A simple way to take the pulse of the Mutiny is to pay attention to tip volume and composition. When the same story is sent in (and for a period is the ONLY story submitted to the tip line), it’s a powerful indicator of what you want to talk about…today, it’s tragedy at a major American public university:
Two students were found shot to death in a home invasion at a Louisiana State University apartment, and officials decided to keep the campus open Friday while police searched for three suspects.
The victims, Chandrasekhar Reddy Komma and Kiran Kumar Allam, both Ph.D. students from India, were found inside an apartment at the Edward Gay complex late Thursday night after authorities received an emergency call. [yahoo]
That emergency call came from Allam’s pregnant wife, who discovered the murder scene at her apartment.
The 911 call was made by Allam’s pregnant wife, who returned home and found the men dead. Authorities said both men had been shot in the head once in what is described as an area with one of the highest crime rates in the city.
Komma, who was studying biochemistry, was found bound with a computer cable, while Allam, who was in the chemistry programme, was near the front door. Initial reports said nothing appears to have been stolen from the house. [TOI]
The apartments are a vulnerable, easy target:
The apartment building where the shootings took place is designated for married and graduate students, and is near a field on the 2,000-acre campus where the university’s band practices. A cluster of pale yellow cinderblock, three-story buildings, it sits on the edge of the campus…
The complex has a tall fence separating it from the off-campus neighborhood, but the apartments have no gates or surveillance cameras…attempted break-ins and holdups are common at the complex. [yahoo]
Logically, TOI zeroed in on the anxiety most of you conveyed in your emails:
Phani Mylavarpu, a 26-year-old Indian student pursuing a mechanical engineering Ph.D., told the local Times-Picayune that he was an acquaintance of both victims, having met them at social events of the Indian Student Association, which brings together Indian students on the campus.
Mylavarpu, a former president of the group, said Indian students have spent much of the day talking with each other talking with each other about the crimes and fielding telephone calls from concerned relatives and friends from India.
The homicides appear to be ”a random, unfortunate act” not targeting the victims because of their nationality, Mylavarpu said, echoing the local authorities.
But he said international students, who often congregate together and comprise a considerable portion of the residences in select housing units, want to be assured that their safety is a priority for campus police.
”I’m not blaming the safety system,” he said, ”but things like this are still happening, and it leaves us concerned on behalf of the international student community.” [TOI]
Many of you who sent this story in noted that you were especially affected by it because you are DBDs who are currently in grad school, just like Komma and Allam were. Just last week, one of our readers in Bangalore asked me if America was “so violent”; he was thinking about pursuing a degree in this country but he was worried about “racism and crime”. My insouciant “it’s not so bad here” seems really lame, right now.
My thoughts and prayers are with their families, especially Allam’s wife and the unborn child she will have to explain this senseless loss to, one day.
::
On an uglier note– Shame on LSU. I couldn’t believe one of the links I read (now altered, natch) which quoted a school official as stating that this was an opportunity to test out the emergency text messaging alert system which many Universities implemented after the Virginia Tech tragedy. Thank goodness the Telegraph hasn’t been “cleansed” and thank goodness they’re calling LSU out. Read the shitty, callous message for yourself, below.
“The tragic homicides that took place on campus on Thursday evening provided an opportunity for the university to test its new emergency text-message system. Thanks to feedback from members of the LSU community, university officials learned that not everyone who had registered their cellphones with the system received a message.
“The university is now investigating the problem with clearTXT, which is the text-message service provider, and is working to fix this problem rapidly. LSU will provide moreinformation when the problem is resolved.â€
Investigate where your tact and decency went, while you’re at it.
::
UPDATE #1– The bloggers (who, like the victims, came here for grad school as well) at UberDesi have their gumshoes on– they’re on the trail of the “missing quote”, you know, the one about how this was an opportunity?
…the student newspaper of LSU has been inundated with complaints. The particular story is no longer on the front page of the student news paper and digging for half an hour, proved useless. All we managed to unearth from our history was the story with partial comments.
