Freshman Daniel Foster admitted on Friday to making racial slurs toward, threatening to kill and spitting at a group of Korean students, as part of an apology in the framework of an agreement between him and the 13 members of the Korean Students Association (KSA) whom he accosted during the early-morning hours of April 9.
Foster and the KSA members reached the agreement over the past week outside of university channels, although Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman largely accepted the terms of the deal.
Click here to view a PDF of the agreement.
As part of the agreement, Foster, who is white, said he would request that the university suspend him for next semester and he would write a signed apology that he would “cause to be published” in the Daily, not join a fraternity as an undergraduate at Tufts, attend Alcoholics Anonymous sessions and “anti-bias/anti-hate” courses, and enter into and receive treatment from a therapist or mental health counselor.
Click here to view a PDF of Foster's apology.
“Mr. Foster wishes to make amends to the extent which is possible for his inappropriate, offensive, and hurtful behavior, and all parties wish to resolve this matter without litigation or other proceedings,” reads the agreement, which Foster and the KSA members signed on Friday.
The agreement comes after a fight broke out between Foster and some of the 13 KSA members shortly before 2 a.m. on April 9, as the Korean students practiced for a culture show in the Lewis Hall main lounge. KSA members initially alleged that Foster uttered racial slurs, made threats and spat at them members after the violence ended.
Foster said in a statement later that day, though, that he shouted obscenities and that a Korean student first pushed him. Until Friday’s agreement, Foster had not publicly admitted to making racial slurs toward, spitting at or threatening to kill the students. And Reitman said that Foster also admitted drinking before the incident; Foster is underage.
The agreement and Foster’s apology did not mention the fight, however. Instead, “[a]dvocates for the two sides said that all of the students wished to dismiss their previous statements about any physical altercation,” Reitman said in his statement; he told the Daily yesterday that the university counsel had questioned the parties about this aspect after noticing its omission from the document.
As part of the agreement, both sides said they would not take further action, unless the document’s stipulations were breached.
In his statement, Reitman also said that the university would accept the deal as long as Foster also completes an anger-management program and, upon completion of his suspension, satisfies the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs “that he has learned from this experience and will contribute positively to the community.”
Reitman said his office respected the outcome of the parties’ deliberations, even though they occurred outside of university channels, as “such efforts are often more meaningful than those reached in fact-finding hearings.”
His office was thus reluctant to diverge from Foster’s and the KSA members’ decision, he said, but still decided that more had to be done.
“[G]iven the seriousness of the behavior to which the one student has admitted, I do not feel that his automatic return to the university community after the suspension is appropriate,” Reitman said in the statement.
Outgoing KSA Co-President Tom Moon, one of the 13 KSA members who signed the agreement, said that Foster first met with and admitted guilt to the KSA members on Thursday. At first, Moon said, the Korean students were not sure if Foster was sincere. TThe freshman said he sobbed the night of the incident, according to Moon.
“We thought that yes, we thought that he could be sorry for what happened … but he didn’t understand the extent of what he did and how it affected the people,” Moon said, adding that the KSA members asked Foster why he portrayed himself as a victim in his original statement to the Daily.
“I’m just relieved that it’s all over now, because now I can finally get back to studying for finals,” Moon said. “I think that what happened was the right outcome. I think that he should go to classes, he should have some disciplinary mark to show what he did, to show how much he affected our community.”
On the morning of April 9, Foster approached the students and mocked a dance five of them were practicing; tensions rose and the KSA members asked Foster to leave.
A short scuffle broke out, and both sides told the Daily later that day that the other had started it. Foster said on April 16 that he received injuries to his elbows, one shoulder, an area behind his ear, his neck and one of his knees. At least one KSA member’s shirt was ripped, and one’s face was scratched. Both parties have said the other side started the scuffle.
In his apology, Foster admitted to bothering members of the KSA who were practicing a dance in the main lounge of Lewis Hall and spitting at the KSA members.
He also admitted that he called the KSA members “‘chinks,’ told them to ‘go back to China,’ told them that I would ‘get them,’ said ‘I am going to kill you all,’ and probably other words that I do not remember.
