Collegiate Times

I really enjoy the breakdown of the email in this column. Last two paragraphs tell us what is wrong, not to mention the praise directed at Steger along the way. And while Liza notes that, "People, here and elsewhere, making comments about the safety of our university and the quality of human beings it admits, are simply wrong -- especially when citing race or ethnicity as a cause of violent behavior." I am intrigued because it is not even mentioned how Steger does just that when he said, "Nationally, the Bureau of Justice statistics point out that Asians are ten times less likely to commit homicide than whites in the United States."

http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/homtrnd.htm Lots of Department of Justice data related to homicides (by age, gender, race, and on and on).

You, my dear columnist, are sadly gullible.

I think it can not be ignored that foreign students from Asian cultures are more likely to be quiet and not seek out help. Some Asian also place a lot of value on honor. If someone feels like that have shamed their family, they are more likely to act or commit suicide taking someone that has dishonored them with them.

Andy from the first two postings is not the one that posted at 12:41 on 2/5.

The point is that race may correlate to estrangement and ostracism, but the root cause, if there is one, probably has less to do with race or ethnicity itself, and more to do with the simple fact that international students are likly to have less of a support structure of family and friends here in the US. Race is hardly ever a determining factor in one's actions, yet people seem to constantly point to it as a causal factor, rather than a correlating one.

That's mostly, Jason, because the majority of Americans don't really understand what statistics mean, in general. Taken at its root, a statistic is really an assessment of the probability that a given event or set of events would have happened 'by chance.' To wit, when we see that Asians are 'statistically less likely to be charged with crimes,' what we are really seeing is an assessment that, in a pool of Asians selected totally randomly, you wouldn't be surprised to have happened to have chosen a certain number who had committed crimes. Statistics don't forecast future events, nor do they explain past ones - statistics yield a measure of expectation which is only as accurate as the data on which they are built.

But like I said, most people don't really understand that - and as a consequence, they tend to infer things from statistics that aren't really true. This is especially true in the social sciences, which is one reason why I believe exactly nothing that comes out of the mouth of any sociologist. You can't infer motivation from any sort of statistical analysis, regardless of your inputs. . .

So who is Asian? People from the Asian continent? If so, Israelis are Asians. So are most Russians, Iranians, Filipinos, and Pakistanis. What commonalities do they share? Nothing, except they are all human-beings. The term "Asian" is nonsense in most cases. It is tempting to simplify the world and blame the one or two groups for all the wrongs. We have spent 8 years already doing so. What do we get? Trillions of dollars in debt, two wars in hand, and economy in the drain. Have we learned anything from the last 8 years of stupidity?

JD, your comment is retarded...(about 6-7 comments down)

Well, let's be fair here Zhou. The term 'Asian' generally serves as an abbreviation of 'Asian/Pacific Islander," which refers to most of the nations South of Russia, East of the Indian subcontinent, and North or Australia. So in a general sense you may be right, colloquially the term 'Asian' refers to a pretty specific ground of countries. Similarly, your assessment of the cause-effect relationship of 'the last 8 years' is an oversimplification of an otherwise heinously complex situation. Nobody blamed, for instance, the Taliban for the fact that terrorists exist - but the Taliban as a governing body, in addition to its general cruelty towards its citizens, failed to take action against known terrorists residing within their borders.

It's bizarre that the author of this article refers to the Zhu and Cho incidents as "both homicides," and that Zhu was a suspect in a "stabbing" and Cho carried out "a shooting." Did she forget that Cho MURDERED THIRTY-TWO students in cold blood and wounded 25 more and that Zhu BEHEADED his victim in a campus cafe? Talk about Orwellian.

How many Asians are in the VA State House or Senate? On the VT Board of Directors? On the VT policy group? Let me guess - none. These groups barely have a token black. ZL Hikes was replaced by a really old white guy - Ed Spencer - who called his wife at 0800 on 4-16-07 & told her of a "killer at large." These are typically groups of inbred old white men. $teger is the most inbred of the cretins. VT crows about its 'diversity." Diversity starts by firing $teger.

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