Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Boulder Up A Hill

I'm sure many of you already know about the controversy behind the opinion piece that ran in the CU Boulder student paper that called for an assault on all Asian American students unless they assimilated. It was authored by a student named Max Karson. If you are curious, here is a link to the article.

But what I found more disturbing was that after a little googling, I came across the below article. It sounds like that despite being arrested for threatening language to fellow classmates last year, the same guy a year later was allowed to write an angry anti-Asian essay for the school paper. Sounds like echoes of Kenneth Eng, the Asian Supremacist. I don't see how the school paper feels it can defend itself in the matter.

At right is a picture of Max Karson being bailed out by his dad last year for the incident.

From the Daily Camera:

Students return to class after Max Karson's arrest Officer in class to answer questions

By Vanessa Miller

Friday, April 20, 2007

Most of Max Karson's classmates in a women's-studies course at the University of Colorado reconvened Thursday, two days after the junior was jailed for comments about being "angry enough to kill."

But where Karson would have sat, there was an empty seat. And there was an officer in the room, police said.

"One detective was there in case there were questions," CU police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley said. "They had a brief discussion, and that was helpful for everyone."

Karson was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of "interference with staff, faculty and students of an educational institution" after he commented during a heated classroom discussion about the Virginia Tech massacre that he was "angry enough to kill his classmates," a police report said.

He left the Boulder County Jail on a personal-recognizance bond Wednesday, and he's been suspended from the university until a judicial-affairs review of his case is complete.

Karson's father said his son — who circulates an underground publication called The Yeti on the campus — never directly threatened any students and wouldn't harm anyone. But Wiesley said Karson's intentions don't matter because students felt threatened and said they were afraid to come to class.

"His words were taken as a threat of force or violence, and people said, 'I'm not coming to class. I'm scared,'" Wiesley said. "So that impeded their education."

Among Karson's controversial comments Tuesday, Wiesley said, was one that directly answered another student's question of, "Are you going to do something Thursday?"

"He said, 'Well, not necessarily this Thursday,'" Wiesley said. "Do you take a chance on coming back to class?"

With Karson banned from the campus, most of the students were back in their seats Thursday, and a class field trip in Denver this weekend should happen as planned, Wiesley said.

"We went from most people not coming to most people showing up," he said. "Now they can get the education they came here for, and that's a good thing."

Students have been debating Karson's punishment on the social-networking site Facebook.com.

"A national tragedy shouldn't take away anyone's rights," one person wrote.

CNN television personality Nancy Grace weighed in on the Karson case Thursday night.

After introducing Karson as a CU student who "says he sympathized with the V-Tech killer," Grace asked a woman whose daughter attends the Virginia school what she thought about Karson's statements.

"Let's take him 100-percent seriously and give him zero tolerance," the woman said. "We cannot afford another tragedy like this."