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Grandmother tesifies that School District officials unfairly painted Hao Luu as an aggressor - when he was in fact a victim.
Isaiah thompson Suong Nguyen wants Hao's name cleared.
Grandmother tesifies that School District officials unfairly painted Hao Luu as an aggressor - when he was in fact a victim.
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| Isaiah thompson |
| Suong Nguyen wants Hao's name cleared. |
At Wednesday's School Reform Commission meeting, Suong Nguyen, the grandmother of Hao Luu – or "Guy," as you might know him from this week's cover story – testified before the Commission that her grandson had been unfairly accused of being a gang member and aggressor in the events culminating in the Dec. 3 attacks on Asian students, and was pushed out of the school after complaining that he himself was attacked the day before.
You can read the details of Hao Luu's case in this week's cover storty, "It's Your Fault." In a nutshell: Shortly after the Dec 3 attacks on more than twenty Asian student by mostly black students, District officials began casting the whole thing as "retaliation" for a prior incident, in which a disabled black student was allegedly beaten up by an Asian student. They also announced that four Asian students had been suspended, giving further credence to the idea of a two-way conflict. Superintendent Arlene Ackerman also said that gang influences may have been involved.
But the bulk of this alternative version of events rests on the disciplinary action taken against one Vietnamese student, Hao Luu, who reported that he himself was attacked after school, by mostly black students, the day before. The day his grandmother reported the attack to school officials, Luu was suspended on the basis of an incident report based, in turn, on the testimony of two students who were detained by police after, Luu says, confronting him in the hallway earlier that day.
When his suspension ended, the school attempted to transfer Luu to a disciplinary school - on the same charges. When Luu's family appeared for a transfer hearing, District officials did not, and the transfer was overturned - only to be replaced by another transfer request, which the school later dropped. Hao's family finally enrolled him in a private school.
Nguyen asked the board yesterday that "Hao's reputation be restored."
Interestingly, the accusation that Hao Luu might be involved with gangs seems to have come (based on my own reporting) primarily from one school official, Community Coordinator Wali Smith, who also advised District officials that Luu would not be "safe" at SPHS.
Smith declined to talk to me at the SRC meeting a week ago, but gave the Daily News an interesting quote yesterday:
"[Luu] is playing this part that he's an innocent guy," he said.
"Everybody knows if he went in there tomorrow, they would go after him."
But what does that mean? In one sentence, he seems to question Luu's "innocence" – even though no evidence has been produced linking Luu to any attack, let alone the alleged attack on a "disabled" black student (Several SPHS kids told me outside the school that the attack had occured, but that it had taken place on the subway platform. There are no accounts of Hao Luu's having anything to do with any incident in the subway).
In the next sentence, though, he suggests that "they," – black students? – "would go after him."
Maybe it's just one of those funny quotes, but it almost seems as if Smith is saying, "Maybe he's guilty, or maybe he's a walking target, but either way, he doesn't belong at SPHS."
An odd way of looking at things for a school community liason, no?
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| Isaiah Thompson |
| Asian-American Community Advocates comfort a tearful Suong Nguyen |
Asians...fight violence w/ violence. It's the only language that they understand...trustme...I know!
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