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… 🙁
@ 99: I was more excited when I thought you were going to contain your struggle. No such luck, I see.
tamil tiger–why do you keep ignoring everyone’s comments? if it’s important to you, then start your own blog. Or email/call CNN/NY times/your news media of choice asking them to cover the story. your repeating is reminiscent of children whining when they don’t get what they want. there are plenty of other more appropriate spaces for you to bring attention to this issue you raise, including the news tab on this site.
He is doing an admirable job of dragging his namesake groups name through the mud further with his vague threats (abhi of los angeles?! ha) and incoherent babble. The LTTE has enough problems with public perception, they don’t need imbeciles appropriating their name to lash out on a public forum.
Dr Sp Mutny ( pro skh, pro chrstn, Pro Hnd, Pr Jw, Pr mslm, pr mrcn, Pr ndn, pr hmnty, pr blgsphr, pr pr pr ) & pr pr
Deleted
Since you don’t seem to understand anything politely-phrased here’s a very blunt tip, “tamil tiger”.
Maybe if you stop with the stupid, inaccurate statements (pro sikh pro christian), this forum will be more likely to listen to you. If you want this blog’s help, don’t insult them. When they logically don’t help you after you’re an ass to them, don’t act like they’re oppressing you, when if anything, YOU are persecuting them with your threats and spam.
Your tactics give you something in common with the Malaysian Government– chew on that…and hopefully, choke.
Tamil Tiger 2 @ 105:
This particular post and the related discussion surrounds the tragic news event. Please take your issue to the news tab or elsewhere. Would you show up at a funeral spouting rhetoric concerning an unrelated event? It is not that Sepia Mutiny won’t necessarily cover what you are talking about, it is that you continue to bring it up in the wrong forum and ignore the productive advice of others.
Tamil Tiger:
Sure, but is masturbation ?
listen TT, you are coming across as a juvenile delinquent. by threadbombing you risk drying up support for your cause.
this forum is not necessarily an information dissemination center the way you intend it. the bulk of audience who frequent this, if they are potential sympathizers, are already aware of the tamil situation in malaysia. in order to grow the bandwidth for your cause, you are best to cultivate a more diverse audience. more into that later, but seriously guy, this kind of haranguing shows you up as an illiterate, intemperate, venal boor – and that just does not go across very well.
i have done this some time back in canada and am proud to say it worked.
a. Blogspot has a standard template wherein you can channel newsfeeds and video from youtube directly to your blog. Use key words like “malaysia tamil”, “malaysia race preference”, “bumiputra …” etc. to funnel media content to your blog.
b. I would recommend you draft standard letters clearly articulating the tamil cause for directing to a. newspaper editors, b. npo’s like AI c. foreign ministers. Try to be objective, and do not try to “shame” people into following your recommendation.
c. Surf the net to find the email addresses of your target audience. Or create a blog post that requests the indian diaspora to submit the email addresses for their local newspapers (eg lettertoed@thestar.ca for the toronto Star), their MP’s etc.
d. Create a blog post asking the readers to submit the stock letter to the email/snailmail addresses that are provided.
e. submit a request for action to Sepiamutiny, uberdesi, ultrabrown, chapatimystery, pickledpolitics etc. who are genuinely sympathetic to your cause. it makes sense to engage them then, because that is what they do best, channel the diaspora’s action in a given direction.
This will take no more than 6 hours of work by my estimate – and a better use of your energy – because frankly you’re pissing me off and while i am generally sympathetic to the cause of human rights – if you are representative of the people you are trying to represent, my energies are best used elsewhere.
just to stay on topic, the above strategy is effective in creating action – otherwise the sympathy is wasted. the same applies to the LSU situation and if one needs to create more traction than is currently evident. it’s best this is best led by someone close to the situation in multiple ways (a desi LSU alum?) who knows what should be the right outcome to prevent further occurrences of the same.
just my 2 cents.
Yes, Tamil Tiger is really dragging the LTTE’s name into the mud 🙂
Hey, Tamil tiger 2, why don’t you strap your humorous comments onto an innocent, abducted, indoctrinated child so you can deliver them with more of a bang?
Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh!
Amen!
That was an April Fool’s Joke … where Sepia Mutiny was turned into Culture Kitsch Bazaar for a day 😀
Anyhow…any other official updates on the story? Lots of rumors flying around right now, from the 3 black guys hurrying away from the area to some ex-student settling a score to it was a professional job that might be race-related (though lynching is usually a crime of passion, not one you hire a hit man for)…
Anyway, hopefully the police are on every lead. I hope these people are brought to justice very soon… and we find out WHY such a stupid, senseless thing happened.
Furthermore, I refuse to speculate on the race of the killer(s) .. it doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is the motivation… and finding the ppl who did it
no. Only Permanent residents and citizens can get a gun. I tried buying one in Wal-Mart a few years ago 😉
I am indeed sympathetic to the cause of the Indians in Malaysia. I wish we could do something about it. The issue is not getting the attention it deserves. AND…this isn’t the thread for that discussion.
why not ? the single biggest assaulters on desis in melbourne are the refugees from Sudan. When I see them I take suitable precautions which include crossing the road and I make no apologies for this. I believe in Sydney it is the Lebs.
Could we please redirect our attention to the actual post/thread/topic?
Further comments addressing or engaging Tamil Tiger/Malaysia will be deleted. As many have said, this is not the appropriate place for that.
A final reminder– we request that you use one handle per thread, as a courtesy to those reading you. Those of you who are newer may not be aware that we consider it a ban-worthy offense.
What’s behind this Melbourne phenomena, poverty or do the refugees have a specific animus towards desis ? Do they mistake us for Janjaweed/Sudanese “Arabs” ? Are these violent muggings or whimsical assaults ? I would have to say that the race of the perps in the LSU case is irrelevant unless it ends up being a hate crime. No motivation has been discovered yet
I do think that there are a lot of universities that need to take on-campus security much more seriously–it seems like a fairly small cost, considering university budgets these days. My impression is that the use of undercover cops is very effective, because then word gets out to stay away from the university if you want to mug people, because even if there isn’t an obvious cop present you may get arrested. In some sense, of course, such a policy could be criticized for merely displacing crime off-campus (or at least beyond where the university cops patrol), but that’s kind of why universities have their own police-forces in the first place, no–i.e., to make the campus “extra” safe. And, the neighborhoods that the crime is displaced to at least tend to have voting residents, unlike campuses, where most residents don’t vote in the municipal elections.
Here’s an interesting look at some of these issues, including why private security forces (which would, broadly speaking, include campus police, even at “public” universities) tend to go in more for undercover work than city cops (the key factor is the latter are more interested in prosecutions, the former in prevention).
I doubt many college campuses with their leftist political tilts will take too kindly towards having under cover security officers “snooping” around, regardless of how altruistic their motives are. Just my feeling after having spent enough years on various US campuses. Anyway I doubt this present case would have been helped by that. There seems little chance that a targeted crime of this nature can be prevented by campus police as if occurred off campus, inside an residence.
probably physical size. Sudanese tend to be the tallest people around. Both – muggings and assualts. Everyone gets assaulted – including whites many of whom are able to fight it off more successfully than many desis. Am not saying that the anger of the reffos is particularly directed towards desis – just that the most common perpetrators of assaults on desis are sudanese.
I still dont get the logic of hate crime – Crime is crime -regardless of perpetrator or victim.
the welfare system is australia is very good – so if anyone says that they are poor – it is a sham.
coming back to the topic at hand – will the LSU shootings have an impact on the number of DBD students who come to LSU.
Melbourne Desi asked:
…just as I was reading this:
Yes, if it was targeted (which the few facts we know seem to support), it’s much more difficult to prevent. It was on-campus, though.
From Calcutta Telegraph article linked to in #123:
“authorities yesterday belatedly moved in to ensure visible vigilance at the Edward Gay Apartments” (emphasis added)
This is the wrong direction–they need to announce that the campus will be patrolled now by both regular and plainclothes cops–the latter have a much bigger impact on keeping crime out. Harvard did this with, e.g., “Operation Student Shield” so I don’t buy the point raised in #120 that PC concerns are all that important–this is a crisis (the murders, of course, but also all the follow-on attention to a generally unsafe campus atmosphere) for LSU and needs to be addressed accordingly.
