DSP Awareness for Asian-American Hate Crimes
Written by Brendan Plunkett
This February, Jasmine Lam, our VP of Community Service hosted an event to raise awareness for the hate crimes and violence brought upon Asian-Americans over the last several months. These issues have most commonly been spurred by stereotypical sentiment around the COVID-19 pandemic and its origins.
The event opened with a short presentation (link) to provide context. Brothers were able to see important statistics and news articles that covered the issues. Within the presentation, a brief video was shared. This video covered a teenage high schooler who encountered racism that came as a product of the coronavirus pandemic.
Next, brothers were split up into breakout rooms leading the way for discussion surrounding the video and topics in general. The leading questions were as follows (perhaps you can reflect upon these as well):
Initial thoughts on the video? Thoughts on the news articles?
Have you ever personally experienced any racist encounters?
What do you think can be done to combat this issue? Next steps?
What do you think of the media’s coverage and response to these issues?
Why do you think it is important to raise awareness and talk about this?
What can you do to help?
“Hopping in and out of breakout rooms and listening in to everyone’s conversations made me extremely happy because from what I could tell, everyone was having very informative and fruitful conservations. ”
- Jasmine Lam, 2024
Finally, a large seminar was held where key points discovered from the breakout rooms were shared. This was a great opportunity for people to voice their concerns and brainstorm ideas of how we can support communities in the fight against racism. A few concepts discussed were the idea of “Model Minority” as well as how to facilitate healthy conversations with our own circles. The brothers of DSP were grateful to have this opportunity to learn about problems and plan to host similar sessions in the future to continue staying educated. If you would like to support, please check out https://hateisavirus.org/
Brothers partaking in an open discussion at the end of the event.