USG President's Facebook Post Opens Discussion About Harassment
On Sunday, USG president Rini Sampath published a Facebook post where she shared a shocking story of what happened when she was walking down the row. Sampath says a student yelled out of a fraternity house's window, “you Indian piece of ----”
Sampath omitted the name of the fraternity but said that they did apologize, only after realizing who she was. Her post drew attention to harassment on campus and sparked an open discussion on the issue, especially among the comments on the post.
We spoke to two of the commenters who were also harassed on the row or on campus. USC students Sharada Rayan and Jordyn Chesley shared their story with ATVN.
USC Law professor Jody Armour says he too has been a victim of discrimination. Armour told ATVN that when he went to a meeting at a hotel, he was approached by security guards because they assumed he was homeless, even though he was dressed professionally.
Both students and professor said they believe that this is the start of a conversation that can lead to the new beginning we all deserve.
The California Supreme Court has recently upheld a judge's claim that he has a constitutional right to use his religious beliefs to discriminate against people appearing in his court room. When our society condones bigotry at the highest levels, we should not be surprised that it appears on campus.
http://bit.ly/1DTh6XGSeptember 18, 2015 Update California Supreme Court Protects Christians from Jews and Other Infidels
People don't always realize how this type of behavior becomes part of our daily life. As the story shows, it began with an anti-Semitic attorney who could not tolerate the fact that opposing counsel was Jewish. How the attorney knew the judge would be so sympathetic to his dislike of Jews is not known. It took a couple months to discover that the judge was actually excluding an attorney from a side bar because he "refused Jesus Christ." As the story shows, when the Jewish attorney complained about the judge and the other attorney having a private whispered conference which excluded him, the judge did not apologize but rather justified his excluding the Jewish attorney on the grounds that as a judge he had a constitutional right to an attorney's ethnic background against him. Justice Paul Turner of the second appellate district found nothing wrong with the judge's excluding an attorney because he was a Jew who refused Jesus Christ. Later, the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court allowed Justice Turner's to remain California law.
Now that religious zealots and anti-Semitic judges know that the Supreme Court finds a constitutional right for them to be bigots, the instances of discrimination are likely to increase. The number of incidents will probably remain small as the number of prejudiced judges is probably small. Nonetheless, those who "refuse Jesus Christ" will never know the extent to which a judge may be sabotaging a case due to ethnic bias. This is not beneficial to society, nor will it change. The Chief Justice has spoken and that's it. Accept Jesus or sle.