Jarred at Yosemite National Park.

1/1/2017: As more people have read this and given me feedback, I wanted to clarify that I am not trying to claim that Jarred Ha was assaulted or mistreated primarily because of his race. The reason that this article focuses on race is because it was written for one of my classes as Cornell University, because I saw parallels between Jarred Ha’s case and that of Vincent Chin. Fewer people have been reading the article to the end, and I wanted to stress that the conclusion of the article is more of a call-to-arms against the University of Washington administration and King County Prosecutor’s Office than anything else.

Preface: Jarred Ha is a Bellevue resident and junior at the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business. He has received considerable backlash for events following his part in a dispute that turned violent. This article will cover some of my own views on the case, as well as some of our discussion on Asian American issues. I hope to clear up some of the misconceptions surrounding the case, which have caused considerable poorly based defamatory attacks against Jarred. I also wish to give a voice to Jarred as an Asian American, and urge readers to think about his case in the greater American societal context of the Asian American Middle Class and Asian Pacific American issues in general.

Jarred’s Background

The University of Washington Paccar Hall, the Foster School of Business — Jarred is currently a student here, being readmitted after suspension three months after he was found to have acted in self defense.

Jarred Ha is a Renton-born American who moved to Bellevue at a young age. He went to Issaquah Middle School and later to Issaquah High School. From a young age, he knew he wanted to go to the University of Washington and he worked hard to get into the competitive Foster School of Business to study accounting. While talking to Jarred, he explained that “The way that the school works, you attend the University of Washington for two years of undergraduate studies then apply for admission to the Foster School.”

The Case

Note: While I will stylize to emphasize throughout the article, this is the most important section to read carefully. It outlines the details of the case as confirmed by unbiased witnesses: details which led to Jarred’s acquittal and finding that he acted in self defense against instigation from five individuals who were underage drinking.

In explaining the case, I will be explaining it as best I can to follow the findings of the court trial. These events were confirmed by various unbiased witnesses and are the basis of Jarred’s later acquittal. Jarred, a junior at the time, lived in an apartment with three other friends. One of them owned a car and had a parking spot in the apartment complex. There were three spots total, and a few weeks in one of the tenants stopped parking in their spot. This meant that there was a free spot, which was incredibly useful considering the parking situation in the area (and Seattle, an urban city, in general). However, one of the other tenants started regularly double parking. One day, the landlord visited and ended up having to park in his roommate’s spot- leading her to have trouble parking. They asked her multiple times to stop double parking, but she continued to do so.

On January 25th, 2015, Jarred Ha was celebrating a friend’s 21st birthday. He ended up running into the other tenant (walking with some of her friends, 4 of them were rugby players) at a party while waiting to make sure one of his friends had gotten home safely, and she made a snide remark to him about how she was double parking- something that had been regularly inconveniencing his roommates. Jarred tried to explain to her how it was unfair to him and his roommates, and she and her friends started attacking him. Jarred tried to escape the attack, but they pursued him while verbally harassing him. He managed to get away.

While walking home from the incident, Graham Harper, a white, National Guardsman in Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, happened upon the women who had attacked Jarred and was pointed in the direction that Jarred went to escape the women who were attacking him. Harper ran in Jarred’s direction and started attacking him, leading Jarred to get a concussion after being repeatedly slammed into cars. Jarred’s father was concerned about his safety when he started at the University of Washington, so he made sure that Jarred had some self-defense tool when he started college- a knife. Jarred, only after this initial attack, tried to show Harper the knife to mitigate the conflict; Harper continued to go after Jarred, so Jarred used the knife in self-defense. Jarred told me “Out of the blue, a huge, ripped Caucasian guy running after me in an American flag tank top. He was running up to me- I didn’t realize he was talking to me; I couldn’t believe it. Without saying anything, he just starts hitting me. I tried to block the hits and hit back, but nothing fazed him. All of a sudden, I get picked up and thrown, and I just remember the sound of metal crunching under me. He threw me into a car. That’s the moment when I feared for my life. I just wanted to go home. I just thought “all I want to do is go home. I just want to go home”. That’s when I get back to my feet and I took the knife out of my pocket to try to pacify the situation but he tried to attack me again and so used it. I just tried to move it in his general direction, and I had tried to escape earlier in the conflict but was unable to do so, but only after using the knife did he stop pursuing me and I was able to run home.” Other than Jarred, all individuals involved were drinking while underage.

“Out of the blue, a huge, ripped Caucasian guy running after me in an American flag tank top. He was running up to me- I didn’t realize he was talking to me; I couldn’t believe it. Without saying anything, he just starts hitting me. I tried to block the hits and hit back, but nothing fazed him. All of a sudden, I get picked up and thrown, and I just remember the sound of metal crunching under me. He threw me into a car. That’s the moment when I feared for my life. I just wanted to go home. I just thought “all I want to do is go home. I just want to go home”. That’s when I get back to my feet and I took the knife out of my pocket to try to pacify the situation but he tried to attack me again and so used it. I just tried to move it in his general direction, and I had tried to escape earlier in the conflict but was unable to do so, but only after using the knife did he stop pursuing me and I was able to run home.”

