- She was walking down the row
and a fraternity member yelled out the window,
" You Indian piece of.. 'S word'! " and also threw
a beer can at her. And in the next text she wrote:
"Wow, now they're trying to apologize
because they realized who I am."
- My name is Rini Sampath and I am the
Student Body President at the
University of Southern California.
I really did go into a state of shock as to
how that could even be said because I,
though I experienced a certain degree of that
when I ran for this position, I hadn't really experienced it
to that level,in person and I think it really did affect me.
My dad, he was really concerned for my safety.
As both a woman on this campus but also a woman of color,
and those words actually reinforced for me
that I wanted to go public and have this message heard,
because I know there are so many other people in our campus
who are made to feel unsafe. It starts with words.
It starts with the frame of mind and a mentality
that other people are lesser than you and it's OK
to call them out and treat them like that,
and then it'll get to a point where
people's lives are at stake,
and people's lives are endangered by this type of mentality
that we allow to continue.
I used to get told that I can't play on the playground
with kids because I was darker than them.
It's definitely been on my mind I think, since I was a kid
from playground 'til now.
- [Krystal] I know of students that have been stopped
from going into their dorm rooms by the GPS,
like the CSC people, that are in place for security
that monitor around our campus
and their question us to like
"Oh , wait you go to USC?"
or if it's a person of color in particular, then they'll say
" Oh, so you're an athlete. That must be why you got to USC"
- [Paul] I come from a small town in southern Virginia,
Williamsburg and it's very conservative,
and I've definitely faced some adversity there
for my sexual orientation. And you sort of think,
"Oh we're going out to southern California.
Everything's going to be so accepting.
I'm going to be going to USC. There's not gonna be
ignorance at this campus."
But I think the fact that, there are
so many antithesis of ignorance on this campus
in southern California, goes to show
that this happens everywhere.
- [ Rini] If we do love a place so much,
we have to work to make it better.
Our real goal right now is to gather student voices,
figure out what the students want,
and then move forward from there.
One thing that we are definitely doing, is moving forward
with a list of requests for our university administration.
- [Paul] Our cultural resource centers are great,
but they're small and they're under staffed.
- When a research center doesn't have enough room to fit
the number of people that go to this campus,
or that we are able to send to them,
or have an event there, and people are sitting on the floor,
I don't think that that's right.
- There have been people who have come out and said,
" Why don't you name this person?
Why don't you call them out and go public with them?"
My intention was never to publicly shame an individual,
because especially when you do that, I think,
people will dismiss it as a one time incident
and the story will continue to become just about me,
whereas these kinds of individuals exist all around us.
The individual is facing serious consequences,
and that those consequences,
they're still different investigation pieces
that are on going,
so I'm really waiting for all of those to be complete before
I'm able to share with students what could potentially
happen if they were to report incidents like these,
because I do want other students to be aware that
the university will take it seriously
and will address it in that way.
I believe as much as we can to focus on
the problem itself which is that;
discrimination is prevalent
within institutions of higher education,
and we need to find a way to address it,
and we need to do that as soon as possible.
I think that's really what I'd like to focus on.
(Piano plays)