Meet Joseph Cho, all Asian-American boy. Cho went to Yale undergrad, enlisted in the Army after 9/11, served 3 years and was given a honorable discharge [Link]. Now 31, Joe Cho is a law student at Penn. Thus far he sounds like the kind of good Asian kid that even the most xenophobic auntie and uncle would love to have over for tea. “He’s a good influence,” they might say.
However, earlier this month something went … wonky. Cho had a beef with some neighbors. That’s normal — I don’t like my next door neighbor either, he plays his shoot ’em up video games late at night and disturbs my sleep. Usual apartment building stuff.
Cho’s beef, however, was a bit different from mine. He believed his neighbors, two desi men, were actually terrorists and decided to do something about it.
Police said Cho,… suspected the neighbors – two Indian men studying biomedical engineering at Drexel University – of being spies. On Wednesday afternoon, he sought to confront them. When no one answered his knock on their door, he shot the lock off with his Glock pistol, walked inside, and eventually left. [Link]
Gulp! His lawyer says his client was off his rocker:
His lawyer, Peter Bowers, said the attack on the men he believed were terrorists … “appears to have been a mental health or emotional issue…” Cho, meanwhile, was described as an “outstanding young man,” Bowers said. “It’s really an unfortunate incident…” [Link]
You know, the words tourism and terrorism sound so much alike, it’s an easy mistake to make. It could happen to anybody, really.
The university provost said:
“the student has been temporarily suspended from the law school. The matter will be reported to the Law School’s Committee on Student Conduct and Responsibility for its consideration…” [Link]
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p>I suppose that’s a good first step. I wonder what you have to do to get kicked out of law school.
Me? I wonder if he’s been watching too much 24.
Update 1: See comment #20 by somebody who knows him
Update 2: It was racial, at least in part:
Walker said the Penn student, a Korean American, accosted the Drexel students yesterday morning as all were leaving the building, … When the Drexel students told the Penn student that they planned to return to India after their studies, the Penn student accused them of being spies, Walker said. [Link]
One of the students was actually in the apartment at the time:
… around noon, the Penn student “decided to engage in more conversation” and banged on the Drexel students’ door, Walker said. When he got no answer, he got his 9mm Glock handgun and emptied it into the lock, police said. Then he stepped inside, looked around, and left the building. Unbeknownst to the assailant, one of the Drexel students was cringing in his bedroom about 25 feet from the door. [Link]
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Another neighbor called 911, and officers found the 22-year-old Drexel student still cowering inside the apartment, said police. [Link]
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p>Somebody on a bulletin board who claims to be a fellow law student said:
I think this guy has been involved in at least one other racially charged incident at the law school recently. [Link]
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And the final indignity — the mere mention of terrorism has meant that police anti-terrorism officers have been notified:
Police said … that investigators will notify police terrorism officials about the reason behind the shooting. [Link]
“However, yesterday something went Â… wonky. “
i think this happened a couple of weeks ago.
You’re right, it was Friday the Second. Fixed.
Yeah dude, the article says: “2/2/07”
Damn you, long loading time >:(
I’m just amazed that he was actually able to shoot the lock off. I thought that only happened on TV.
There’s an interesting article about Joel Surnow, the man behind “24” in this week’s New Yorker.
So, I guess the notion of informing the proper authorities never occurred to him? Even if he is let back into school, he’ll have is work cut out as far as getting admitted to the bar. That’s a shame.
He probably overheard them speaking and misheard “biomedical engineering” and “biochemical warfare”. Must be the darn accent. I’m surprised he did not torture them by shooting their leg off or something.
There is this little tidbit from the linked article:
So he just shredded the area around the lock jam. That’ll do it. But, jeebus, firing a dozen rounds inside an apartment building? At least he is held without bail.
I’m very glad no one was injured through this.
I’m curious though-did he see combat? He has veteran status… It sounds like he’s experiencing classic symptoms of war-related PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder).