Jarred was arrested shortly after. Harper had called an ambulance and the police, and the King County Prosecutor’s office sided with Harper. They offered him horrible plea deals, cost his family tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and kept him on parole for a year. The University of Washington also chose to suspend him, citing assault on another student. Jarred was acquitted by a jury following a court case; the jury found that Jarred had acted in self defense and ordered the court to repay his fees. Jarred still lost a year of his life, being stuck on parole and suspended from school. Jarred was only recently readmitted to the University of Washington, and Graham Harper is now trying to sue Jarred in a civil suit for his medical fees- even after the jury found Jarred to have acted in self defense against Harper.

You can find an analysis of Jarred and Harper’s testimonies with more sources here.

Jarred Ha and his father after Jarred’s acquittal.

Knife Bias

I grew up in Bellevue just as Jarred did, so I knew that a large portion of college aged people that I knew carry knives on a regular basis due to necessity for outdoor activities such as camping. The media had focused on the fact that Jarred had a knife, and he told me that the prosecutor had as well, which I found extremely unfair considering how normal it is in the Pacific Northwest to carry a knife. I brought this up with Jarred, and he agreed. He told me “There was a knife bias that came into play with the prosecution (more so than the media), even though the prosecution knew that there were unbiased witnesses who proved that I was acting in self defense, the prosecution still tried to push on the fact that I had a knife at all- but you can’t show a concussion and I think that they just went after me because I had a weapon. However, most people, myself included, view knives as tools first and weapons second: they were just really hung up on the knife.”

The official crest of the Malaysian Pasukan Gerakhan Khas, i.e., the Special Forces of the Federal Police. The crest features karambit knives.

The knife in question happened to be a Karambit. The prosecution tried to emphasize how scary it looked, but the Karambit is actually an Asian style of knife that is one of the most defensive types of knives out there- the ring at the base allows the holder to avoid dropping it while being hit. It baffles me that anyone would blame him for using a tool in self-defense when his life was threatened by someone he did not know, for reasons unknown, who had just ran after him and attacked him out of the blue. Ultimately, it seems that the prosecution treated Jarred unfairly due to his having a knife, considering the regional norms of carrying knives and the context of self-defense.

Bellevue, WA

Bellevue can be considered an “Ethnoburb”- a term for a surburban area with a considerable ethnic minority population — around 30% of the population is Asian. On growing up in Bellevue, Jarred told me that “with so many Asians living here, any reasonable person is far more used to meeting monolingual, native English speaking Asian Americans than nonnative speakers- so they will be able to tell if someone was born here due to cultural clues such as what clothes they wear. I do feel that growing up, I most likely privileged from living somewhere that was more accepting towards Asians, and because there’s such a large population of Asians here we don’t see much racial bullying towards us.”

Jarred’s response was surprising to me, considering there are many Asian American issues in modern American society as well as an extensive history of anti-Asian discrimination in America. I did not experience much racial bullying in Bellevue, but I had experienced it occasionally- I have also experienced bias on a far more regular basis living in other countries, and other areas of America. I then decided to discuss some Asian American issues with Jarred.

Growing Up Asian

“My friend group growing up ended up being known as ‘the Asians’ — but it would be kind of messed up if people did the same for a group of African Americans.”

During our interview, Jarred said “my friend group growing up ended up being known as ‘the Asians’ — but it would be kind of messed up if people did the same for a group of African Americans. It might be due to the history of civil rights that some people feel more comfortable generalizing Asians that way, but there’s no real reason that people talk about any race in the ways that they do. For example, no one would say ‘oh, those Dutch international students don’t speak English’ but they do exactly that for Asians. Ultimately though, I don’t feel that I experienced much discrimination in my life due to being Asian- or maybe I’m oblivious to it.”

Jarred (top right) at his acquittal celebration dinner with his friends.

The Media’s Portrayal of the Case

Shortly after the incident, regional news outlets such at Kiro 7 covered it in a very negative light towards Jarred- claiming that Harper was “defending women,” only having interviewed Harper- not Jarred. This one-sided story resulted in immense defamation of Jarred, and he has been struggling to repair his reputation ever since. In fact, Harper has repeatedly gone on record with the media with lies, for example, he claimed in a KIRO 7 interview that he has been present at the initial incident- which was found untrue in the courts. Many opinions of Jarred since have been based off of those initial inaccurate reports, which still have not been updated since he was acquitted after having been found to have acted in self-defense. There should be some accountability for news outlets when reporting issues that could ruin lives, and I must question why they have still not removed videos and articles venerating Harper and villainizing Jarred- and I must question if it’s related to the appeal of a “Yellow-Peril” type article posing an Asian individual as a threat to the normative white college students. In fact, the comments on a recent “UW Daily” article perpetrate these ideas. Members of the public commenting on the article claim that Jarred is at fault regardless of truths (that Jarred was not the instigator at any point, and that he acted in self defense) found by a legal court or the fact that a jury acquitted him. The very basis of the legal system is to give everyone a fair trial and find the truth: but to me it feels that this is being overlooked because Jarred is less relatable to Euromerican people than Harper. They ignore the fact that Jarred is less athletic than any of his attackers and the fact that he was initially attacked by a drunk group of people, and later a drunk individual with military training. Many of them refuse to consider Jarred’s experiences and simply immediately relate to Harper, either on basis of ignorance due to the initial media reports, or due to internal racial biases.

