Students, faculty, and administrators are now well aware that the case of the racist student micturator may well be a fabrication. But they are unmoved in their zealous pursuit of racial justice. It matters not whether a couple of drunken white students peed on Asian students passing by beneath their balcony, or whether, in fact, those passers by were inadvertently splashed by some beer being poured out from above. Nor does it matter that the ethnic insults alleged to have accompanied the urine-like beer went both ways: if the drunken students insulted the Asian students on the street below, they appear to have returned the favor by calling one of their interlocutors "a white fat American piggy." Racism is still bad, it still happens, and it must be fought. Specifically, anti-Asian bias is still common on campus, it's still bad, and it must be fought. Hence the lead story in today's Michigan Daily, which reports that "regardless of whether the official investigation proves or disproves the incident, many Asian students are using the incident to highlight what they say is a campus climate that condones ethnic discrimination and intimidation." "Using" is the key word in that sentence.

The Daily also reports that UM president Mary Sue Coleman remains under fire--not because she failed to get her facts straight before writing to the entire campus community to deplore the anti-Asian racism of the accused students--but because she presides over a campus where such racist events happen, even though those events didn't happen. "In light of the greater recognition of racial harassment on campus due to recent events," the Daily notes, "students are questioning whether the University's goal of diversity has been effective in fostering a campus climate of tolerance." Coleman, for her part, is running with what has become by now a nonsensical exercise in multiculturalist bad faith: "Coleman said that regardless of Sept. 15's alleged felony of ethnic intimidation, the incident has provided an opportunity for the entire campus community to reflect upon and address the issues surrounding racial harassment at the University."

In an effort to document the severe ethnic bias Asians face at UM, the Daily quotes a Filipino student who was called a "chink" ("I was offended because first of all, I'm not Chinese, and he was utterly racist against me"); another who was asked, on the strength of his surname, whether he is related to Jackie Chan; and others who testify to being asked whether they know karate and to being called a "Chinaman." University spokesman Julie Peterson has promised that UM will "establish clear guidelines to ensure that students know how to report incidents of ethnic intimidation and discrimination." But it seems to me that the "incidents" cited in the Daily fall far short of reportable offenses worthy of formal disciplinary proceedings (not least because they are all instances of ignorant but ultimately harmless speech). The way to counter speech like that, if one finds it offensive or ignorant, is to respond in the moment with better, more informed speech. Anything else only adds to the problem, pathologizing the "victims" of offensive comments, raising the comments themselves to the level of an attack, and involving the university in a highly suspect and legally treacherous attempt to regulate speech that ought to be free.

At UM, an incident of "ethnic bias" that involved a physical assault (urinating on an Asian student) has turned out not to be much of an incident of anything. So, in the search for material to bolster the outcry that has opportunistically attached itself to the outrage-that-was-not-one, UM's activists are focussing on speech--and pretty mild instances of it, too. But the university is playing right along, talking about the importance of reporting incidents of ethnic intimidation, and allowing campus activisits to substitute for the non-existent urinary incident examples of expression that they would like to see punished when they arise again.

Meanwhile, a UM student forwards an email that has been circulating on campus:

Dear All,

A lot of you might be shocked to hear his, but I'm a next door neighbour of the students who are accused of having committed the "hate crime".

Although I understand the agony caused by media over this incident, I can assure everyone that this case has been _altered_ and THEN amplified (in the wrong intentions) before being published to the public in the Michigan Daily.

Co-incidentally, my roommate is a witness to this "crime", and agrees to the fact that the story has been GREATLY sensationalized and exaggerated by the Michigan Daily reporters to gain additional attention!

As a second witness (25 minutes late), I can guarantee that there were no "eggs" thrown at the Asian students as no egg shells could be seen at the scene of the "crime". Also, I can guarantee that there was NO racially discriminatory intent OR 'urination' involved in the entire case.

The Asian student involved was extremely aggravated that splashes of a discarded beer cup came in contact with his garments and so he called his colleagues to the scene. It was then that the Asian students initiated a verbal, racial battle with my Caucasian neighbours, and threatened them [who were apologetic at first] and invited them to a physical fight. Further, the Asian students flicked a burning cigarette butt at my neighbours, 'the accused'.