Hoping that I could get the LSU Reville to cough up more information on why they had “broken†their commenting system on one particular news story I called the Editor In Chief Mr. Justin Fritscher, only for someone else to answer the phone. “Yes our system is broken and we are trying to fix it, we are not sure about when and if the comments will be back†(paraphrased) was the answer. [UD]
UPDATE #2–
sreechettan over at SAJAForum points us here, where
we discover that it might not have been random:
LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe said…the men “appeared to be targeted for reasons unknown.â€
“This does not appear to be a random event,†O’Keefe said. [2advocate]
Developing… 🙁
Unfortunately Jindal or any other state/govt official is under very little or no obligation to protect private citizens/non citizens:
Memorial Service
Coverage on CNN headline news. 986 stories on google news. Story is not being ignored.
A post on the ABCNews comments page on a possible motive for the killngs:
The poster says he is an Indian grad student at LSU.
This should have been much more widely and prominently reported. I agree with Brown Writer at 21 that the business of announcing the emergency systems result was very callous and in poor taste. I hope these murders will be properly investigated —I think people/Mutineers should e-mail Bobby Jindal’s office to urge/demand a thorough and speedy investigation. Imagine the extreme shock of being pregnant and coming home one evening to find your husband and his friend bound, gagged and shot dead. The baby is already harmed. The wife and families should sue LSU on whatever grounds can be brought to describe how the University enabled these murders by providing inadequate security on their turf.
I can’t say much… but some people at LSU think this was definitely not your run-of-the-mill home invasion. There may be some money-lending issues going on or something like that, but there is definitely an opinion that this may not be as random as we are led to believe…
will let you know more of what i can as soon as i find out. I’m going there post-Christmas .. hoping all my friends are safe 🙁
SM intern: Thank you for addressing the cringe-worthy remarks of Surprised/Another Desi. In fact they should be removed because they are absolutely racist. But could you clarify what you meant by the following as most of the Indian grad student do travel far (and do risk a lot most of the time) for something worthwhile
And all those up in arms about use of DBD term: If you have been reading this site long enough (or did some research before increasing your BP), you’d know that ABD and DBD are terms that were discussed and thought to be more appropriate rather than the derogatory FOB/ABCD.
I agree with zuni, DBD much better than FOB (except when a FOB uses FOB, makes it funny).
And as far as the location of universities go, I have to agree, they always seem to have areas that need to be avoided.
The media is mentioning the incident, but I am yet to see anyone raise their voice about the callous email. Now that the student newspaper has removed the story and the comments, they might have ended the issue.
Since ABD and DBD are often terms that hold cultural signposts (that is, we can make some inferences about their life and experiences within the US), out of sheer curiosity – what would you call people who were born in a South Asian country, but moved to the US at age two, and therefor have more in common with ABDs?
first of all, I am very saddened by this news, and my heart goes out to the families.
I hope this will cause Baton Rouge and LSU officials (including Jindal, et al) to address some of the chronic dysfunction that may be pertinent to this terrible event. i lived on Roosevelt St in a slummy, roach-filled shotgun opposite ed gay apts from 85-89 when i was an undergrad at LSU. i couldn’t afford anywhere else, and it was within walking distance to campus and my job waiting tables (on Nicholson). i was mugged at gunpoint twice, and a friend of mine was raped on Aster st. Then i moved to Chimes st, two doors from the Bayou, where I was mugged again.
All of the residential areas north of campus have been very poor and crime-ridden for decades. my parents, who both attended LSU in 60s remember chronic problems and the odd sensational incident in that tension-filled zone between privilege and poverty. the question is, after all these years of documented problems, why hasn’t LSU (who for obvious reasons won’t publicize these problems) invested the money, to either:
1) fund the construction of grad/married student housing in a better area–after all, mostly foreign students, paying hefty foreign-student fees, live there. Surely the money could’ve been allocated (perhaps with private partnership) to develop a complex on the south side of campus, which has been explosively developed in the last ten years. I am always astounded when i return to visit my family during the holidays how fast things have changed on the south and west side of campus, and it is striking how the north side remains the same. Foreign students depend on the school for guidance about safe areas to live, and there is an assumption that on-campus housing should be even safer. This has never been the case, unfortunately, at LSU, which remains vast, sprawling, and open.