“My guilt and shame have been eating me away inside,” Foster said in the written apology, which appears in today’s Daily on page 20. “I am genuinely sorry for the pain I have caused not only to the people directly involved in the incident, but for every one [sic] else who was affected by the words I said that night.”
Foster declined to comment further for this article.
“How many of us feel is, though he emotionally scarred us for our lives, this is just another incident for him,” Moon added. “I feel like we got the worst of it, because what we’re gaining through this agreement is basically nothing, and this agreement is all about him getting better.”
The agreement came on Friday morning as five panelists gathered in a room in Dowling Hall to convene an administrative hearing that would examine whether the university’s code of conduct was breached during the April 9 confrontation.
That administrative hearing never took place. Instead, Reitman received the details of the outside agreement and on Friday and Saturday considered whether the university should accept it; the school was under no obligation to do so, as the parties involved did not officially arrange it through Tufts.
Since the incident occurred earlier this month, the KSA has orchestrated a campaign to spread the word about what happened. Hundreds of students, faculty members, administrators and others on April 16 attended a rally on the Tisch Library patio in response to the incident, which some called a hate crime, and over 2,000 people have joined a Facebook.com group devoted to it.
KSA members, other students and some faculty members have called on the administration to take stronger action directly in response to the incident, with many demanding diversity-related curriculum changes.
Administrators have spoken out against bias incidents in general but had largely been careful not to comment directly about this incident until an ongoing judicial investigation had wrapped up.
Moon, the outgoing KSA co-president, said that the whole incident has left him and his fellow group members hurt, as well as angry at the administration.
“We actually wanted the administration to send the apology letter out through the university e-mail,” he said. “They haven’t really … tried to support us at all. And the reason that we decided to go through with the outside agreement is because [the administration] didn’t do enough about it early enough.”
256 comments
Everyone at some point or another has experienced some version of racism and were probably not to keen on it, yet everyone at some point has probably also dished out there own prejudices. Maybe they haven't been so severe or maybe they have and these cause people to be acclimated differently to actions such as the one at Tufts. The majority of people in our world have grown up in sheltered environments where parents try and protect their kids from such situations and for many this may be the first of its kind with such hype and development.
To say that I have no prejudices whatsoever would be a lie and it is because of events such as these. It seems that many people here have coupled being wealthy and white and being sheltered but this in itself appears to me as stereotyping that Tufts kids claim to be so sensitive to. I feel that I fall under the category that no one has realized possible, white wealthy and unsheltered. I grew up in an environment full of racism at every turn. I've been called so many different things its not even funny. Yet I never felt the need to get so up tight and insecure about any of it. My high school was very diverse one might say. Over two thirds asian, 15 to 20 percent white quite the opposite of most peoples experiences and from that I feel like I may have a better view of things but maybe I am wrong. From my experience however, of all of those Asians the Koreans had the strongest presence. I don't know if this meant there were more of them or what but its clear they are a very proud people and don't stand for any sort of pushing around, in fact in my high school the gang of koreans pushed everyone else around. I am not a small guy or anything and there were countless occasions where a groups of koreans would come up to me for no reason at all and poke fun at me or push me around and then if I were to retaliate would say something like "What did you say whitey, say it to my face" or something of that nature. I don't feel that this is the attitude of all Koreans but I have been led to believe that they are very exclusive and don't associate with many people outside of their organizations like the KSA.
While Dan has committed a serious mistake and he should take time to find himself the event should not have been so public but the KSA saw it more as something that they could exploit a ridiculous amount. It was not an event that resembles what the rest of Tufts thinks and doesn't justify the use of phrases like "hate crime" The KSA claimed to try and be nice and fair to Dan but if they were in fact only looking to better the Tufts Community in such a way as to rid it of racism they would not have done so in such a public way. They would not have required such a public statement from Dan.
Everyone seems to instantly need to attack someone but as I said before its hard to do the correct thing in any of there shoes. What we should do is learn from this, as of now its too late for Dan or the KSA students to retract any of what has been said or done. Hopefully now everyone will learn about racist issues more and the administration as well will know how to better deal with a situation if it were to occur in the future.