Students, Staff, and Faculty Respond to the Homicides in Atlanta

As invested listeners and staff writers, we felt that it was important to use this space as a platform to highlight the voices of Asians and Asian Americans in the Covenant College community who felt comfortable sharing their perspectives on the Atlanta shootings. This article is produced from a series of interviews with students, staff, and faculty who share rich insights from their personal experiences. We also interviewed Associate Dean of Students Nesha Evans to discuss the anti-discrimination policies in place at Covenant College. We'll start there.

We talked with Evans to learn about the policies and resources in place for students, staff and faculty who experience discrimination in the Covenant community, whether or not that discrimination is race-based.

The Student Handbook 2020-2021 iterates that the aim of a policy to respond to discrimination is twofold: peacemaking and reconciliation (pp. 15-16). This is part of the rationale for Covenant's grievance process.  Members of the Covenant community who experience discrimination have the right to file a grievance, which is an official means by which the community member can share about their experience and seek outside help from others. College officials to whom a grievance is submitted are required to address the grievance. The grievance forms can be found at scots.covenant.edu.

These are the questions that we asked, and below each question are a few of the responses that our interviewees gave.

What is your experience like as an Asian or Asian American at Covenant College? More broadly in majority white contexts?

John Bae ’21: "It's very exposing in a way."

Gracya Rudiman '22, Indonesian: "Before I came, I didn't realize how impactful it was [to be a minority in a majority white context], socially and culturally."

Rachel (Jiaxing) Caine '21, Chinese: "I would say my overall experience is very good. I have not really experienced any racist situations at Covenant. Everyone has been very kind to me, especially professors."

Dr. Jiewon Baek, South Korean: "There's just this constant awareness, and cognizance of racial difference is something that I carry with me all the time because it's so rare that I am in a context in which I'm not the minority." 

Dr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt, Japanese American: "Because I'm biracial, my body is often seen as a puzzle to be solved… Curiosity is always a good attitude to have… rather than giving people a prepackaged narrative… My experience at Covenant largely has been so good… I am really grateful for all of the ways my colleagues and the administration have listened to me and supported me."

How have the recent homicides in Atlanta made you feel? Generally, what is your perspective on the recent homicides in Atlanta?

Janet Jian '23, Chinese: "I felt very hurt at first and did not know how to process the news… Am I going to be the next victim because of the way I look?"

Bae: "My initial response was this is not the first time a shooting has happened in the sauna, so I'm not going to think about it… It didn't hit me until later… The public baths have always been defiled. In Korea and Japan public baths are very sacred. That is the one place that you don't get sexualized. That is the one place you get to go and be a human being… It is appalling that this man would murder these women in the one safe space they may have had."

Caine: "It's like a second wave of Black Lives Matter, just Asian Lives Matter… It makes my heart ache… Nobody can choose what race they are, where they're born, what they look like, and there's no reason for people to be killed for something they cannot choose."

Professor Lok Kim, Korean American: "This homicide case is unique. I thought this would be big news in Korea, but the response in Korea was quiet and passive…Because the victims work in an illegal space, Korea did not treat them as importantly."

Baek: "I think anger was the worst feeling the week after Tuesday night when I read the news… The perspectives that I heard were the ones that either completely dismissed or that keep debating whether or not racial bias was involved...but a more helpful approach would be to see that these women were mothers and grandmothers who came and were living in a foreign country, working, working to make a living, to care for her children…to be able to subsist in this country."

Weichbrodt: "They've made me feel really sad…It was the connection to evangelical Christianity that was the most unsettling to me."

When you first heard about the homicides in Atlanta, did you understand this to be a racially-motivated incident?

Caine: "I tried not to think of this as a racist act…Thinking of it as such a racist act hurts my heart.

Kim: "My initial response was not that this was anti-Asian homicide."

What are you seeing on social media about the homicides in Atlanta?

Baek: "It's almost like we have...a lack of vocabulary to talk about it, or to respond…There's just a need for new vocabulary to be able to talk about anti-Asian crime."

Weichbrodt: "I've seen a lot of cautions about assuming that this was racially motivated… I also saw a really generous outpouring from the African American community…saying, 'You are seen. We are praying for you.'"