2) fund local community efforts to make the surrounding neighborhoods more liveable generally. for years there has been no supermarket near campus, for instance, impacting both students and local residents with no cars. meanwhile bus service continues to suck, serving primarily as a kind of maid-ferrying shuttle for poor black women from north of campus to the posh suburbs southwards. Surely LSU could do something concrete to make the university more relevant to the local community. I am very glad not to be in Baton Rouge anymore–when i left I felt like a rat leaving a sinking ship.
Finally, I agree with the posters above that the whole text alert issue has been exceptionally callously handled. And it seems especially offensive that the failures of the alert system often threaten to overtake the news articles that should be focusing on the facts surrounding the terrible crime. The mom (quoted in one of the articles) complaining about how her daughter’s whole sorority didn’t get the alert is simultaneously galling and boring because sorority row is one of the prettiest and most well-guarded areas southeast of campus. The alert system issue seems like a red-herring and should be dropped from the discussion period.
ex- baton rouger, do you mean the press reportage or this discussion? I’m glad to read your clear eyed comment.
I was referring to the crimes recounted by Baton Rouger in # 62.
Jhamu: Why is it that it is generally not safe for women in India to walk around on their own ? What does the cess pool that is the Indian criminal justice system say about us ?
louiecypher, to stay on topic, if an American grad student in India were murdered at home while living in on campus housing, don’t you think there would be less talk of whether everyone’s phone beeped or texted right afterwards?
amrita (#63): I mean the news reportage on the killings. While it’s perfectly valid for LSU to be concerned that their system is not working as planned, I believe it is a mistake for LSU officials and news media reporters to report on the two issues in the same breath. Not only is it distracting, but it’s simply bad PR: it frames everything in a local-news perspective, with all its provincial prejudices: “omg, how does that news affect me and only me?” The story is the tragic loss of two lives, not whether sorority girls should lock the doors of their well-landscaped mansions. Had the news media not conveyed the news so muddily, it might not have become the racialized issue it seems to have become for some posters here. I believe that LSU would have announced the failures of their alert system just as clumsily no matter who was killed on campus; LSU bureaucrats and security force are as incompetent as can be expected of any big institution.
Got it ex-baton rouger. Even if it’s just clumsy PR, and I’m not sure big necessarily means clumsy, I think there’s negligence at play here. I mean, why don’t they have basic security arrangements in place in such a setting/surroundings? no gates? no surveillance cameras? How are foreigners supposed to be savvy enough to cope?
In that case, I doubt you would use either term. They probably would use Indian and go into their backgrounds in the writeup. Look, the term DBD here was used merely as a shorthand to give us an instant picture of the victims. My feeling is that when we look at the title, we get an instant snapshot of the victims and how far their parents live. I don’t think it is meant to be judgemental. This sense of outrage is getting out of hand. Whenever someone covers a tragedy, we seem to get posts whining about why SM did not cover this or that.
Ex Baton Rouger, excellent comments that give us a great picture of what is going on.
This is such a sad story. These two people living so far away from home, living away from their family, hoping to start a new family. Poverty is another obstacle that foreign grad students face. While American grad students aren’t rich either, many internationals (especially DBDs, not talking of some rich students from certain countries) are significantly poorer. Just getting a car (in many places a necessity) and decent furniture takes years of saving. On top of that, many save up money from the small stipends to send home to their family in Desh. So many sacrifices for a chance at something… and then, BAM, all gone.
Another matter that may not seem such a big deal – I don’t know if they were hoping to have their baby be an ABD. If the woman is on a dependent status (F2) and not a student/worker herself, she might have to leave the country immediately and not give birth here. Granted, it’s much smaller a deal than the death of the father, but it could also be the death of a dream for the parents. I say this because I have known friends who (for reasons not too clear to me) dream of this and are really proud of their children being American, often proudly saying things like “She’s a global citizen” or “I’m an alien/resident, but he’s a CITIZEN”. Most of all, I’m really sad for the wife. When she returns, what a horrible memory she will have of America, losing so much and going through so much sadness in a short time.
