In Response to The Response,
I was hoping that by the time a response surfaced to the TikTok article, this situation could be put to rest. But, unfortunately, I am forced to address it once again, as my personal integrity has been put into question.
“Since the article has been posted, it was brought to our attention that the author of the article posted on a social media account of their own that when they first addressed us, we had threatened them, which simply is not true.”
Simply not true. After I posted a comment under the original video, I received two messages at roughly the same time. One was from the original poster, and one from another individual, who was very clearly working in tandem with the poster at the time.
I will admit that this message never outright alludes to any harm that will come to my person. However, based on the colloquial meaning of the phrase “pull up,” what is implied is; “Do not call my friend racist or a physical altercation will be the result.”
This is a veiled threat.
“When they first addressed us, we immediately took the video down and messaged them to let them know that. We did this because we did not want anyone offended or hurt by what we believed was an innocent, harmless and kind gesture for our friend and her boyfriend. This is just one false statement out of the many that have been made regarding the situation.”
The above is a message I received from the original poster at roughly the same time that I received the threat. It is true that at this time the video was removed but it is also true that the poster took this as an opportunity to insult me and to make sure it was known that she was not sorry.
“On multiple occasions we’ve also tried to connect with the author to introduce ourselves, discuss the situation, and come to a mutual understanding of how this incident evolved and bring it to a respectful conclusion.”
The following are the kind of “connecting” I have received:
Note that the comments shown were posted under false names…my name actually, so I do not know for certain that the posters were the same as those involved in the Tiktok, but my common sense leads me to believe they were involved.
After being harassed it became obvious to me that they did not want to have a civilized conversation about the issue at hand, they wanted to act like grade school mean girls in order to intimidate me into silence. I will not have that. I decline to meet with these individuals.
These individuals did not address the bulk of the issues I, and the community, had with their video. I implore anyone to show me a Chinese food restaurant where the menus are written in broken English and where the employees dance at the table for you. I implore these individuals to explain away the sentence “tank yew, peas come back in 15 minutes for pork fried wice,” or to break down the “authenticity” of the dance that was performed.
These individuals aren’t sorry, and I do not accept their apology, nor am I in any position to do so. At the end of the day this upset people, including friends of mine. Your good intentions aside, my friends deserve an apology for your actions, as does everyone else on this campus, not another excuse.
I condemn the behavior of these individuals and I encourage my peers to speak out when they see unacceptable behavior on campus; otherwise, nothing will change.
Sincerely,
Magnolia Mulqueen
Thank you. The response from the college is repulsive. The students should be removed from their respective sports teams and face the consequences of their actions. With the current pandemic, there has been an increase in hate crimes and discrimination against the Asian community, and not only does the lack of punishment look bad on the college- it also teaches students that this behavior is acceptable. The video and actions were meant to be malicious, and a half-assed apology (which wasn’t a real apology), is not acceptable. The video is blatantly racist. Do better, New England College. Sincerely, a current Junior who is not impressed with administration allowing racists to not be held accountable for their actions.
It seems as though you were never threatened in the first place, she was just calling you out on not approaching her directly like an adult would do. As one of the people who called you a coward, I can confirm it was not any of these three women because I know all of the people that posted them. You know what assumptions do so I don’t think I need to explain that to a “respected journalist”. I don’t think it’s right for you to condemn everything they said because they are allowed to tell their side of the story while giving a sincere apology, because there is always more than one side to the story. Not meeting with them just continues to drag this situation out, and if it’s an issue of safety it could be over zoom because adults have conversations about things. Also, you wouldn’t let the comments be posted calling you names but you call them names? Pretty hypocritical to me, it’s time to move on from this.
“As a person who called you names and continues to disparage your character from a protected position of anonymity, I would like to know your reasoning behind not allowing my name calling harassment posted to a public platform.”
A veiled threat is still a threat, only the purposefully obtuse wouldn’t understand the context behind demanding a face to face confrontation under these circumstances. And, as with the excuses made for the original video, pretending the students involved in this debacle are too innocent and pure to see their own bad acts is disingenuous in the extreme. If they are so ignorant of context and subtext, what are they doing going to college to begin with? Perhaps they should go back to middle school if they don’t understand veiled threats (“Honestly teacher, I told her to meet me by the flagpole- I meant so we could talk out our differences like adults, that should be *obvious* right?”) And contextual racism against Asian Americans (“there’s nothing racist about pee-pee in your Coke, I have the utmost respect for Chinese Americans”)
Everyone can see what is going on here, and those who pretend otherwise are the worst kinds of liars. Racism is real, the video was objectively racist. Veiled threats are still threats. The bigger story here isn’t “idiot 20 year olds do crappy thing, make video to document crap,” but “campus administration fails to address blatantly racist acts of student athletes, fails to create safe learning environment for Asian American students.”
Honestly let it go at this point. You are trying so hard to keep this going and I have a feeling that no matter what these people do, you won’t be happy. Take a chill pill
How about actually taking accountability for their actions as opposed to sicking their friends on someone reporting the truth? Take a pill that teaches basic accountability. Or empathy. Or how to just not be racist.
Do you really think the girls don’t feel regret, empathy, and accountability at this point? I would bet everything that they wish they had not done the dinner at all and it seems as though they had absolutely no malicious thoughts going through their minds while this all happened a month ago. How about we, as peers, help them grow and learn from this without harassing them? I feel like no one is allowing them any room to breathe and no matter what they do, it’s not good enough. Let’s bring them up now, instead of constantly bashing them down.
I commented on the last article that the three athletes (and their friends now too!) seemed bent on attacking Magnolia’s character rather than introspecting on their actions. The fact that they were allowed to so blatantly lie in their ignorant and narcissistic response while behind closed doors were harassing the author is frankly disgusting. At this point I would feel more relief in hearing “we’re racist, deal with it” then being force fed another tragic excuse for an excuse.
The longer the school waits to respond and condemn the actions of these individuals shows that they are more dedicated to upholding white supremacy than educating well rounded and honest individuals. And this is especially heinous for a school that uses diversity as it’s largest marketing tool. There is already a large ostracism that POC students feel here from the white students that the school barely acknowledges (which should be another separate article) so I am not surprised by their lack of comment.
Back to the issue at hand though, these girls are either very poor liars or truly shouldn’t have made it past a basic elementary school ethics lesson with the statement “that video wasn’t actually racist at all,” yet one of the things they are defending is “tank yew, peas come back in 15 minutes for pork fried wice,” and “Kung Pao Pow Wow”. Worms for brains, I say.
Furthermore, the mentality the girls have on racism is not the worst racism most POC face, however it is the majority that many face. Jokes like this try to cement white peoples false superiority over POC, when in reality, only racists will agree or laugh at these jokes. You don’t have to be a person who says the n word to be a racist, you just have to uphold the idea that POC are inferior. If they were truly remorseful (and they seem not to be based on private messages they sent to Magnolia) then they would apologize, and look at their actions, instead of burrowing deeper into self assigned victim hood.
AS YOU SHOULD! Thank you for bringing this up!
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