October 26th. In response to these recent events, President Lindsay has announced a campus-wide prayer to ask Christ for campus healing on Nov 18 at 10:25 AM.
In the following days, students took to Instagram to express frustration with the administration’s slow response to the incident against Gordon’s Asian community.
A.S.I.A., a club that describes itself as “a home for Asian students at Gordon College,” published a statement regarding the incident. When interviewed, Jasmine Rupani, a sophomore and the president of A.S.I.A., expressed gratitude that the community has come together with a unifying response, but is concerned over the possibility of it becoming divisive.
She said that it was unfortunate that Gordon’s response seemed slow and that there are not more resources available for when these sorts of events occur; she voiced appreciation for Tyman’s support.
She described the difficulties of handling the incident as president of A.S.I.A: “It’s important to remember that, even though we are leaders and we intend to stand strong and attempt to guide our Asian student body, this kind of thing has an emotional toll on the entire community. It stirs up not just anger at the present situation, but so many memories of what it has been like to grow up in this country as a minority. It forces us to relive painful events.”
She concluded with a call to unity: “The best thing the student body can do is to be patient and have grace with each other–and yes, even with the administration. This is a battle we ought to all be fighting together. Direct your anger toward injustice, not toward each other. We need to come together.”
Rupani credits the unified response against the slur to the students who shared their personal reactions to it on social media. In one post, sophomore Sieun Yang urged her fellow students to not ignore the incident, and instead speak out and support the Korean community. When interviewed, she expressed a desire for more transparency:“I do not want to find out about what’s happening at Gordon via social media.”
She emphasized that this is not an isolated event, and that after speaking with friends who are also international students, she has found that they too have been racially targeted at some point or another. “Gordon students take pride in our community being Christian campus, but I know that a lot of issues are still out there without a lot of people finding out about that.”
The Tartan interviewed the three targeted students: Peter Kim, Sinyoung Noh, and Hyungyu Park.
What was your reaction when you found the racist message?
Peter Kim: When I first encountered the message, I was shaken by the hateful slurs written to us Koreans. On the whiteboard in front of our door, someone wrote “DOG EATER.” As someone who doesn’t use any social media, my first reaction was to erase this hateful message. During my four years at Gordon college, this was my first time experiencing direct hatefulness. I am used to being racially judged outside of Gordon College, but the fact that it happened in Gordon breaks my heart and pains me.
What happened when you reported the incident? What were you told?
Peter Kim: We emailed DML and our RD, Ethan the day it happened. The next day we received a personal email from Lindsay stating that he is sorry for what happened and that Ethan and the team are working to resolve the situation.
Ethan immediately came down to our apartment and we had a short discussion about the situation. After talking with Ethan, there was a slight miscommunication of how Ethan took our statement as wanting to stay private. For us, we believed that this situation would also be heard throughout the student body of Gordon. We didn’t receive any notification and were in the dark for a week.
Even if there was a miscommunication, I personally thought that Gordon would still show us attention and care from this pain. It was disappointing. What was surprising was that Dan Tymann, the vice president of Student Life, was aware of the situation only a week after the incident. This shows that there are flaws currently in our community.
Do you think there was a sincere effort in the investigation to find out who did it? Were the other students in your dorm interviewed about it?
Peter Kim: We had a meeting with Dan on Nov. 13th to talk about how the investigation is proceeding. Student Life and the police are investigating and keeping us updated on the findings. Dan has plans to update surveillance by February of next year. Dan is trying to use all resources available to find the culprit. I do think that they are showing effort and passion in this investigation.
Sinyoung Noh: Regarding the interviews for the other students, we don’t know when it is happening.
What do you think about Gordon's response to the incident (admin response, investigation, overall campus reaction, etc)?
Peter Kim: Like we mentioned before, we are disappointed with how the situation was handled. If Gordon got in touch with us sooner, our pain and anger would have not lasted as long as today. We are grateful for the students that have reached out to us and have helped us make this matter an important issue. Just as the BLM matters to all of us, other colors should be receiving the same attention. We are one community. I want Gordon to be a place of love and care, free of hate, and a place everyone would consider home.
How should Gordon have handled this differently? What do you think they should do now?
Hyungyu Park: Take actions and let students know what is going on campus and what the college is doing to solve the issue clearly! Please!
Sinyoung Noh: We understand that other students could not support and speak up for us before the email from Dan Tymann because many of them just did not recognize what happened. The administration did not even mention the word “Asian” or “Korean” when they officially published their response on November 3rd, and that was the turning point where we started to share our story, first to people we really trust, through email.
I think it caused a huge misunderstanding between Asian students and other students. Some Asian students assume many other students did not speak up even though they knew what happened to us. However, I want to emphasize again that there are so many students who did not even know about this incident until November 10th because the admin did not share it with them, even with ISO leaders, GCSA, and faculty members. Making awareness was the primary purpose of sharing our story. All three of us did not publicize with Instagram postings initially because we wanted to hear back from the admin first about what they will do for us, and obviously, it did not go well as we'd expected. -
Have you found that racism/xenophobia is a pervasive issue at Gordon? Has your apartment or community been targeted in other ways?
Hyungyu Park: Yes! I am pretty sure all people of color have both direct and indirect experiences of racial discrimination on campus. I think it is a good idea to make a poll about how people of color feel about this.
Sinyoung Noh: We have once experienced that food in our fridge disappeared when none of us were on campus. We usually kept the door unlocked because we felt safe on Gordon, and I know many other students do likewise. Now we always make sure it is locked before leaving our apartment. We do not know whether it is related to the recent racial incident, but we feel unsecured more and more with these continuous things. -
What can admin/students do to help, both with this incident and in the future?
Hyungyu Park: Recently what I felt is that the college kind of hesitated to publicize the incident. I think it is really important to share with students what’s going on campus and show the college is putting full efforts to solve the issue and deal sternly with racism. That is the best and utmost thing that can be implemented by the college.
Sinyoung Noh: Our demands include asking to hire more Asian staff who are fluent in our languages (Korean and Chinese) so international students from Asia can reach out to them even if they are proficient in English. Personally, I feel a language barrier is so big, and it needs much more courage to speak up about uncomfortable experiences. I know they are here partially for learning English, but providing international students a better environment to stand up for their rights will also enrich our whole community. In the same context, we need a better reporting system for racial incidents just as Gordon has for reporting sexual harassment. I’ve never expected to use my time and energy this much, just to report the incident and to make it right.
Is there anything else you’d like to say or like the campus to know?
Hyungyu Park: I am asking Gordon students to stand up for us and want you to know the things that happened to me and my apartment-mates. Please speak out with me against college authorities. Speak out against the administration. There is racial discrimination happening on campus towards all people of color. Some people think that because it is a Christian college, so discrimination does not happen but actually, it does and it has happened always. So, my hope is that these two recent incidents bring some positive movements on campus.
The Tartan has reached out to and is waiting for comments from President Lindsay, Mr. Tymann, and the Gordon Police.
Absolutely abhorrent behavior. Such a shame.