UCLA student posts racist rant about Asians on Youtube—–> Student receives barrage of death threats——> Scared for life, student makes apology fast and gets it published in the school newspaper—–> Pissed UCLA student organizations and Chancellor respond with vigor…but so far no ACTION has been taken to reprimand the third-year student, Alexandra Wallace.
via Colorlines:
The university has not taken any action against Wallace at this time. Robert Naples, associate vice chancellor and dean of students, told the Daily Bruin that officials are examining the video, the student code of conduct and Wallace’s First Amendment rights.
“(Wallace) has made judgments about a certain race, and people have made judgments about her, but we’ve got to make the correct judgments in the dean’s office, and in order to do that we need to know everything first,” Naples told the school paper.
So what does it mean if Wallace does not get reprimanded? More importantly, what will it mean if UCLA doesn’t get their act together?
Some biting words of “advice” from Jorge Rivas on how Wallace’s next video stunt can lead to change over at UCLA:
Regardless, here’s a suggestion for Wallace’s next viral video: Redeem yourself by apologizing and telling your viewers who you don’t see on campus. For instance, in the 2009-2010 school year, UCLA had a total of 25,611 undergraduate students enrolled. Only 112 of them were American Indian. And only 951 of them were black. Maybe you can get your school to do something about that. Good luck on your political science final.
Zing.
And like the Asian American Studies Department and Center at UCLA said in an issued response to Wallace’s rant, the real problem is UCLA’s shirked responsibilities to diversify their campus, not this one young girl’s 5 minute claim to bigotry-fame:
As the only University of California campus without a diversity requirement, UCLA surely needs to implement a diversity requirement that will expose every student to the task of living civilly with people of different origins, backgrounds, orientations, and beliefs, whether they are born here or come from abroad.
###
*Tangential but related question…Can one ever genuine apologize enough for (and move on from) bigoted remarks?