Northwestern University is looking into whether one of its students called a woman of Indian descent a "fucking sand nigger" on Tinder, a university spokesperson told BuzzFeed News.

The student was first identified by The Daily Northwestern as Brendan Amos — a sophomore at Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.



Alan Cubbage, the vice president of university relations at Northwestern, confirmed Amos' identity and said they were "looking into" the incident.



He refused to provide further details, and did not say whether the university was considering disciplinary action.



On June 18, Amos matched on Tinder with Anjali, a freshman at Dartmouth College who wanted to be identified only by her first name, as she didn't want to be "permanently tied to this one encounter."

Anjali told BuzzFeed News on Friday that the two matched because they were both in Hanover, New Hampshire, and had some common friends.



She said she did not use Tinder to meet many people, and only used it with her friends when she was bored.



Anjali's Tinder bio reads "Send memes" which is why Amos' first message to her was "I'm not tryna send memes I'm just tryna smash," suggesting that he only wanted to have sex with her.

She replied "yikes," to which Amos responded, "ok but answer me honestly why are you on tinder."



When she replied "mostly because I'm bored," Amos said, "I call bs."



She responded, "Lol why."



After two days, she received a response from Amos that said, "cause you're a fucking sand nigger."



Anjali told BuzzFeed News that at first she just laughed at "the stupidity" of the response.



"My initial reaction was, 'This is just a stupid thing to say to anyone and this guy is an idiot,'" she said. "But the more I thought about it, I started blaming myself for a while and asked myself, 'Did I do anything to provoke this kind of response?' I then realized that this guy's words had a greater impact on me than I originally expected."

Anjali said the Hanover area is "very racially divided."

"Six- and seven-year-olds have called me and my other Indian friends the n-word," she said. "That's the kind of environment we're in. But one would have expected a lot more from a kid who goes to Northwestern. You would expect them to be more educated and tolerant."



Amos refused to talk to BuzzFeed News, but in a statement to the Daily Northwestern, he denied sending the message in question.

"I am not a racist person," he said. "I am sorry for anyone who has been affected by this incident, and I do not condone the language used."



The incident came to light after Anjali's friend, Devon Kurtz, posted the entire exchange on Twitter on June 23, calling it "disgusting."