Racial Bias?

While waiting for an ambulance, Graham Harper referred to Jarred as “that fucking chink”.

I asked Jarred of the possibility of a racial bias in both the incident and in his experiences since. He told me of something that came out during the case- a witness report came up during the case showing that Harper had said racial slurs about Jarred while waiting for the ambulance. Furthermore, the prosecution later (and many members of the public since) tried to portray Jarred’s past participation with a Chinese lion dance troupe as some sort of intensive martial arts and violence background. Considering that Harper had instigated the conflict, his racial slurs indicate that his decision to attack Jarred was influenced by race. Jarred stressed that he didn’t believe that Graham was looking to attack a person of color, he did believe that Harper would have been more hesitant to start a conflict had Jarred been a tall, buff, white male like Harper. Ultimately, as minorities, we end up always asking ourselves when and how our race changes our experiences. For Jarred, this could have made the difference between life and death- and at the very least could have been the reason why he had to suffer and lose a year of his life.

Publicly accessible post Graham Harper made on Facebook about a Muslim woman being “sub human”

Regional History: The Pacific Race Riots

I spoke with Jarred about the Pacific Race Riots of 1907, which were a series of anti-Asian riots throughout the west coast, including in Bellingham, WA. The Bellingham riots saw a mob of over 400 white men attack the homes of Asians, pulling them from their homes, beating and robbing them. Many fled to Everett later, and faced similar treatment a few months later. He commented “I don’t think that the protest would have been the same if the immigrants were from other countries, such as Europe” — and he’s right, there were far higher rates of immigration from European countries with many similar issues, and none of them faced the same kinds of widespread lynch mobs.

National History: Vincent Chin

A portrait photo of Vincent Chin held by a loved one after his death.

Ever since I first heard about Jarred’s case, I couldn’t help but think about Vincent Chin. Vincent Chin was a Chinese American who was beaten to death in the Detroit area by white men who chased him down. Both his killers were reported to have yelled racial slurs at him, and ultimately were barely punished- they only saw three years of probation.

I discussed the case with Jarred, who could barely believe how the legal case proceeded. He commented how the attacks victories in court were ridiculous, and how he is incredibly lucky that his jury was more diverse than those in the Vincent Chin cases. Jarred also commented that “Graham just ran in the general direction that the girls pointed and attacked the first Asian guy he saw- he just as easily could have beaten my friend who was with me within an inch of his life. There are definitely some parallels between our cases, but Vincent Chin’s case was definitely a hate crime while I don’t think mine was racially based- but if I were a different person, a different race, he might not have been so willing to attack me.”

“Graham just ran in the general direction that the girls pointed and attacked the first Asian guy he saw- he just as easily could have chosen my friend who was with me to beat within an inch of his life.”

I felt that the parallels were fairly significant; both Harper and Vincent Chin’s murderers were reported to have called their victims by racial slurs. In both cases, the instigators were white men who chased down Asians for minor conflicts, and in both cases the instigators were barely reprimanded.

The Limitations of Justice

My hope with this article and interviewing Jarred Ha was to discuss with him how Asians have historically been oppressed into political passivity. This leads into cases like Jarred’s, where even though he was the victim, he was put on probation and forced to pay tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs. It is unacceptable that a university in one of the most diverse areas of the country with an incredibly diverse student body — not to mention one with an Asian American Studies program — would overlook these facts and just preemptively punish the victim.

Jarred Ha could have been the next Vincent Chin, and yet these institutions chose to prosecute him and continue to protect his attackers. Had Jarred not been Asian, then the University of Washington and the King County Prosecutor’s Office might have been more hesitant to treat him so poorly before knowing the full details of the case. While he has been readmitted to school and found innocent, the wrongs have in no way been righted. I am impressed by Jarred’s strength, and his strong refusal to blame his hardships on racial discrimination throughout this ordeal. Jarred’s resistance to these false charges and harassment from Graham Harper helps to show how Asian Americans have become more empowered since Vincent Chin’s death, even if there are still the same sorts of attempts to oppress them. The University of Washington and the King County Prosecutor’s Office should formally apologize to Jarred immediately, and should reprimand the students who attacked him and caused him so many damages.

The University of Washington and the King County Prosecutor’s Office should formally apologize to Jarred immediately, and should reprimand the students who attacked him and caused him so many damages.