I was under the impression the Edward Gay apartments are near campus but not actually in the campus.Maybe they are still covered by the university jurisdiction. University security has been notoriously lax on most campuses for decades. In the 70s, the serial killer Ted Bundy broke into a Florida university sorority house and murdered two women, injuring a number of others. All this while he was a known fugitive. Given Louisiana’s historically corrupt police force and inept university administration (gems like “provided an opportunity for the university to test its new emergency text-message system” are a good indication of their idiocy) I am not too hopeful that anything will change. Unless somebody who personally knows the killers gives the police a lead, it seems there are no real clues. Maybe the FBI will bring better skills to bear on the case.
Well, they’re probably not reporting the “real” clues! Let’s hope so, at least!
will the LSU shootings have an impact on the number of DBD students who come to LSU.
Yes, for many reasons.
1) Graduate schools in American Universities upwards of 50% are international. Word spreads fast, and the impact is immediate. Indian students apply through word of mouth, and I am sure potential applicants to LSU in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai know about the tragedy.
2) Even undergrad application suffers. A campus seen dangerous has very profound effect – sometimes, even places like Columbia University, and U. Chicago.
3) LSU in two weeks is play BCS National Championship, and last thing it wants is a tragedy (bad news) hovering around.
4) I have been to these apartments @ LSU in past many times, these ones sit on the periphery of campus, not much could have been done, except gating, and electronic security entrance. That would have been a deterrent. Parts of LSU (and many other campuses) touch very shady neighborhoods (that area has the highest crime rate in Baton Rouge. I have been on those streets, 100 meters off the apartment complex where this tragedy happened, they look like scenes from Mad Max movies**), and it is not realistic the comb the whole area with the size of campuses in America with under-cover cops.
Such high-risk areas have slightly lower rents, and international students with limited funds tend to live there on many campuses on America. A lot of my friends lived in these complexes @ LSU and other places, and with limited funds as international students, one tends to look safety of the area the other way or often they have limited choices due to their budget constraints.
5) The apartment complex in news was LSU owned, but they are private own ones too five steps away in the same area, and they are more vulnerable. Sure, somebody, said why can’t students live in suburbs, sure you can, some do, if you can afford it. It is all economics. The ones who afford buy houses, and condos, and what not. In most American Universities, good majority of students (upper classmen in undergraduate, and especially graduate students) live off campus.
6) Both at Cornell and LSU, I never lived close to the campus – because peripheries of campuses tend to have ghettoisation.
The only thing that can be done is awareness…….a new student should know that one should not cut corners (if they can) with the area they choose to live. I know this is easier said than done.
** What can campus police do if the criminals originate from off campus, and spill over to on-campus in an instant. For that matter, some parts of American landscape are out of bounds of city police…they fear their own life in those areas.
As a Baton Rouge desi resident, this is extremely disappointing and frightening. I went to high school less than a mile away from the shootings and the area has a lot of Indian students living in the apartments. The only thing good thing I see is the coming together of Louisiana’s South Asian community, not just Indians. I’m also a college student and after coming home from my first semester in college, this is what I see…I’m really worried at this point…I live pretty close to LSU and many of my friends go to LSU.
As for race, I doubt it’s a huge factor. IF this was supposed to be a Black/Indian thing, it would have happened long ago and possibly at a the historically black university (southern)…
Hopefully LSU and Baton Rouge will be able to recover from this tragic loss
From the Harvard Crimson:
OSS seems to have mixed reviews at best.
Kush, I’m with you the problems for international students–simply put, universities shouldn’t be foisting them off into dangerous accommodations, which is what they
doing if they’re not giving grad students enough in stipends to live anywhere else. But I think you underestimate the effective deterrent value of a few undercover cops–once word gets out that they’re there (most) criminals will move on–the key is the university should not in effect be presenting its students as easy targets.
