On the night of June 14th, an Asian University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) Ph.D. student was unprovokedly assaulted by five young people while walking around downtown Madison heading back to his home. The five men were very tall and well-dressed, and they sped up to him and surrounded him. He was then punched on the left side of his face and suddenly pull to the ground by the people behind him, and repeatedly punched and kicked. The student was injured badly. There is visible facial bleeding. Unfortunately, there are more hate crimes on campus (and nationwide), The consequences for the victims could be life-threatening and psychologically traumatizing. Not too long ago and not too far away, in Chicago, there have been several violent crimes (including death) against the Asian, Pacific Islander, Desi American (APIDA) group. Recently, since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a nationwide surge in crimes against the Asian community. 

What if one of the assailants was armed with a gun and shot the Ph.D. student on June 14th, which brings our memory back to many similar attacks, such as the one in Chicago? Will only more avoidable death provoke the start of a protest?  We stayed silent for too long because we tried to understand and be peaceful. We are trying to digest everything with a heart full of love, but our love is leaking because it is not reciprocated.  There are millions of people in the APIDA group in the U.S. and we want them to feel safe, understood, cared for, and respected…because this is their home too, which they believe in, rely on, and have been devoted to.  We formed this petition to take a stand against hate crimes and discrimination against APIDA, pursuing that the event on June 14th will not occur again. 

Hatred solves no problems but creates more.  United we stand, divided we fall. 

We aim to start small in our community (UW-Madison) with the following requests (please see below) and then eventually we hope to bring about the positive changes across the country. 

1. We hope that UW-Madison can respond to this Asian Hate Crime publicly. For example, send an email campus-wide, send a post about this Asian Hate Crime and how to prevent the occurrence of similar events in the future on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.
2. We really appreciate the work and investigations of our police officers, STILL, we hope that UWPD can pay more attention to this case. For example, send a WiscAlert to warn students to avoid the area.
3. UW-Madison is renowned for its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. If the attackers turn out to be UW-Madison students, we urge the university to handle the misconduct according to university conduct policies and procedures. We hope that the decision will be announced and learned by university students.
4. We can work on a specific required racial class on Canvas, similar to Alcohol and Sex education. This will probably take some time if we want to start it. If it is possible, we can talk about it more in the future. 

Check out the following links for more information: Linkedin​, Instagram​, Twitter