Sept. 24--Lola Fajinmi and Precious Nwaoha were both A students in high school. But once they got to USC, the African Americans were constantly asked whether they were athletes and told they probably got in because of affirmative action.
So when they heard that a USC fraternity member had cursed the campus student body president, Rini Sampath, with a racial slur and hurled a drink at her last weekend, they said they were appalled but not too shocked.
"It's something that happens so often you kind of just tune it out," Fajinmi said of racial bias, as she paused between classes on campus Wednesday. "I think it's a huge deal and would like the administration to do something about it. This is a hard topic, but we need to start talking about it."
That's exactly what Sampath said she hopes the incident will launch: candid conversations about race relations on campus and a chance for students such as Fajinmi and Nwaoha to share their experiences.
"This story is really not about me," Sampath, a 21-year-old senior of Indian descent said in an interview Wednesday. "It's about what the greater community goes through on a daily basis. I hope this creates a national conversation about race relations on campus, because these kinds of things don't just happen at USC."
There was plenty of buzz about the incident on campus, where students gathered at the outdoor campus center courtyard for lunch, perused produce at a farmer's market and lounged around the iconic Tommy Trojan statue. Nearly all students seemed to know about the incident because it burned up social media sites and prompted USC officials to distribute a campus-wide letter late Tuesday expressing "sadness, anger and dismay."
Some students said they had never experienced racism and found USC to be a diverse and welcoming environment. Daniel Uhm, a 21-year-old senior of Korean descent and member of a multicultural Christian fraternity near Greek Row, said he regarded Sampath's experience as an isolated incident of racism.
"I've never experienced racism in my fraternity or on the outside," Uhm said. "For the most part, this campus is welcoming of different races and cultures."
At the El Centro Chicano Center in the student union building, Latino students said they had witnessed or experienced "microaggression" -- incidents that were not overtly hostile but still offensive.
Juan Martinez, a 20-year-old civil engineering major of Mexican heritage, said he was told by a white acquaintance that his multicultural fraternity, Sigma Delta Alpha, was not a "real fraternity," implying that diverse Greek organizations were inferior to those that are predominantly white.
Kyron Richard, a 21-year-old economics major who is gay and African American, also said microaggression was more prevalent than overt racism at USC. He said some of his white friends have made racially insensitive remarks without realizing it -- such as girls viewing black men as "consolation prizes" when rejected by whites.
Sampath, who has received thousands of supportive messages from as far away as India and Denmark, said such stories need to be voiced. She and other student leaders plan to hold a forum on cultural diversity next week to give students a chance to speak out on the issue.
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