I agree.
doing if they’re not giving grad students enough in stipends to live anywhere else. But I think you underestimate the effective deterrent value of a few undercover cops–once word gets out that they’re there (most) criminals will move on–the key is the university should not in effect be presenting its students as easy targets.
Majority of LSU students, and Baton Rouge natives stay away from these areas – Why? They can afford. I can bet majority of LSU students until few days ago even knew they were LSU owned apartments in those areas.
You can be at LSU for many years, and never step in those parts of the town, except to buy beer kegs or pawn your ex-boyfriend’s engagement ring.
But international students with limited finances have to force themselves to live at these places. Even international students come in all shapes and sizes – sons of Mittals, with high paying assistantships, sometimes even with prestigious fellowships, but then some with teaching assistantships, and a lot of them do 20 hour odd jobs on/ off campus. The last category ones have to really struggle hard with jobs and finances.
I had friends who lived in those apartments (the ones in the news above) – trust, they were not that cheap, only slightly cheaper than other options.
I seriously hope LSU now takes a harder look at their “affordable” on-campus family housing, since hardly any American lived there, and therefore, these places never got their attention.
yeah I can confirm, you are spot on for Sydney.
As a former resident of Nicholson Apartments (the other married/graduate student complex), I can answer a few questions that have been raised on here since I have had a number of dealings with administrators and police department officials regarding security at these two locations.
1) To clear up any misconception, Edward Gay Apartments are a part of the campus and are LSU owned. The Chancellor intentionally spinned this story to the media to make it sound as though the apartments were not even on LSU property, referring to them as “on the edge of campus”. By doing so, he was obviously trying to make this sound like it was a Baton Rouge Police thing and not the fault of the University.
2) When these apartments were built, actually Nicholson too, the areas that they were built in were known to be low-income and crime-infested areas. Chancellor O’Keefe does not even understand the history of this area, as made obvious by his referral to the area as the “Gay Apartments” during his press conference. No one on this campus refers to those apartments as such. Everyone knows them as either Ed Gay or Edward Gay. It just goes to show how out of touch this man is in relation to the campus.
3) The administration of this University has known for years about the problems with security in these areas. Armed robberies, car thefts, attempted break-ins, bicycle thefts, and the list goes on. I can attest for a number of people who have either e-mailed or gone in to speak person to person with administrators of both the apartments and/or the police asking for increased patrols in these areas. The most we would ever see was an increase for about a week, than back to the same old-same old lack of patrolling. If you ride by either Nicholson or Ed Gay today, you will see uniformed police officers literally standing there guarding the areas. It took the death of two students to get some type of action. The only problem is that after the initial shock of this incident disappears, so to will the police department. They will be back to their normal routine of patrolling the areas once a week or so. If I’ve noticed this in the past, don’t you think criminally minded people see this as well? They know which areas are vulnerable to their criminal activities.
4) The only reason why the text messaging system was even discussed was because of the incident which happened at Virginia Tech last April. The University rushed to implement this system to make it look like they were being proactive, yet along the way someone forgot that you have to test things first to make sure that they work. The wording used in the e-mail was very offensive to me, and I’m a white American male. A murder should never be considered an “opportunity”.
5) I wholeheartedly agree that the University needs to make some efforts to rebuild and relocate these facilities. The southside of campus has plenty of available land that could be used for building adequate housing for family/graduate student housing, and it would also be in a safe location of the campus, as opposed to having our students in a vulnerable location.
6) I would encourage everyone from this site to send a letter to the Chancellor and/or Governor Bobby Jindal encouraging the exploration of better living conditions for graduate students. It’s sad that some of our brightest inviduals are made to live in such a bad area because they lack the funding to live in the “upper-class” areas of campus like the rich people do. When the masses are put into motion, the wheels of government tend to start turning a little bit better.
My heartfelt condolences go out to the family members and friends of the victims. I hope that the men behind this heinous crime are given a punishment to fit their crime (which is a possibility thanks to the existence of the death penalty in the state of Louisiana).
