Mention of shooter's ethnicity unnecessary

Title

Mention of shooter's ethnicity unnecessary

Description

Apr 30 2007
Re: "CUPD Assesses Campus Safety," News, April 18

To the Editor:

Thank you for the article "CUPD Assesses Campus Safety." In some ways, it made me feel a little bit safer knowing about the heightened security. However, it made me feel uneasy and unsafe at the same time after reading about the last shooting that occurred at Cornell. As a Korean-American, I have felt shame, sadness, pity, anger and fear about sharing the same ethnicity as the shooter at Virginia Tech. In a society where racial inequalities and stereotypes still very much exist, I feared for what this one young Korean-American student may have done for our future race relations here in the U.S. My fear was shared by many others, where Korean parents took their children home from VTech for fear of racial backlash.

Thus, I strongly believe that your reference to the last shooting at Cornell was inappropriate and uncalled for. Although you did not specifically say that Kim, the shooter at Cornell, was Korean, it can easily be implied just by his name. I believe that your mention of this one horrific incidence in which the shooter just happened to be Korean only further aggravates the very sensitive issue of race. I believe that you should have referenced the incidence at Cornell without giving names of those involved, to prevent any kind of potentially dangerous stereotypes and consequences that it may have on other Korean-Americans around campus.

Rachel Baek '07

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Original Source: <a href=http://cornellsun.com/node/23257> Cornell Daily Sun - April 30, 2007</a>

Creator

Rachel Baek

Date

2007-07-10

Contributor

Sara Hood

Rights

Jonny Lieberman <jdl46@cornell.edu>, <lieberman.jonny@gmail.com>

Language

eng

Citation

Rachel Baek, “Mention of shooter&#39;s ethnicity unnecessary,” The April 16 Archive, accessed November 2, 2024, https://april16archive.org/index.php/items/show/677.