I’m not making excuses, just trying to figure out how he could go so way off the deep end.
He’s in the army for three years, probably killing brown foreigners. He’s doing this killing for reasons that aren’t even clear to the people who sent him there.
I see nothing remarkable in what happened next.
“It is a bizarre case that we are investigating,” Walker said. “You would think he would be more tolerant and more understanding to different cultures of people because of his educational background.”
The above from the Daily News article made me laugh.
You know, cuz people who go to Yale and Penn State must be sooo much more tolerant.;)
I actually feel sad for him. One of my cohorts is working on a project on PTSD for VAs out of Iraq – and the lack of resources and services. I can’t imagine what his state of mind could possibly have been to have gone through with shooting off the door knob. I don’t blame Cho, I blame the government for not providing adequate services to treat the young soldiers coming out of Iraq for PTSD….
I blame the f*cking government for sending people to Iraq in the first place. Grrr.
Actually, he’s at Penn, not Penn State. Normally a nitpick, but yes, the general point is that the coastal cities are a little more tolerant than the interior. The Ivy connection is probably also significant. Most Ivies are on the East Coast, and though this may seem accidental, I think it is relevant. BTW, I’ve directly experienced the racial climate on both these campuses, and Penn was waaay better. Your mileage may vary.
So this Cho fella actually uses a gun and blows off someone’s door and gets suspended. While the Indian chap who called someone a ‘fag’ after after being told to ‘go back to India’ — gets struck off the rolls. Indian boy did a bad thing, Cho did a terrible thing. Why the unequal measures?
Wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald an ex-Marine ? Though he didn’t see any combat AFAIK.
Cool explanation… any such deep analysis about the Bosnian Muslim teenager who killed 5 people in Utah the other day?
Um, you would think he would be a little tolerant because of his ethnic background too, right? I do feel bad for him. PTSD can be hard to comes to term with and please someone correct me if I am wrong, goes undiagnosed a lot. There may have been a series of actions that led him to this point. I hope that he gets the help he needs.
Let’s try this: Because South Asians are reviled, yet Korean Americans are worshipped as the chosen people by white Americans?
What reason were you fishing for?
I’ve actually known this person for many years, and think he has a history of mental instability and aggressive behavior. I believe he was asked to take a year off from Yale for allegedly raping a fellow student. I’m sure spending 3 years in the military didn’t do wonders for his mental state, I doubt that his actions can be entirely attributed to PTSD, considering his track record of aggression.
I have to say that I never thought he had any racist tendencies, but Koreans are a fairly xenophobic bunch.
(ps i’m a regular reader but posting anonymously because he is a family friend, and bringing up the incident at Yale would not endear me to his family, considering the difficulties they are going through right now)
reminds me of some of the stereotypical dudes in Little Mosque on the Prairie.
Ennis,
Ron Daniels is the Provost of UPenn, not of the UPenn law school.
Fixed, thanks.
Sure, no prob.
taz at #13: ” I don’t blame Cho, I blame the government for not providing adequate services to treat the young soldiers coming out of Iraq for PTSD….”
Please. Do you also not blame Cho for voluntarily serving up for the military? Or are you going to blame the brainwashing Godsmack-soundtracked military commercials also? We’re all puppets, huh?
In Vietnam I served in both a special forces detachment (out among Vietnamese) and a parachute strike force (MIKE Force) composed of montagnard tribal irregulars. After the war, when the Army cleaned us high school graduate combat captains out of the active force, I went off to college, and then law school. I assure you that law school in a language not originally my own was as, and sometimes more, mentally stressful than combat. It was certainly a more sustained form of stress. There were periods when I gave serious consideration to chucking it all and taking off for Rhodesia, or the Foreign Legion. The strain on my non-veteran classmates was equally hard. By the second year we had lost two thirds of the class, some of whom dropped out to take up extremist (usually) left wing causes, and a few of whom exhibited behaviour no different than that of young Cho.