Here are the addresses for O’Keefe and Governor Jindal:
Chancellor Sean O’Keefe Office of the Chancellor 156 Thomas Boyd Hall Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Governor-Elect Bobby Jindal c/o Governor’s Transition Team Kirby-Smith Hall/LSU Campus Baton Rouge, LA 70810
Sketches of suspects released.
The suspects are black, who would have known? It is likely, these desi students in their extreme kanjusi (miser behaviour) must have taken some housing in a low cost high crime black neighbourhood and payed the price.
are you going out of your way to be offensive? alternatively, if this is a thread you chose to diplay trollish behavior, nice work.
you have no personal knowledge of the financial situation of these two people, who were, more likely than not, two grad students stretching their stipends (especially the one whose wife’s was expecting a child) and trying not to impose on folks back home. and it seems like married grad students only had two housing options on campus, and living off-campus was not the best idea either. commuting in the area seems to be difficult because of the bare-bones public transportation system.
also: is it purely a coincidence that low-income areas just have shoddy law enforcement? tough luck for people who can’t afford suburban safety, they will “pay the price” (many times over, unfortunately) for their poverty. is that what you’re saying?
baramati hostel: Take your outrageous, racist trolling elsewhere. You should be ashamed of yourself. This is a thread to mourn two murder victims and you disrespect it and them by vomiting your stupidity here as if it’s some act of bravery against the PC-warriors? Please. You have been banned.
FYI, LSU Foundation has established a support fund for the deceased. Details can be found at http://www.lsufoundation.org/
I am tired of people like shallowthinker who believe indian americans owe american blacks a debt. The 1965 immigration act was passed because of American catholics and jews. The 1965 immigration act was proposed by Emmanuel Celler and supported by Senator Ted Kennedy. Second indian americans are in the US because the country needed the skills of indian americans. A discussion on the widespread prevalence of black crime in America is necessary to take steps to prevent it.
Is it necessary on what is essentially a memorial thread, where the two victims should be the focus, instead of their murderers?
Can these racist assholes from India explain to us why India is not violence free considering they have no black residents. If you look at rediff reader comments on this news item, it boggles the mind the kind of vermin that immigrate over here.
The case is also about justice. The newsmedia will stop covering the story because it does not fit the white man as oppressor liberal morality tale. The asian american civil rights organizations will ignore the case because they represent the interests of upper class and upper middle class asian americans. For them discrimination in the corporate boardroom is a greater concern than the plight of asian american shopkeepers and asian american cabdrivers. Which civil rights organizations speak for the middle class and working class asian americans for whom black underclass crime is a greater threat than white racism?
Vince, what a joke. Blacks are more frequently victims of black crime than Indians are. If blacks did this crime, it has nothing to do with a hate agenda on Indians. It is a simple crime thing that went bad. Why the hell should race based organization spend resources on something the city should be worrying about? The only reason for them to step in is if the cops are not paying enough attention to the case because the victims are foreigners who do not have many local connections.
I feel sorry for the people that died,but the racism in this thread is turning me off. That is why I find it hard listen when you talk about racism and stereotypes directed at you,from the looks of things you give as good as you get. This not directed at all the folks on the board just some. Again I am glad they caught the criminals.
So as not to be elitist let’s also remember Pravinkumar Chimanbha Patel and Dashrath Patel who were murdered Dec 7 at their gas station in rural Florida. And HMF their murderer was not a “redneck”, KKK member or gated community White racist Republican guy. Sorry to disappoint you.
Their killer Leon Davis, Jr has been captured. He’s also charged with setting on fire two Latino women he robbed, killing one and killing the unborn baby of the other.
http://www.amw.com/fugitives/brief.cfm?id=51532
They caught them?
My bad I thought they did.
Amen. But it’s in tragic cases like this that the ugliness reveals itself. Better that it’s in plain view and on the record. The psychological legacy of oppression maintains itself long after the specific political and economic relations of oppression have disappeared. Behold the results! Divided and conquered, capable of the most acrobatic acts of compartmentalization, and drenched in anxiety.
Peace to the deceased, their families, the ancestors. Liberation awaits.