The Fall Guy

The student the School District blamed for the violence at South Philadelphia High School shares his story. It's not the same one District officials have been telling.

by Isaiah Thompson

Evan M. Lopez

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the print edition of this story, City Paper protected the identity of the South Philadelphia High School student ("Guy") at his request, and at the request of his grandmother, Suong Nguyen. However, on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 — after this article went to press — Nguyen chose to use her grandson's name, Hao Luu, in her public testimony before the Philadelphia School Reform Commission.

By now, you've heard the story: On Thursday, Dec. 3, more than 20 Asian students were attacked on their way home from South Philadelphia High School (SPHS) by a mob of as many as 100 of their peers, most of them African-American. The incident — which is still under investigation by the Pennsylvania Human Rights Commission, and is the subject of a complaint Asian-American activists filed with the U.S. Department of Justice — dominated the daily papers' front pages, and drew national, even international, media attention. It was, to be sure, an ugly affair that sent seven students to the hospital, and ultimately led to 19 suspensions and 14 transfers to alternative schools. Earlier that day, security guards had locked down an entire floor of the school to prevent a surge of primarily black students from threatening Asians; in another incident, Asian students were attacked en masse in the lunchroom. After the attacks, Asian students boycotted SPHS for seven days, saying they wouldn't go back until the School District of Philadelphia could guarantee their safety.

For Asian-American community advocates, this racially charged violence represented just the tip of the iceberg, the culmination of years of hostility that Asian SPHS students had faced — a problem, they say, that school officials simply failed to acknowledge.

The School District was slow to respond to the attacks. It took Superintendent Arlene Ackerman six days to comment publicly. And when she did, she had a decidedly different interpretation: "What began as an unwarranted off-campus attack on a disabled African-American student," she told the School Reform Commission on Dec. 9, "quickly escalated into a retaliatory multi-racial attack on primarily Chinese students."

Her implication was clear: The black students were retaliating against an alleged attack that took place the previous day, Dec. 2, on a black student, presumably by an Asian. A month later, Ackerman suggested the fight was "gang-related," and penned an op-ed in The Philadelphia Inquirer to say that preventing school violence was "everyone's problem."

In painting the attacks this way, Ackerman's critics say, the superintendent was glossing over a pattern of neglect and letting school officials off the hook by blaming an endemic, citywide "culture of violence."

Three weeks ago, retired U.S. District Court Judge James T. Giles released a 37-page report — which had been commissioned by the District for $99,553 — that largely echoed Ackerman's take on the situation: Whether the report of an assault on a disabled black student was true or not — the evidence is ambiguous at best — the rumors amplified the wave of violence, Giles told reporters in late February. While his report doesn't mention any violence against Asian students before December 2009, it focuses heavily on the events that took place the day before the infamous Dec. 3 attack, and speculates further that those attacks may have stemmed from "street gang influences." (UPDATE: The day after City Paper broke this story, the School District reversed its initial claim and stated for the record that Hau Luu — "Guy" — is not in a street gang.)

Of course, it wasn't that tidy, nor was it the conclusion. Ackerman may be ready to put this unpleasantness behind her, but neither Asian students nor community activists seem willing to follow suit. On March 14, the Inquirer published the accounts of six Asian students who say that Giles ignored key elements of their stories in compiling his report. (Giles insisted to the Inquirer that his report was balanced. He said he focused on Dec. 2 and Dec. 3 because that was all his budget allowed.)

Also, critics say, Ackerman and school officials relied on a thinly sourced narrative that dwelled on the supposed actions of a single Vietnamese student. That student, it turns out, was among those suspended from South Philly High. He was identified in the Giles report as a possible instigator of the Dec. 2 violence that supposedly led up to the Dec. 3 mêlée. Though never mentioned by name, this student, who speaks little English, became part of a convenient narrative for a District that wanted to paint these events as being less about the long-standing victimization of a targeted ethnic minority than the result of a feud gone haywire. After all, with the latter explanation, school officials couldn't be blamed for ignoring the powder keg that was about to blow.

But that Vietnamese student has his own story to tell — and so far, it's one that hasn't been told, because neither Giles, the police nor any school official has ever bothered to ask him what happened. He denies being in a gang. He says that on Wed., Dec. 2, he was the victim, not the aggressor, in a beating that left him bruised and vomiting — and contrary to both Ackerman's assertion and the school's rumor mill, that incident had nothing to do with any disabled student. He says that he and his family shared his story with school officials not once, but twice, but they weren't interested in what he had to say.

Instead, he was suspended and ultimately pushed out of SPHS. His Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF) attorney, Cecilia Chen — who also represents, separately, other Asian SPHS students in the complaint filed with the Justice Department — says the District used the teenager's alleged misdeeds to absolve itself of charges of "deliberate indifference" and "intentional disregard for the welfare of Asian students."

This student recently spoke to a City Paper reporter, on the condition that his name be withheld. So, we'll just call him "Guy" — as in, perhaps, the fall guy, for a school's troubled reputation.

Neal Santos TEACH THE CHILDREN WELL: Murals depicting African-American and Asian students (top and bottom, respectively) are displayed outside South Philadelphia High School, the site of racially charged violence.