What have you seen as common responses to the homicides among AAPIs (could be experiences, emotions, stories)? Which of these responses resonate with you. 

Jian: "I think I do feel invisible as a minority, and I am uncertain what I can do about my situation to be honest."

Rudiman: "It is draining to talk about it...Sometimes I feel like people don't see beyond my race…"

Weichbrodt: "Everyone, of course, decries an act of violence as wrong…A lot of the responses were a sort of delayed grief…or silence."

What Scripture is comforting to you in the midst of this tragedy?

Caine: "First and Second Corinthians, since they're both about love. That's very comforting to me. Every time I feel low, those are the books I go to. They help me remember that God loves me and encourages me to love other people."

Kim: "Galatians 3:28: 'There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.'"

Baek: "Ephesians 2, where it talks about reconciliation bringing two people together who were once apart from God… and Psalm 13, such a helpful tool in terms of what a faithful response looks like…It ends on choosing to trust him."

Weichbrodt: "I have been meditating a lot on Psalm 84, which begins, 'How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul longs, even faints, for the courts of the Lord.' There is this sense that we belong in the presence of God…I also love the part in the middle about passing through the Valley of Weeping and making it a place of springs…praying that my valley of weeping would become a place of springs for others…It ends with 'God does not withhold any good things from those whose walk is blameless.'"

What is your perspective on the response of your local church to these incidents?

Kim: "My church's response was to counsel us to be careful when going out as you may be a target. Always be accompanied by someone…The church of the shooter canceled his membership, saying, 'We cannot believe he is truly a regenerate person, so we will cancel his membership.' That's the real deal. They take it very seriously."

Baek: "There were people who reached out from my small group, but the local church as a whole, I would say the response was extremely disappointing because there was no response. And, yeah, the Sundays following the shooting, even after it was all over the media there was just no mention of it in the services, which was heartbreaking."

What does action, or change, look like in the church right now? 

Bae: "I want the church to say it like it is: 'This act of violence has occurred against women and against the Asian community.' We need to address this problem. We need to talk about this."

Rudiman: "The church needs to address purity culture, particularly the blame that is shifted to women."

Kim: "Can we actually be freed from discriminating? No! We are all sinners. Sinfulness is our nature. Rather than putting the responsibility on the majority or on the ones who do the discriminating, we need to actually kneel before God and be honest…If we educate people well as to what the Bible teaches us, I think discrimination cannot stand.” 

Baek: “The local church is an expression of the global church. If we are to be faithful and kingdom-minded, it means that we are mindful of the global church and care about racial division and care about fighting for reconciliation, even if we have done nothing personally wrong."

Weichbrodt: "For all of the support that I have received, there is still a sense that some folks don't know what to say, so they opt for silence instead…I have learned to say that this has been hurting me, and I need you to bear witness to that."

What does a faithful response look like for Covenant?

Bae: "Go to your friends. Ask questions. Be thoughtful in the way that you ask. You can always ask them. If they are willing to share, then ask away...Don't be afraid to ask. The worst we can say is no."

Rudiman: "Educating yourself is important. Learn what a model minority is. Learn about the history of these issues. Read Asian and Asian American authors…Have more diverse speakers come."

Kim: "We have to say that we are equal."

Baek: "I think one thing that we have to challenge ourselves to do is just to stop being afraid, and stop drawing lines where none exist as if we were the ones to judge…Oftentimes, we're afraid of change, or we're afraid of action or of engaging with these sorts of conversations…because we think we need to protect ourselves from corruption or we're not willing to let go of the power that we have or to let go of what we're familiar with. And sometimes I just want to ask, Do we really believe in God or do we just believe in ourselves? Do we not believe that God is in the work of building up his church?"

Toward the end of our interview, Evans shared that there are many resources for students seeking encouragement in painful circumstances and for those who want to be articulate on difficult societal issues. Multicultural Program (MCP) leaders are available in their office in the mailroom to join in celebration, appreciation and awareness of kingdom diversity. In 2021-2022, conversations on culture and race will continue. Students, staff and faculty may also attend diversity cafe, or "Dicaf," hosted by the MCP, to meet students and learn about each other's stories. 

Demonstrated in part through these resources, Evans said that her "sincerest hope is that our entire campus feels invited to be a part of what it means to be a biblically diverse and inclusive community."