so the following is the story given to us by the chief of yale police, james perrotti as of nov.9th:

on sat. sept 19th at around 3 a.m. on asian american yale undergrad and his two white friends from out of town were walking down whalley avenue when they were surrounded by a group of people outside of zeta psi fraternity house at 29 whalley ave.  the group, numbering 15-20 people, surrounded the three students, taunted them, and yelled racial epithets at the asian american student.  the asian american student recognized an acquaintance of his near the fraternity and asked him to intervene.  his acquaintance tried to intervene but was unsuccessful.  the three students then fled the scene and were followed by 3-4 people from this original group.  they were intercepted on howe street and assaulted.  the victims tried to get away but were chased down and beaten again.  the asian american student sustained the worse injuries.  he was treated for a punctured ear drum after the attack.  racial slurs targetting the asian american student's nationality were also used during the assault.

the asian american survivor did not contact the police until sept.22nd he brought names of potential suspects to the police; however, when he was asked to pick out the assailants from police photo boards he was only able to identify one of the assailants.  he could not specify the exact role that this assailant played in the assault.  at this point, the police explained that the survivor decided not to continue pursuing the case. without the surivivor's cooperation, the police closed the investigation. the case has been closed for at least three weeks now.

right now, the university says that they are not pursuing this case through any internal disciplinary proceedings.  dean of students, betty trachtenberg, has asserted that they can do nothing since the survivor does not want to press charges.

there are a number of things that disturb me about how both the police and administration have dealt with the case thus far:

1) Misunderstanding of hate crime Administrators have discouraged us from calling this a hate crime.  They assured us that the assailants were not really motivated by hate.   When we first spoke to the police the two detectives on the case  emphasized that the assailants were drunk during the time of the assault and "didn't really mean what they said." At our Nov.9th meeting with Chief Perrotti, however, he told us that he believed that this assault was racially motivated.  He made a similar statement to the YDN.

2) Inadequate investigation So far the police have not questioned anyone involved with Zeta Psi fraternity or any of the witnesses to the assault. Since neither the police nor the university are officially pursuing an investigation right now, students have basically been left to do our own investigative work on the case.

3) Isolation of Survivor Only the police and administration have spoken to the survivor.  We are very concerned about how he is being treated and what support resources are being made available to him in wake of this scarring attack.

4) This an isolated incident According to Yale's official crime statistics there hasn't been a hate crime on campus in at least three years. Chief Perrotti told us that this is the first violent hate crime he's ever seen at Yale (and he's been here for close to 30 years). Even IF that's true, then why hasn't there been a more concerned response to this crime?

Members of the AASA board have actually known about this crime since mid-september but were asked to keep quiet about it.  We were told this was in the best interest of the victim.  When we finally all agreed to go public with the story, the YDN printed their first article about the story.