For what it’s worth. And for all you PTSD apologists, note how so many of those claiming such stress had jobs that didn’t put them in direct combat.
How can Cho be a racist, anyways?
I mean, he is Asian-American, and those Indian neighbors of his are also Asian…
I believe he was asked to take a year off from Yale for allegedly raping a fellow student.
Could you provide the link for this?
call someone a gay slur?
Ok, this is my story with a university (UCLA), with an Asian(Chinese-born professor) and a terrorist (me):
I was looking to join this lab (http://civs.stat.ucla.edu/) and the professor (http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~sczhu/) said to me: “I hope you are not Muslim — you are not going to be any trouble”. He paused, maybe half realizing what he had just said and explained “because you are from that part of the world”. Oh and all that stuff the HR manual warns you about asking (age, marital status etc… he brought up in his inimitable uncouth manner). So in the end what happened? Well, I got punished–it wasn’t a UCLA-style tasering (http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003965.html), but it was at least as bad. The professor got promoted of course. Incidentally, every single Chinese-born person I have ever interviewed with has asked me whether I was Indian. Sometimes they ask other inappropriate questions but since I, a non-Chinese, am invisible to them, it doesn’t happen too often. Being invisible is not all bad. Long long ago, before there was a word for it, I was a victim of the most hateful sexual harassment (and yes desis were responsible). So I hung out with the Chinese grad students because they left me alone.
That part of the world eh? Maybe the prof should, as the kids say, educate himelf.
Re: Bob, #28 — I don’t have a link for what happened at Yale, I just know of the incident because I have known him since 3rd or 4th grade, and was at Yale when it happened. From what I understand, the woman after initially divulging what happened, refused to press charges (which is unfortunately rather common). From what I gather, something improper definately happened. This was more than 10 years ago, and I’m sorry I don’t remember all the details. I believe the girl ended up leaving school, citing health reasons.
I’d guess it was related to his being in the military. There’s probably some political pressure to not reprimand those in the service to harshly, when they react brutally to the brutal conditions that make them act in brutal ways.
I think there is also a sense that someone who acts as Cho did is mentally disturbed, and needs help more than punishment. On the other hand, a guy who resorts to name-calling is just plain mean, and should be punished meanly.
Or it could just be that desis don’t speak up when they get stepped on.
An example from my own life: as a law student, I took a trial skills course where the final is an actual trial. You’re partner with a fellow student as co-counsel, and you plead the case of your “client” against another student team. Our trial went fine, but at the end, when the judge (a real judge brought in to grade our final) gave us comments, one of the things he said to me was that my accent would make it difficult for juries to understand me. The thing is, I was born in Canada and have lived in the US since I was 12! As far as I can tell, my accent isn’t any different than the judge’s own accent. We even had a built-in control, as one of the other students was originally from Eastern Europe and had a very pronounced accent, which the judge did not comment on.
I shrugged it off as just one of the indignities of being brown. Some of my non-desi friends were much more outraged than I was. Looking back, I should have lodged some sort of formal complaint.
Sorry for the OT tangent…
Woah. I doubt he’ll stay in school, for one thing he’s under arrest. But it takes a little bit of time to kick somebody out, and they probably have to wait for the police investigation to get finished since the incident was off campus. Nobody’s suggesting that Cho will come back to law school after a time out to cool down and attend some therapy.
ennis,
“I wonder what you have to do to get kicked out of law school.”
Ask for directions, be told to go back to India, then yell back the British word for cigarette. That’s grounds for expulsion. Shooting a firearm with homicidal intent? Meh, suspension. I wouldn’t be surprised if his exams were rescheduled so he wouldn’t have to waste a semester.
sillymidoff,
Sorry, I didn’t see your comment stating the same!
No_fan_china_man, we should all start an email campaign against this idiot UCLA professor. The notion that he would shoot his mouth off in such a manor means to me, he has no place collecting an income form us California taxpayers…
Oh, man, STFU already! And also educate yourself about the percentage of UC funding that comes from “us” taxpayers.
