Following a bias-based assault on a Sikh student at Richmond Hill High School last week, the Sikh community is demanding that the Department of Education take action to protect Sikh students from hate crimes.“Fed up. That is the only way I can describe how we feel,” said Amardeep Singh, executive director of the Sikh Coalition, which identified Richmond Hill High School a “problem” school for Sikh children last year.
Jagmohan Singh Premi, an 18-year-old ninth grader at the high school, was allegedly punched in the face last Tuesday, June 4, by a student who attempted to forcibly remove his patka (a small turban worn by Sikh youths).
This is the second such incident in a year. In May 2007 at Newtown High School, 19-year-old Umair Ahmed dragged Harpal Vacher, 16, into a school bathroom, ripped off his turban and cut off his waist-length hair — a violation of Sikh religion.
Ahmed was convicted last Thursday, but did not receive jail time. Instead, he will perform community service for one year and write an essay for the judge.
“I am sad this is happening in America,” said Premi, who moved to the United States two years ago and speaks very little English, at a press conference last week. “I want to go to school to learn.”
Premi suffered an orbital fracture and facial contusion as a result of the attack, which took place in the classroom with the teacher present, according to Singh.
Premi’s tormentor, who has a history of harassing him by pulling on his beard and squeezing his jurdha (the knot of hair covered by the patka), is said to have untied Premi’s patka and, as Premi attempted to secure it, punched him in the face with a key between his knuckles.
Although this behavior was frequently reported to teachers, no corrective action was taken, according to Singh. The student was suspended earlier this year after attempting to remove Premi’s patka, but the harassment continued when he returned to school.
Since July 2007, the Sikh Coalition has been meeting with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein and his staff every two months to discuss the problems facing Sikhs at Richmond Hill High School and other schools throughout the city, Singh said. So far, “there wasn’t enough movement on the ground to stop this from happening.”
At their most recent meeting last month, the Department of Education said it offered diversity training — part of its “Respect For All” initiative — to Richmond Hill High School’s administration, which declined it, saying it had already had enough such training.
The Sikh Coalition has offered such training, free of charge, to a number of schools throughout the city, none of which has accepted so far. “It’s extremely frustrating” for the Sikh community, Singh said.
The real problem is systemic, he added. The DOE doesn’t specify any crime or offense within the disciplinary code for bias-related bullying or harassment. This means the DOE cannot track how many of these offenses are taking place in each school, which means it cannot identify problem schools, which in turn means nothing is being done to address ongoing issues.
Officials from the DOE said the agency does track bias-related incidents, but is currently enhancing its data systems to track these incidents with greater accuracy. By September, it expects to track these issues comprehensively regardless of the nature of the incident.
The Sikh Coalition took it upon itself to conduct a study, which found that more than 60 percent of Sikh students suffered bias-related harassment or violence in city schools. It also worked with a number of advocacy organizations and presented the chancellor with a model regulation that would create a system for defining, tracking and addressing biased-based harassment and problem schools.
Things are slowly reaching a boiling point for the Sikh community, which believes there are only so many times it can keep raising the issue before taking action on its own.
“We’re doing what the DOE should be doing itself,” Singh said. “It’s ludicrous. ... Our community is frustrated enough that if something like this happens again, we’re not gonna be doing press conferences anymore, we’re gonna be protesting and were gonna be out on the streets.”
Advocates are skeptical about Klein’s promise, which Singh said was made under “duress” at Friday’s press conference, to employ a regulation such as that the Sikh Coalition presented before him. “I won’t tolerate any harassment based on race, religion or gender in our schools,” Klein said during the conference.
“(A)ddressing and preventing bias crimes in school is a priority,” he added, which is why the DOE is drafting the new chancellor’s regulation that incorporates the Sikh Coalition recommendations.
Additionally, the department will distribute to all middle and high school students an anti-bias brochure defining harassment, advising students of their rights and outlining appropriate actions in response to harassment.
“While we’re happy the DOE is saying that they’re moving on the issues that we’ve raised with them ... they haven’t shared with us any drafts of the regulation,” Singh said. “It’s a shame that there’s no transparency to the process at all.”
