On December 2, 2002, three 22-year-old graduate students were attacked in a hate crime that resembles too many bias-motivated incidents over the past fifteen months. The students, two men and one woman, had all come from India to pursue masters degrees starting just this past fall at UMass-Lowell. On the night of the attack, three assailants accosted the students on a street near campus and began to punch and kick them. They repeatedly called the students “children of Osama bin Laden” and told them they “deserved” the beating.

Police were quick to investigate the attack as a hate crime and arrested a 17-year-old in relation to the crime. Public figures also reacted quickly to the news of the crime; State Senator Steve Panagiatakos (D) condemned the attacks and U.S. Representative Martin T. Meehan (D) called the attack “despicable” and expressed his support for the victims and the community. The Indian American Forum for Political Education New England Chapter organized a forum for members of the community to express their feelings on the issue; it drew an audience of 200.

Sadly, bias-motivated violence is not new to Lowell. As home of the largest Cambodian population on the East Coast, as well as a large working-class Latino population, xenophobic attitudes began to run high in the 1980s, resulting in countless reported and unreported hate crimes, including the drowning death of 13-year-old Vandy Phorng in 1987. Although it seems some people have not learned lessons from the ignorance in the city’s past, OCA-NE hopes the hatred can finally stop and the healing can begin.