Alleged racial incident stuns Tufts

The freshman, who is white, approached five men from the group who were practicing a dance for an upcoming cultural show and insisted the dancers teach him their moves, according to the school newspaper and a news release from the Korean Students Association.

When the dancers refused and asked him to leave, the freshman responded with expletives, called them "gay," spat on them, and threatened to kill them, according to one written account.

A fight ensued and the dancers pinned the freshman to the floor, put him in a headlock, and let him go only when he said he could not breathe, said a written account of the incident from the Korean Students Association. The freshman then allegedly spewed a string of racial epithets, yelling at the Korean students to "Go back to China."

The freshman acknowledged in a statement given to the student paper, The Tufts Daily, that he shouted obscenities after the fight but the statement did not mention any racial slurs.

"In the aftermath of the dispute, members were shocked and saddened that such racism and hostility could be found at our school," the students association wrote in an e-mail.

Bruce Reitman, dean of students, assured students via a communitywide e-mail that the university is investigating the incident he described as "apparently involving a physical altercation and racial epithets."

"We want the community to know that we take seriously our responsibility to pursue this incident and to ensure a safe and supportive environment on campus for all our students," Reitman wrote.

About 200 people gathered at a campus rally Thursday to demand that the university administration make institutional changes to ensure that students from all backgrounds are safe on campus. Among those present: Councilor Sam Yoon, Boston's first Asian-American councilor and a mayoral candidate.

Jenny Lau, a Tufts junior and incoming co-president of the Asian American Alliance, a student group, said the incident represented a more widespread problem on campus. In recent years, she said, Tufts students have targeted their African-American, Muslim, and gay peers by making stereotypical jokes against them in campus publications and defacing property.

"Time and time again, these sorts of incidents have happened that go against a safe campus environment that all students should be entitled to," Lau said.

Tomorrow, Eric Johnson, Tuft University's executive director of development, will be among the 200 Tufts students, employees, alumni, and parents running the Boston Marathon.

They're responding to a challenge set by Lawrence Bacow, university president, in 2003 to hoof the 26.2 miles to raise money for fitness programs and research on obesity and nutrition at the university. Tufts will field the largest college team in Boston's famed race, according to a university spokeswoman. The group typically raises more than $400,000 each year.

Johnson, who's raised money for Tufts for 21 years, likens marathoning to his day job: "There's high energy at the start and ups and downs on the course - until you see the finish line."

Tomorrow's race will be Johnson's seventh Boston Marathon, and 21st marathon - though he swears it will be his last.

University deans announced recently that the college is canceling its "January experience" for Harvard undergraduates - a new two-week term between the holiday break and spring semester that was to include special programming. The initiative was supposed to launch next school year, after years of discussion, to give students something to do after schools across the university synched their calendars, resulting in a longer winter break.

"We are concerned that mounting a new, compressed, short-term set of offerings in January - particularly at a time when resources are highly constrained - would in fact distract from the college's focus on other more central aspects of the undergraduate experience," wrote Michael D. Smith, dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and Evelynn M. Hammonds, dean of Harvard College, in a recent letter to the Harvard community.

Now, not only will students forfeit whatever special programming they were to receive, most of them won't have housing. To the ire of many students, only those with a preapproved need to be on campus - varsity athletes, international students, thesis writers, and students conducting lab-based research - will be permitted back in dorms, the letter said.

Its Cambridge neighbor, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently announced plans to eliminate about a half-dozen of its 41 varsity athletics teams to help trim its budget by $1.5 million.

Gone with the team sports - which ones will be determined later this month - is the title MIT shares with Harvard as having the most varsity teams in the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a point of pride for both schools.

"Current budgeting efforts, in the wake of the economic downturn, have made it clear that MIT can no longer support a varsity program of the same scope and scale," said a news release posted last week on the school's athletics website.

Students are already launching an effort on Facebook to save athletics programs: "As a community, we need to show the MIT administration that athletics are an integral part of our education and they are too important to be cut."

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