In the ten-year period from 1996-2006, 21 Cornell students committed suicide. Thirteen of them (approximately 62 percent) were of Asian descent. Additionally, there have been suicides at Cornell by non-students.
In at least four cases, people killed themselves by throwing themselves into the gorges.
Good fodder for comedy? Here’s one Cornell blogger’s (D. Evan Mulvihill) take:
President David Skorton announced the plans for the construction of an Asian Community Center at a midday press conference today. The building is to be located directly adjacent to Uris Library on the Clocktower Side, and will be designed by the famous architect I. M. Pei.
“I believe that this building will dramatically reduce the amount of Asian suicides at Cornell,” Skorton announced. “We also plan to fill in the gorges with those chewy bubble tea orbs so that distraught students will have to rely on other methods.”
The article has since been deleted, but its cache remains:
Among the centers many features are the Pokemon Card Trading Arena, the Mi-So Slipi Lounge equipped with 100 beds for study break naps, and one-seater dining areas with calculators built into the tables. Many students are most excited, however, about the center’s Lucky Sun Moon Restaurant, which features MSG, beef with broccoli, and cat-fish casserole, which incorporates not catfish but a mixture of cat and flounder.
“Our plans were substantially modified after meeting with the Asian and Asian-American community,” said architect I. M. Pei. “The original plans called for an underground parking lot, but it was scrapped based on the projected amount of parking mishaps. That was something I did not foresee, perhaps because of my squinty eyes.”
Most Asian students jumped for joy upon hearing the news. Student Mi-So Honee remarked, “Is so close to libelly!”
Other students were appreciative that the name was changed from the Little Rice Room Place. “Besides being a sirry name, I couldn’t rearry pronounce arr those R and Ls,” said Henry Joon-Kimyung-Jook.
ED’S NOTE: I’m not really this lacist… but then, again maybe everyone is:
Apparently this “humor” article caused an uproar, which lead to an “apology”:
I wrote the satirical fake news article intending to exhaust the full spectrum of stereotypes about Asians. It was also an April Fools’ Day joke. It was intended to be so, so over-the-top that it might come across as not tasteless. In the end, I think if I had used only the positive stereotypes of Asians instead of the others (poor pronounciation, higher suicide rates, etc) then it might not have been such a flop.
I personally am close friends with many Asians, and don’t have any prejudgments about them. I know that as a whole Asians tend to be more studious which is what the article was supposed to harp on: the funniness that an Asian community center would be built right next to the library.
I’m glad that you would like to hear my side, because I think the discussions about racists and racism usually amounts to the “oppressed” group sitting together and whining about how oppressed they are instead of actually seeing what other people perceive their group.
So a commenter calls him on this crap (the Asian friends! the whining of the “oppressed”), and the “apology” gets written yet once again.
In response to three critical comments, the author posts again:
Clearly, this is a very emotional subject for a lot of Asian-Americans, and I didn’t realize that. I’m sorry that I played around with stereotypes, and made fun of an ethnic group. Apparently this isn’t enough for you guys–what more do you want? You are reading a lot more into this than is necessary. Please let it go.
D. Evan Mulvihill, did you know that the Cornell task force identified one of the issues facing the Cornell Asian American community as the “lack of recognition and awareness of the reality, experience, and impact of racism and stereotyping as they relate to Asians and Asian Americans”?
Maybe you could have talked to somebody who knew Ash Thotambilu or Jun Wang. Maybe then you would understand why a joke about suicides by people of Asian descent at Cornell wasn’t funny. Maybe then you’d understand why you compounded the problem by heaping on tired old racist “humor.” Because isolation is often a factor in suicide, and maybe that isolation has to do with people making fun of you and then claiming it’s “just a joke.”
Maybe you would start to understand that you are a part of the problem.
16 comments
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April 9, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Kathy
I remember reading about the high rate of suicide at Cornell by Asian American students a few years ago and apparently the jokes and cartoons have not been addressed by Cornell. “The Adventures of Antman” were published about three years ago, and still Cornell is just sitting on this issue.
What is most amazing to me is how Cornell, and the treatment Asian Americans face by the student body are not recognized as the the source of the high suicide rates there, instead the blame is put on the students themselves rather than the racist cartoons and jokes that the student body perpetuates and Cornell ignores.
April 9, 2008 at 5:56 pm
caroline
thank you so much for thoroughly explaining the context and the issue at hand. a large obstacle in the national APIA community is the very lack of recognition of social, political, and economic problems we face. to even begin to inform the larger community about the lack of resources cornell students, staff, and faculty face, more people should write as eloquently as you do.
and kathy, as for the antman comics, i didn’t even hear about those until a few days ago. i may be a transfer sophomore who has been attending cornell for less than a year, but all students and i should know about this! that’s the extent to which problems APIAs face get buried.
April 9, 2008 at 6:40 pm
caroline
also, we just got this blog started a few days ago, but here you can keep updated with cornell’s asian & asian american center (A3C) news. we just got the official, public go-ahead from the administration to establish this center on march 31st.
concerned students, faculty, staff, and administrators have so much more work to do to found this A3C. we appreciate any insight, questions, or comments readers would like to give us, so come visit the A3C blog:
http://a3c-cornell.blogspot.com/
April 9, 2008 at 9:36 pm
sylvie
Every time i hear the phrase, “I have many [insert minority group here] friends,” or “It was satire,” I want to kick someone in the head. You know, a karate kick because I’m Asian and I, too, like to exhaust the full spectrum of Asian stereotypes, just like Mr. Mulvihill. Idiot. His post was purposeful degradation that he thought he could get away with. And now that people are actually opposed to it (surprise!), it’s suddenly “satire.”