Hmmm, isnt that exactly how many if not most desis feel when they leave the desh? Would you prefer living in India instead?
In Bangalore the locals are starting to physically assault the IT pros, I hear.
“You hear“… I go there every summer and yes with the advent of the IT industry things have become very expensive. But assaulting IT workers…???? Please link to articles in newspapers or magazines.
Leaving India is as good as leaving a sinking ship! WOW! You certainly have a low opinion of immigrants, eh!
Amrita: Jhamu had made a racist statement to the effect that “blacks murder & rape wherever they are” that was deleted by the SM Intern…that’s what I was responding to. I am not moved by the fact SM readers might disagree with me, because for the most part they know a judge/MLA/IPS officer within one degree of separation and so of course Indian justice works for them.
Is the communications from LSU hamfisted ? Yes. Would it have been better communicated if the victims were white, I don’t know this is LSU and not some Ivy where they hire heavy hitter corporate PR types to keep the endowment money rolling in. Could be ineptitude or it could be racism. Would you care to examine the use of the English language in the Indian press ? Murderers are described as “miscreants”, what broad conclusions are you willing to draw about the value of life in India from that ?
I don’t know this is LSU and not some Ivy where they hire heavy hitter corporate PR types to keep the endowment money rolling in
LSU, while being a major state school, an ex-NASA chief as their current chancellor, flagship university with enormous state resources put there from time immemorial (since Huey P Long loved LSU to death and powerful legislators in Louisiana are always LSU Tigers), once a basketball ball powerhouse, now in baseball, and football (twice in national championship in last 5 years and a current football coach with 3 million dollar annual salary) – LSU has a long history of bad PR – like dis-enrolling hundreds of iranian students during iran hostage crisis, and later relenting, the list never ends.
I have been seriously thinking of writing directly to the Chancellor. He should know about the faux pas.
Mytri,
Article discussing disenchantment about the IT industry and assault upon IT workers:
http://outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071217&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1
Yes. Would it have been better communicated if the victims were white, I don’t know this is LSU and not some Ivy where they hire heavy hitter corporate PR types to keep the endowment money rolling in
The answer is Yes. It would have been different if the victim was white.
LSU also has had one of the largest single donor endowment in American educational history – by Pennington family foundation – which made the Pennington BioMedical Center there – one of its kind in the world
It takes brave, wise men to somehow link this tragedy to Christianity, so that they have a flimsy excuse to insult a religion they find inferior and inauthentic; in the name of efficiency, they spit out the name of LA’s new Governor, too…better to tar two things with one trolling.
It is disgusting that one of you shamelessly suggested that people might brush off this horrific loss as anything less than an awful tragedy, because the victims “weren’t saved”. You are the worst ambassadors for whatever you stupidly think you are upholding or protecting. Don’t you dare accuse me of filth that I certainly did not say, write or imply. Instead of libel, try masturbation if you need to get your jollies.
As for those courageous souls who curse us as “Goddamned ABCDs”, you don’t know what you’re talking about (not that it will stop you from shitting in this swimming pool with your assumptions). I didn’t unilaterally decide that we were going to use ABD and DBD as respectful, neutral “abbreviations”, THE COMMUNITY DID. You’d know that if you read the blog instead of venting on it.
And finally, to the jerk whose comment was deleted- did it ever occur to you that I tried to blog about the story you said “we didn’t have the guts to cover”, but I couldn’t bear to? I’m not a robot. I’m a human who experiences emotions. If I’m crying too hard to type, good golly, no post for you– that’s life. Deal. If I can’t, I can’t. If we can’t, we can’t. You need to get over your bizarre, irrational need for recognition of tragedies, which you feel like seeing blogged here.
THIS IS A BLOG. NOTHING MORE. STOP INSULTING US OR THREATENING US FOR NOT POSTING SOMETHING.
