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Sophomore Charged with Hate Crime

Chad Washington, CC ’15 and football defensive lineman, has been charged with a hate crime. According to NBC, he allegedly threatened, followed, and physically harassed an Asian student on Saturday night. A Public Safety office witnessed what happened, but ignored it because “he thought it was a group horsing around.” Washington “faces a felony charge of aggravated harassment as a hate crime.” He may have been with four other people, who are being investigated.

Washington recently wrote an op-ed for Spec titled “Athletes Deserve Respect.” From Washington’s Spec op-ed:

Most of my fellow students at Columbia feel so divided from athletes because, once again, sports have never been a part of their life. During Friday nights in high school, they were probably in the library and not at the football game. During the Homecoming pep rally, future Columbia students were most likely working on extra homework and problem sets.

Update: An informal statement from Wilfred Chan regarding the administrative response to the incident is below, taken from his comment on the recent post on certain football players’ racist Tweets. Apparently, the assault occurred earlier in the week, but was only reported by outside media recently.