Feel free to come by the apartment complex across from the parking structure... It is virtually impossible for an individual to stand on the 4.5 foot tall ledge on the patio and urinate down on the footpath. Even if a human being managed to perform that feat, it would have taken him/her enough
time and visual indication to give any individual standing even close to the target, to walk [at least] 50 meters away from the intended target.

"Your last name is Chan? Are you related to Jackie Chan?" "No."

For pete's sake, call the police.

I once had a black coworker who saw my toddler daughter's blond hair and asked where she got it b/c my husband and I both have dark hair. I responded that we were both blond as kids and that her hair would probably darken later. And to her disbelief, that it is not uncommon at all for white people's hair to do that. Her response was "You white people are weird!" We both laughed. Now I wonder if I should have filed a complaint.

As to whether UM has a problem regardless of whether or not the incident is true, at this point I would say that they do: either they have a couple of white students who act like cultureless barbarians, or they have a very active and vocal subset of their minority student population looking for an excuse to create bad feelings and drive a wedge between them and the white kids.

As my 80-something-year-old grandmother often says, "Better to be pissed off than pissed on." Maybe the Asian students were both.

I confess myself a bit surprised that Michigan jumped on this one with such unseemly abandon. I grew up about a half hour away from U-M Ann Arbor and at least while I was living there and privy to older classmates' admissions statistics, Asians weren't one of the minorities privileged with the suspension of disbelief whenever they cried "racist." Too successful, I suppose, but perhaps the wind is blowing in a different direction (so to speak).

It was refreshing to see this letter in the Michigan Daily. I wonder how long it will take before someone accuses him of selling out his race.

Once, just once, I'd like to hear of an administrator who, in reaction to such a non-event as this, tells the professionally aggrieved professors and activists to piss off.

Actually, Glenda, my boss at a previous school did just that on my behalf once. I found a black student in violation of our sexual assault policy. The previous semester, I found a white student not in violation of the same policy, as the victim changed her story a few times and witnesses who saw them together earlier did not back up anything she told us.

The black student complained to a philosophy prof, who wrote several scathing e-mails to my boss accusing me of being a racist. My boss (who was as left wing as I am right wing) very politely told him to shove it. The issue died a very quick death.

Tait: your story reminded me of something that happened when I was a financial aid administrator at a small liberal arts college in MA. A black work study student, after being caught and warned against the practice twice, was once again determined to be illegally downloading massive quantities of media on the computer he used to perform his work study job. He also, as it turned out, was distributing it for profit. His boss wanted to fire him, but he came to us first because we ran the work study program.

My fellow FA officer didn't see any reason why the work study supervisor shouldn't fire the illegal downloader: but then the president of the college got involved. "Well," he said, "the kid is obviously bright, and he's black, so we should really give him another warning before we take action. Maybe take his computer away for awhile."

Turns out that someone in the ethnic studies department had gotten to the president first.

This story had a (semi) happy ending. A white student was found to be doing a similar thing on his work study computer. The head of the FA department pointed out the inequity of enacting two different punishments for the same crime, and since the president really wanted to stick it to the white student, he had to stick it to the black student at the same time.

Those are interesting stories. Tait's is heartening.

I worked at an on-campus job, and there was a black woman who was rude, didn't do her job, actually left work to sleep on the couches in the building, etc. No one could get rid of her because she openly said she'd sue for discrimination. A new supervisor came in and became the hero because she PROMOTED the woman away from the rest of us. Everyone was so sick of her that no one cared that she got something she didn't deserve (apparently it was a trivial promotion), and that was the end of it.

I had a friend (Asian) in medical school whose medical textbooks were stolen by a black medical student. He (the victim) reported the student, who then brought in the NAACP to the meeting to threaten the administrators, so nothing happened to the thief. My friend sat astonished at the meeting that nothing was going to be done, even though everyone knew this medical student, future doctor, was a thief.

It seems most professors (and administrators) know this is all extortion but they just accept it. Why risk one's job for someone else, I guess. And then there are the self-righteous professors who knee-jerk take the underrepresented student's side.