Alexandra Wallace, 3rd-year political science undergraduate, posts video rant about Asians in the library during finals week. The video immediately went viral on Facebook.
Asian Pacific Coalition posted a response to the issue:
As evidenced by the responses of outrage and hurt from our community, it is clear that this student’s comments can be considered a hate speech, an act of discrimination, harassment, and profiling.
However, we must address the many ignorant comments stemming from our own community in reaction to Wallace’s comments. While we condemn this student’s remarks as not only ignorant and offensive but hateful as well, we believe that we as a community can do better than to resort to the student’s tactics of throwing out divisive words, which only perpetuate a culture of racism and sexism on both sides.
We will not use our strength as a community to attack this individual but rather we will use this event to grasp at an understanding of campus climate: despite what you may have believed about UCLA or our universities before, it is clear that racism, sexism, bigotry, and hatred still exist.
As a community, we should respond with the grace, sensitivity and civility afforded us through the manners we learned from our parents, and their parents before them.
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