Kusula, do you agree with what that idiot UCLA professor said and did? It defies logic that any sane person would.
Oh, and there would be no UC system without revenue from both state and federal sources. Go educate yourself, you loser!
thank you FF,
on the clarification. we started getting into the topic of…
but you let us know Cho’s case was unique.
i want to know more about naina’s post on gay slur vs ignorant comment. can someone of credible source enlighten us?
39, 40: Cyrus and kusala,
< Some of his funding comes from the Office of Naval Research. There is probably also some money from NSF, DoD and other similar agencies. When you get one of these (coveted) grants then you have to sign a form declaring that you will not discriminate based on race, religion, national origin etcetra. This is not the fine print, it is in BOLD text, and its on the FIRST page.
He also gets department support in the form of TAships and fellowships extended to his students. So yeah, the California taxpayer foots the bill–directly(through the money UCLA gets from the state) or indirectly (as a US taxpayer).
Now this is how Oxford handled a similar complaint and this is how the Oxford students responded. Sadly, the ULCA students (many of whom, as you may know, are Chinese or Chinese-American) don’t seem to care. Perhaps if the discrimination had been directed against that other semitic group there would have been swift and decisive condemnation.
no_fan_china_man: You’re leaving BIG gaps in your story. You talk about “being punished” (“not a tasering”), but what exactly are you talking about? And what actions did you undertake in all this after the alleged discrimination in the interview process? Did you file a formal discrimination complaint with the appropriate University authority? Did you contact the student press? At this point, what you’re relating here is just anecdotal and full of holes, so I’m not sure what the purpose of relating this story about how there’s some Chinese/Chinese-American cabal in the UC system that is oppressing the brown (and/or other) folks.
I really hope he gets back to law school. I’d love to have him at my firm.
My last names Claudio,i was in basic training with Cho,hands down he was the best recruit in the whole fort benning,Cho had a positive impact in my life,i will never forget him,he’s a wise man,with out a doubt my best friend while i was in there,even though physically and mentally he was the best in shape recruit he was totally against compertition,im sure he served our country with honor and dignity and i have no doubts this story here had to do with PTSD,in conclusion best wishes to him and his family, again i will never forget Cho the lil time i knew him he showed me the definition of honer respect integrity and loyalty,4ever my friend J.Cho.Fortunatly for me i didn’t make it thru basic training that yr because i pissed hot on my urinalysis while on exodus.
Joseph Cho was my best friend for around 6 years (4 of which were at Yale 94-98). We lost touch in 2002 or 2003. Unfortunately I came across this story as I was trying to facebook and google him. Comment #20 does not know what he is talking about. There was never any alleged rape and that statement has no truth whatsoever. Complete fabrication as I was with him throughout his 4 year education and graduation at Yale. We lived together with several mutual friends in a house on campus his junior and senior year. Joseph Cho had a genius IQ, was a concert pianist and composer and possessed a 4.0 GPA for the majority of his Yale education. His mind was truly brilliant and maybe too brilliant as he began to become philosophically lost in the corridors of his mind. At the end of his Junior year and throughout his Senior year he began no longer observing basic social etiquette in order to seek truth etc in people. It created many uncomfortable situations that I had to smooth over. However, he seemed pretty grounded towards the end of his Senior year and began interviewing with top consulting firms before graduation which did not work out. After graduation he became obsessively religious and was breifly enrolled at NYU Law before dropping out and entering the ARMY. He would call me from there but was primarily concerned with converting me into a born again Christian. Ironically, he was too educated and intelligent during his time at Yale to ever put so much faith into something like religion. We lost touch as he became more mentally unstable. I will always cherish the time we spent together at school as he influenced me in so many ways while he was mentally grounded. His composition on the piano rivaled Rachmaninov. I was always worried that I would one day read an article such as this about him. There was a time where he was a remarkable human being and the most loyal friend. I miss this person