Guy came to the United States from Vietnam with his parents a year and a half ago. They were brought over by Guy's grandmother, Suong Nguyen, 65, a member of the Vietnamese diaspora known as Viet Kieu — many of whom left North Vietnam as refugees after the fall of Saigon. Nguyen fled the country stowed in a boat piloted by her husband, and eventually made her way to Orlando, Fla., where she worked assembling electronic parts for eight years before relocating to Northern Virginia, where she spent another eight years working at Dulles International Airport, preparing airline meals.

Nguyen retired last year, the same year her husband passed away. Last fall, the reunited family moved to South Philadelphia, into a modest house near Broad Street. In September, Guy, a soft-spoken, lanky 17-year-old, began attending South Philadelphia High School, just a few blocks from his house. Guy liked the school. The teachers were good, the bilingual counselors and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) instructors were helpful, and he made friends quickly, mostly among Vietnamese students who, like him, were immigrants and spoke limited English.

But there was one problem, Guy says: He and his friends got picked on, a lot — mostly by African-American students.

This isn't a new problem. Since 2008, AALDEF has documented at least 28 incidents in which Asian-American students were attacked, threatened or harassed by other students at SPHS, including robberies, assaults, racial slurs and episodes ominously reminiscent of the Dec. 3 eruption.

"These kids would yell at us, but I'm not sure what they said," Guy says through an interpreter provided by Boat People SOS, an organization that assists refugee families. "They would laugh really loud in front of us. When I walked by in the hallways, sometimes they'd put out their leg and try to trip me."

It wasn't just him and his friends: Many of the students of Asian descent, who constitute 18 percent of the school's population, were targets. (That many of these attacks came at the hands of black students is likely the product of simple demography: 70 percent of the student body is black.) Guy says he and his friends tried to ignore the taunting and keep a low profile, a tactic that many immigrant students' parents and school officials encouraged.

"They usually say to the kids, and I myself say to my grandson ... just try to not find any trouble," says Nguyen, also through the interpreter. "Ignore the teasing, your English isn't good, if they say stuff to you, you don't even know what they're saying, so just lay low."

And that's what they did, Guy says. Most of the time, the bullying stopped at teasing. But not on Dec. 2, 2009.

As Guy tells the story, that afternoon he was walking down a hallway on SPHS's fourth floor with some friends, listening to music on his headphones, when the trouble started. A black male student plucked out his ear bud and said something to him. He couldn't tell what, so he kept walking. By the time he reached the end of the hallway, the black student and his friends were following them. Guy and a friend, "V," headed down the stairs to the second floor — pursued, they say, by a growing crowd of black students.

A school police officer intervened and separated the two groups. The officer handcuffed and detained both the black male who Guy says harassed him and another black student who, according to a police report, displayed "extra aggressive behavior." Those two students were taken to the school's police office. Guy and his friends went to class. They were never questioned.

Guy says that, on their own, he and V filed written statements about the incident with the school's security office.

After school, things got worse. Guy and five friends were just leaving the campus, on Broad Street at Snyder Avenue, when they saw a group of more than 10 students, mostly black and both male and female, running across the street, directly toward them. Some of the kids, Guy says, were the same ones who had chased him earlier that day.

"They started taking off their backpacks, like they were getting ready to fight," he says. "They surrounded us, and they started beating us."

One of Guy's friends managed to escape; Guy wasn't so fortunate. When he made his break, he lost his shoe. As he reached down to grab it, he was punched in the head from behind. He says he swung his shoe blindly, connecting with someone, he thinks — though he's not sure. He tried to flee again, only to be overtaken by another, smaller group of assailants. He was punched in the head again, and after he fell forward, he says, four males pummeled him with their fists. They did not stop until an employee of a nearby Walgreens chased the attackers away. Guy limped home with the help of his friends. Along the way, he threw up. By the time he got home, the side of his face was badly bruised.

His story is largely supported by testimony included in Giles' report — but only as one possible version of what happened. In another iteration, which is also described in that report, Guy is alleged to have confronted the African-American student in the hallway and been among the Vietnamese aggressors who "jumped" a "crippled/disabled African-American student." He is also alleged to have been part of a street gang.

Ackerman picked up the latter version and ran with it, and the idea of the Vietnamese instigators who beat up a disabled black student the day before the Dec. 3 chaos became the de facto official story. (She and other school officials declined to be interviewed for this story.)

Calling the evidence that supports this theory of the events of Dec. 2 "flimsy" would be generous. The notion of Guy-as-instigator, according to Giles' report, is largely based on a single incident report filed that day by school police officers. Although Giles' report says that both the black and Asian students involved in that incident were interviewed, the officers' incident report contains only interviews with the two African-American males who were detained that afternoon. Guy says the school police never spoke to him or his friends.

According to that incident report, one of the black students told school police that Guy had "bumped" him, and said "something smart." It describes the incident as a "fight," although Giles' report says the police officers saw no punches thrown. The contradictory version Guy and V gave in statements to the school security office that day are not included in this document. In his report, Giles says, "None of the Asian students reported any fear or concern for their safety," even though they say they did.

