Asian Fortune Your source for all things Asian American
By Gaylord Garcia
On October 3rd Friday afternoon, hundreds of students and faculty of Harvard University received death threats, according to New England Cable News. The death threats disrupted student life and prompted increased security on campus. Harvard police said that the death threats were e-mailed at around 4:45 PM, in which an unknown person will be coming to the Ivy League campus and gun down “all students of Harvard” the following day. Although the e-mail was addressed to the whole student body, the recipients appeared to have predominantly targeted Asian and Asian American women.
The true identity of the sender still remains unclear. In one of the e-mails, the sender self-identified as a Boston resident named Stephanie Nguyen. In the other e-mails, the sender goes by the names of Eduardo Nguyen and of Huy Dinh. After initial investigation of the police and the FBI, the Harvard University Police Department deduced that the letters came from overseas. The sender used a hotmail.de account – located in Germany – to send the threatening and racially charged e-mails.
The e-mails also offered clues that the threat was heavily directed towards Asian and Asian American women. The sender appeared to have chosen his recipients based on their presumed race or ethnicity, using their surnames. He or she also wrote in the e-mail “I am going to kill every one of you. I promise you, slit-eyes” – “slit eyes” or having a narrow eyes is a common characteristic by Asians and Asian Americans.
The Harvard University Police Department (HUPD) increased patrols on campus and encouraged students to review the school’s safety guidelines during the process of their investigation – since they could not yet determine the credibility of the threat. At least two on-campus events were also rescheduled to ensure the safety of the students. One of these events where on the Asian American Experience at Harvard hosted by the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association. The death threat definitely caused the whole campus to be gripped by fear.
Pranay Nadella, an Asian American freshman at Harvard said that although the campus didn’t shut down but that there were more visible officers and security. Nadella said “The whole issue made me realize how open [to the public] our campus and college campuses in general are. I never thought I’d feel unsafe walking around my own campus and going to class”.
Adela Kim, a senior at Harvard, along with several other students were critical of the university’s response towards the threat. “ Aside from the initial notification about the threat and link to the university’s Active Shooter Safety Guidelines, students have not received further information,”said Kim. Kim said this was not the first time Harvard has had communication problems citing the Boston Marathon in 2013 as another case where the university didn’t provide adequate information to its students.
Students were not the only members on campus that was critical of the Harvard administration’s response. The Dean of the College at Harvard, Rakesh Khurana was also critical of the administration at the university for failing to communicate instantly and efficiently with students and faculty when the threat was received. Nonetheless, a couple of student groups at Harvard took the initiative by themselves to bring more attention to the issues of race and gender that are not completely foreign to the threat.
Asian and Asian American students along with black student groups organized social media campaigns to show solidarity with those affected by the threat that disproportionately targeted Asian and Asian American women. Sarah F. Cole, president of the Black Students Association said, “ …We just wanted to say to the Asian and Asian American community that we know how you feel, and to say to the rest of the community that you need to listen”. Black students across campus changed their Facebook profile pictures with an overlay captioned, “ I stand in solidarity with the Asian and Asian- American Women at Harvard”.
Shengxi Li, a senior at Harvard and a student who received one of the emailed threats was pleasantly surprised by the support from the black community. Li said, “ This is really an opportunity for students to come together as a Harvard community, regardless of whatever background or whatever clubs you’re involved in. This incident affected all of us.”
Even though the Harvard University police released three community advisories detailing physical safety and security procedures, many of the students noted that there were no other supplementary materials that the College offered to help with the emotional issues caused by the murderous, racial, and gender-related nature of the e-mailed threats. Nevertheless, it was refreshing for the Asian and Asian American students to know that other students were gathering together for community conversations to discuss the incident that created an environment of fear and anxiety on campus.
