Ohio State Responds to “Anti-Asian” Twitter Feed with Community Meeting

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Ohio State University’s Multicultural Center co-hosted a meeting to address an “anti-Asian” Twitter feed linked to Ohio State, the Ohio State Lantern reports.

Twitter user @OSU_Asian has been tweeting since at least January and has nearly 1,500 followers. The @OSU_Asian describes him/herself as “OSU’s Favorite Asian: I run to class” and gives a location of “The Ohio State University.” But it’s not like Twitter verifies these things.

Sample tweets:

• Boy in class today speak so much about new bar he try on weekend… Does he mean like the snickers or milky way? I must try new snack
• I find Chinco de mayo quite offensive, but I still drink and try to find woman. Wish luck for me.
• Silly American boy struggle with simply calculus problem. I giggle and get all points for exam.

The meeting addressed the @OSU_Asian account and another, similar account (@OSU_WhitePerson), that has about 400 followers. Sample @OSU_WhitepersonPerson tweets:

• Finals week = time to load up on adderall
• I can’t find my wallet, time to ask this black guy if he stole it.

The meeting about the Twitter accounts comes the same week that the university released a report in response to graffiti on and near campus containing swastikas, the “n-word” and the phrase “Long Live Zimmerman,” an apparent reference to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

The report’s recommendations to ensure Ohio State is “open and welcoming to all” include:

• Sending out “Public Safety Hate Crime Alerts;”
• Creating a Certificate for Diversity Competence to be noted on university transcripts; and
• Establishing and expanding efforts to recruit more students from “rural and urban high schools that have historically sent few students to Ohio State.”

Ohio State saw a similar reaction about five years ago, after some Ohio State students received racist, anti-black letters from someone in North Dakota. And, at about the same time, students at OSU’s Agricultural Technical Institute in Wooster organized a Facebook group called “Oprah Winfrey is the Devil” and used language online “that was derogatory to blacks.”

The upshot from those incidents was the creation of a Bias Assessment and Response Team to “receive, monitor, refer, and, as necessary, coordinate university responses to hate and bias-related incidents that impact all or a significant portion of the university community.”