To the Editor:
In his May 9th letter to the editor entitled "Technical Difficulties," Andrew Grossman '02 writes that none of the incidents outlined in the May 2nd article (The Dartmouth, "Past five years marred by hate crimes toward Asians") qualify as hate crimes.
While his observation may be correct, Grossman deliberately undermines the significance of these incidents by proposing that the title of the article ought to have been "Past Five Years: No Hate Crimes Directed at Asians." By definition, hate crimes are motivated by a desire to intimidate or harm a person or group based on their race, nationality, sexuality, religion, or gender. Another article in The Dartmouth that day, "Racist incidents at Duke University spark outrage at N. Carolina campus," describes incidents at Duke University that are being investigated as hate crimes. While the incidents directed toward Asian American members of the Dartmouth community that are chronicled and not chronicled by The Dartmouth may not qualify as "hate crimes," they demonstrate the same ignorance, prejudice and acts of cowardice that have been directed at Asian-American students at Duke, University of Vermont, Stanford University, UC Davis, Cornell University and SUNY Binghamton within the past year alone.
While Grossman argues about technicalities and the letter of the law, the fact that these incidents aren't considered crimes do not change the fact they were acts of racism.