The basis for these accounts, according to Giles' report, are "hearsay statements," none of which were taken from the students involved. Giles never interviewed any of the school's African-American students, nor did he speak with Guy or the other Asian students who claimed they were attacked the afternoon of Dec. 2.

"I did not do an interview of students," Giles tells City Paper, citing concerns over students' due process in disciplinary hearings. "I looked at incident reports."

Neal Santos BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS: Since Dec.3, the police have beefed up their presence around South Philadelphia High School.

On the morning of Dec. 3, with the help of a bilingual translator, Guy's grandmother filed a report to SPHS on the attack on her grandson. "Just tell your grandson not to cause any trouble with those kids," Nguyen says the counselor told her. "I said, 'My grandson hadn't caused any trouble, he had been attacked.'"

Nguyen wanted action taken: inquiries, discipline, something. But neither she nor Guy nor — as far as they know — any of his friends who witnessed the attack were ever contacted by school officials. The school did take one action, though: On Dec. 3, Guy was suspended for 10 days for "disrupting school" — though neither Guy nor his grandmother would know of the suspension for another two weeks.

The next day, the school's Asian students did something completely unprecedented: They boycotted the school and refused to return until school officials could guarantee their safety. Guy, still unaware of his suspension, joined them."We all felt that we were victims, and we were in it together," he says. "I thought that I was like all the other kids, and that I was going back to school."

That same day, Dec. 4, the day the violence grabbed headlines, District Regional Superintendent Michael Silverman announced that 10 students, four of whom were Asian — including Guy, who stayed home from school Dec. 3 — had been suspended. That detail lent credence to the narrative of a two-way racial feud, rather than the victimization of one race of students by another.

It was only after the boycott ended on Dec. 16, when Guy tried to return to class and a school official told him to leave, that he learned of his punishment. And it was only that day, after he returned home, that Guy and his family found a suspension notice in the mail. (The notice was dated Dec. 3, but was postmarked Dec. 16.) That notice informed Guy that he could argue his innocence at a Dec. 9 hearing, which, obviously, he'd already missed.

Documents obtained by City Paper suggest that Guy's suspension resulted from the police incident report — which, again, was based solely on the statements of the two black males who had the run-in with Guy on Dec. 2.

Guy and his family were upset. But, it was only a 10-day suspension, and Guy returned to school two days later prepared to resume his studies. That evening, however, his family discovered another piece of mail, a notice for a "disciplinary transfer hearing."

The School District wanted to expel Guy from SPHS.

Even as Guy's transfer hearing was pending, school officials again emphasized publicly that Asian, as well as black, students were being punished for the Dec. 3 violence. For anyone hoping to smooth the ugly racial edge to the attacks, Guy had become a valuable statistic.

"They were looking for a scapegoat," says Helen Gym, a board member of Asian Americans United, an advocacy group. "And they were willing to go to any length, including potentially ruining this young man's life, to do it."

Guy appealed his transfer, and when District officials failed to show at the hearing, the transfer was overturned. But the District, it seems, was adamant: On Feb. 2, Regional Superintendent Silverman authorized and SPHS principal LeGreta Brown signed a "transfer request," which meant that Guy would be booted from SPHS and into an alternative school without ever getting the chance to confront his accuser.

"There was no opportunity [for the Asian students who were disciplined] to tell their side of the story before they were disciplined," says Cecilia Chen, Guy's attorney. "There was no effort on the part of the school to investigate what happened."

At one point during this process, Chen says, a School District attorney told her that Guy would, in fact, be allowed back. But the next day, the attorney called Chen again and said the District had received word that Guy was a "gang member," and that he would not be safe at SPHS. That implication outraged his family: "[Guy] was beaten by students after school. Then he was suspended, and then he was told he could not go to the school anymore. And now I am told you believe he is in a gang," his grandmother wrote in a Feb. 5 letter to District officials. "If you say that he is in a gang, where's your proof? ... You have not spoken to my grandson. ... I cannot believe that a school in this country would treat my family this way."

In a March 12 statement, the School District tells City Paper that Guy is, in fact, welcome at South Philadelphia High School: "The school delayed his return due to the need to fully investigate information the school received from a community partner regarding the safety of the student and the overall climate of the school. This student is now permitted to return; however, the student decided not to return to District-managed school."

Indeed, on Feb. 4, the District rescinded Guy's transfer. But by then, his family had had enough: They enrolled him in a private Christian school.

The District, meanwhile, maintains that its disciplinary process was fair: "The school and the District followed the required procedures throughout the disciplinary process. The District's investigative and appeal processes provided students and their families with the opportunity to question the disciplinary actions taken by the school."

Of course, that's of little consolation to Guy, who — if you believe his version of events — was taunted and beaten by fellow classmates, had his pleas for help ignored, was punished by the very school officials who were supposed to protect him, and, his lawyers say, was used as a pawn in the District's PR battle.

The District may say he can come back to SPHS, but, it seems, he feels less than welcome.

(isaiah.thompson@citypaper.net)