If it matters to you so much, where’s your blog? Who made me your peon? I give all I can to this, which is more than I can say for you unbelievably negative few who pollute this community with your nastiness.
Wow, this is horrible on many fronts. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to read this blog and I’m not happy to see a post on such tragedy. Thanks for writing about it because I had not heard about it yet.
@Anna (aka “I’ve HAD it”) – I’m not sure which comments you are referring to (since it looks like they were deleted) but it sounds like they were crazy comments from crazy, frustrated, have no life people. You are so right that if people want to ‘cover a story’ then they should start their own blog or start their own campaign about it. I’m always surprised (maybe since I’m so new to blogging and putting myself out there in the Internet) that people can be so tacky, insensitive, and downright *&^holes about stuff just because they feel safe not saying it to your face. It takes guts to do what you do and write what you write about from many aspects and I admire that. Don’t let it get to you.
Aruni, thanks. I am considerably calmer now and I wonder– these people are obviously deeply affected by this tragedy…so why not give to the relief fund set up for the murder victims instead of anonymously typing deletable worthlessness here?
Dear Sepia Mutiny ( pro sikh and pro christian ),
Please provide coverage to the ethnic cleansing of Indians in Malaysia. As we speak many Indians are being tortured, and abused in Malaysia. If you dont cover this and spread awareness who will ?
It is great that you cover desi centric topics ranging from mundane to tantalizing.. but I urge you to cover this issue.
1.8 million Indians are under attack in Malaysia and you dont even blink??
Thankyou,
Tamil Tigers.
p.s. dont try to ban our i.p. addresses, we can create 1999^10000 proxies.. just get the message. cover the issue abhi tripathi of los angeles.
Tamil Tiger, go start your own blog somewhere else. If there is enough interest, people will come.
tamil tiger, that would be a bit pointless since there are only 2^32 distinct ip addresses possible, and even IPv6 will give you only 2^128 addresses. so creating such a large number of proxies would require a nat, and that defeats the entire purpose of creating them in the first place.
i can’t dance but i do want to be part of your revolution, which is why i am offering this consultancy gratis.
sat sri akal! hail mary!
I’m a LSU student who is white, but I grew up around many Indian families and I have to say they are some of Baton Rouge’s most valuable families and I’m not the only one who recognizes this. I hope you all don’t think that everyone outside of the Indian community in Baton Rouge is ignoring the tragedy.
I am so saddened by what happened on Thursday, and I am so embarrassed and angered, but unfortunately not surprised, by the way LSU has handled it. My fiance’ used to live in Nicholson, the other apartment complex for married and graduate students, and he has been literally sick since we heard about Allam and Komma’s murders. Ever since he moved into Nicholson, we have been screaming for police to step up patrols, to add security measures such as cameras and fences, to just fix up Nicholson and Ed Gay. It is sickening that LSU puts its brightest and most promising students and their families in the worst areas of campus and in the worst complexes. The apartments are so grossly neglected.
I just want to say how deeply saddened I am that we have lost two wonderful people in our community, and I want to apologize for how badly the administration has handled this. Many students have been calling for O’Keefe’s resignation as a result of how awfully the entire thing has been botched. I hope you know though that so many students on our campus, both Indian and non-Indian alike, have the men and their families in our thoughts and prayers.
Silly question by an Indian- Are temporary residents (students, H1-B holders etc.) allowed to own guns? If yes, can then apply for & get conceal-carry permits?
louiecypher. you already got your best answer to your second question, the one without a question mark, from Kush Tandon. My answer to your last question is: None. What kind of behavior do you sometimes call police brutality in New York and LA?
Communiucations, whether clumsy or deft, certainly come second to nonexistent security arrangements for impoverished foreign students. They’ll likely never fix this without a lawsuit.
And who are the spades you would wish to have called spades, O great Spadeville? Come on: Say what you have to say. Have the courage to express yourself, or if all you have to say is dim innuendo, go away.
We quake before the power of your cyberwar techniques, O Tigers. I just got the message. It says, ” talk is cheap.”
