SEATTLE
Asian American students and community leaders are criticizing a state Human Rights Commission task force report on Washington State University’s handling of a student complaint about the behavior of two school basketball players.
“I was very disappointed,” says Doug Chin, president of the Seattle chapter of the Organization of Chinese Americans.
The report looked at the way the university responded to a February complaint by WSU student Nina Kim, who worked in the school’s Multicultural Center. She complained that two White male students, part of a group who would frequently pass by her office window, made animal noises and danced in what she referred to as a monkey-like style.
On one occasion, she says, one of the young men pulled up his eyes in a slant and motioned “I heart you.”
Kim’s complaint prompted a Feb. 23 campus march by about 100 students calling for expulsions and better minority recruiting at the university.
A WSU student conduct board found that while the two students might have engaged in adolescent behavior, there was insufficient evidence to call it harassment under the university’s code of conduct. The board also decided the behavior was not racially motivated.
When informed of the complaint, the students apologized, stopped the behavior and expressed surprise that it had been perceived as harassment, the school says.