Angry Black Woman blog has a great post about the use of supposed satire in context of the U of Colorado editorial that’s very similar to the one at Cornell.
http://theangryblackwoman.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means/
April 9, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Fighting Evan Mulvihill's racist speech
Evan is a complete racist jackoff. He can try to erase his column from his own website, but we can do our best to make sure that he doesn’t succeed in just sweeping it under the carpet.
I created this blog so that, in addition, to reading it on this site, people will see what Evan wrote for years to come and know what a racist fool he is. Here’s the blog:
http://evanmulvihill.blogspot.com/
April 9, 2008 at 10:25 pm
c
What a box of effin rocks.
Why why why are people stupid?
How could one not know that the sterotypes used in that piece of ish are utterly, utterly offensive?
How could one write such crap and find it funny?
And how can one, who is not part of the group they’ve mocked and dehumanized, then around and say, “Let it go already.” because they are obviously an asshole and don’t want to confront their own stupidity?
Why?
April 9, 2008 at 11:34 pm
panracial
You know what makes me mad — it’s college kids and educated people being satirical, throwing ghetto parties, redlining neighborhoods, denying entreprenuers loans and then denigrating the white rural poor or white working class people in general as the real racist ones. I’d love for someone to address how white hipsters/liberals/professionals act in incredibly bigoted ways and then point at some poor white family and say — who me, it’s those people who are racist hicks.
April 9, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Margaret
Evan Mulvahill is a racist effing pig. I will never “let it go already” because the words you write affect my children.
April 10, 2008 at 12:05 am
David
There are so many problems with Mr. Mulvihill’s writings that’s it hard to single out any one thing. But I will mention the part that strikes me hardest.
While I don’t know if “resistance” knew either of the students he mentioned above, I did know an Asian grad student at Cornell who committed suicide. I prefer not to mention her name out of respect for her family.
Several years ago this month, I was riding a city bus (as I did today), when she got on the bus at the same place she always would, near her house. At the same time, a guy that we both knew was also on the bus. He and I talked with her a few minutes, and then she got off the bus. I thought it strange that she was in a bad mood, because I had never seen her that way. Three days later she was dead. When I saw the mutual friend a few days later, he told me he had the same thought as I did - he also had never seen her in a bad mood. We both wished that we had realised what was going on and we could have somehow intervened. He has since graduated and left Ithaca. I don’t know if he ever thinks about this (I imagine he does), but I know I sometimes think about her, usually when the bus stops near where she lived. Because of Mr. Mulvihill’s writings, I certainly have been lately. I know there are other people at Cornell who probably think of her still, including a professor that knew her very well, and whom she was very fond of.
As I don’t know what Mr. Mulvihill is studying, it is possible that he may even have a class with that professor. But even if he doesn’t, I’m sure this professor would be happy to teach Mr. Mulvihll about the effects this kind of thing has on people. And I would be right there assisting the professor in this “class”. It is unfortunate that in a place of higher learning like Cornell, that there are still people like Mr. Mulvihll who never learned simple life lessons like treating everybody the same, no matter what they look like, where they’re from, or however else they may be different from him.
I don’t know what year Mr. Mulvihll is in school, but it seems to me that when it comes time for him to graduate, it would be appropriate if he were not given a diploma, as it’s clear that he hasn’t learned anything so far…
April 10, 2008 at 12:58 am
Kathy
David,
I agree, Cornell should not give Mr. Mulvill a diploma.
btw, your post was beautifullly written and moving.
April 10, 2008 at 2:52 am
molecularshyness
wow. I guess ‘racial satire’ is the intellectual blackface/ghetto party, now. Neither is funny.
April 10, 2008 at 2:47 pm
Jay
I wanted to leave a message on Mr. Mulvihill’s blog, but he has closed the comments section. If I may, I would like to ask him a question: “Mr. Mulvihill, would you have DARED to write your piece if it made fun of African-Americans?”
April 10, 2008 at 4:58 pm
panracial
I’m sure he would have! I don’t know why people seem to have this view that blacks are some privileged minority that no one dares disrespect.
April 10, 2008 at 10:17 pm
Kathy
Panracial,
I do not think the Blacks are a privileged minority, but I do believe that racism is the schools manifests itself differently for different ethinic groups.
For example, while an Asian American might be invited to a party that an African American was not invited to, an Asian American is more likely to have racial slurs ignored or dismissed as inconsequential at school. I don’t know if this holds true at the college level or maybe it’s just geographic to where I live, but that’s what I have observed.
And I do think this is part of the invisibility that causes so much pain.
I recently read a blog post that speaks of the dull ache of racism. I think
an Asian American could probably write about this dull ache but with a different set of experiences. Of course, I could be all wrong about this,
but it’s something I have thought about for a while now.
I don’t know if you have read this post, but I thought it was worth reading.
http://whattamisaid.blogspot.com/2008/04/dear-america-few-things-this-black.html
April 11, 2008 at 8:46 pm
Fighting Evan Mulvihill's racist speech
There have been lots of incidents (unfortunately) where white college students have hosted “ghetto parties” and decorating themselves in blackface. Racism persists because of ignorance and there’s no shortage of that at U.S. colleges and universities.
April 24, 2008 at 12:00 pm
On Campus Racism at Racialicious - the intersection of race and pop culture
[...] Racism just came out with a great piece on the impact of campus hate speech: In the ten-year period from 1996-2006, 21 Cornell students committed suicide. Thirteen of them [...]