I myself am an LSU student, though I am not Indian. I had a biology lab with one of the victims, while we never really spoke, as I zoned out most of the class, he seemed like a good guy to me.
To those of you speaking as though you know what happened, kindly stfu. Not everyone in LA is the racist person you are.
Remember one thing, this was a tragedy. People died. The color of their skin isn’t relevant. Two people, with families, friends, and loved ones are no longer on this earth.
Hopefully, those responsible are caught, and thankfully Louisiana has the death penalty.
I agree with #87. It’s horrible to be racist. But, it’s even more egregious of some posters to:
constantly accuse others of being racist, while demonstrating the worst type of bigoted thinking oneself
So, everyone’s a racist except for you? Especially those horrible black and white folks? You know, those ones that you know are ignorant racists? The ones who hate Indians and are out to get you?
I don’t understand why desi’s are so quick to say every crime is committed by blacks or have a hidden grudge against them. None of them have any first hand experiences. Right?? Lulz!!:-)
I am glad the wife was not home when this happened. Who knows what would have happened to her.
Priya, Chetna, Amrita etc Since all three mentioned the plight of the pregnant wife without mentioning the victims. Just thinking what you would have said if the victims were women.
A tragedy is blogged and immediately all the vermin emerges? My esteem of the human race is at a new low.
My condolences to the families. Why are campus buildings situated right next to the worst neighbourhoods in town?
Why are campus buildings situated right next to the worst neighbourhoods in town?
Huge urban campuses in America (not campus towns, even there, New Haven has shady neighborhood next to campus) grow over 100s of years in all directions as vast sprawls (almost cities within cities), it is no wonder that they will in some parts touch poor and violent neighborhoods.
Becaue grad students in Amreeka are poor and the univ , probably because they are forced to by law, “helps” by arranging for “affordable” accomodation. And we all know what “affordable” housing implies. Meanwhile, happy smiling undergrads are probably getting new lacrosse uniforms designed by Prada.
But…isn’t it cheaper to locate campus buildings in the suburbs? I know it’s further away, and that’s what makes it cheaper. But it’s also safer. And doesn’t the student housing council own places in the centre as well? I guess the situation in my country is completely different though. Here the council owns a lot of extremely beautiful historical houses in the centre. Unfortunately, at the time of my application I could not get into those, as they are dominated by frat students. Now I probably could but it’s too much of a hassle to move. I’ve got the best view of my city anyway.
Shouldn’t student safety be a priority of the university/housing council though? In my town the complexes are not located in the ‘worst’ neighbourhood, I don’t know about other cities, but I think the same is true there.
Suffer the grad students, they are the indentured cane cutters of the 21st century. Most of the white undergrads at the elite school I went to were on work study and are heavily in debt. The Ivys are not stocked by Exeter or Andover contrary to what you may think. Are the undergrads at a state school like LSU living a charmed life, drinking mint juleps while ther desi T.A.s dodge bullets ?
Something terrible has happened and there is not much info, so it seems like people are trying to fill the vacuum
There were no suburbs in the US until cars were developed, most unis predate this invention. So why not farmland ? I am not sure of the relative economic costs back then, but something like 50% of the US pop would have been engaged in agriculture back then. Secondly, you need critical mass of population to attract intellectual types. Getting young profs out to Stanford 120 years ago when the SF Bay Area was a cultural back water was no easy task
Oy, I came to see if there were any important updates on this tragic story in the comments section and got slammed by another horrible, vitriolic SM discussion thread. It’s depressing.
Cheers to those of you who tried to stay above the fray and whose hearts were in the right places. For the rest, shame.
Wll, tw ndn stdnts mrdrd n yr wn bckyrd, nd w hv s mny cncrnd. gd kp it p!
Deleted
TML TGR
well said. and tamil tiger, recognizing a small personal loss, doesn’t mean that we overlook the bigger injustices in the world. there is a time and place for everything, and if you cannot be gracious, at least be silent out of respect and decency. let other people decide which battles they want to fight. it is a little bit disconcerting to see those who squelch free expression masquerade as the vanguards of all that is free and good.