Asia Blog: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam

Danwei points out an interesting bit of plagiarism by Xinhua news, which published an article called “Sexy American teachers make students concentrate” based on a Weekly World News (Sketchy Tabloid) story titled “School orders teachers to dress sexy“!

Strangely, the picture they publish is even more scandalous than the original article. I suppose Xinhua wants to make Americans out as sex-crazed animals, even in their institutions of elementary learning. Come on–kids don’t need sex in their school.

And … if anyone going to make up a story, please do not use a completely disreputable source like WWN.

The New York Post carries a disturbing story about a Princeton PhD math candidate named Michael Lohman who spent the greater part of three years sexually harassing Asian women on campus. Although married, he terrorized more 50 Asian women by (among other things) clipping snippets of their hair which he stuffed into his mittens.

For three years, the married grad student quietly terrorized Asian women on campus by clipping snippets of their hair, spraying them with urine and pouring semen or urine in their drinks at university dining halls, cops say.

Lohman also had lingerie and other clothing believed stolen from women around campus, McManimon said. Cops say they can link Lohman to 50 incidents involving Asian women. Police began getting bizarre complaints involving Asian women soon after Lohman, a Ph.D. candidate, arrived at Princeton in the fall of 2002.

Not only is this extremely bizarre, it’s sadly a rash of crimes comitted against a specific minority group. This is yet another reason to work against popular American stereotypes of the “exotic Asian woman,” and stereotype in general. At Cornell I don’t see a lot of race-related incidents, but if it can happen in Princeton, it can happen in your hometown too.

chronicle.com/temp/email.php?id=wtvliaupi53925368fteve1ddzeo3q42

Here is an article that talks about the difficulties an international TA would face due to language barrier, cultural barrier etc. It also talks about a 0.2 drop in GPA for students taught by an international TA. So what to do. Cornell has a program called International TA Development Program. I work for it, and I think they do a great job of introducing international TAs to American culture, helping them with pronounciation and intonation. I also think ITADP is better than the “crash courses” other universities in the article implement because it runs all year long. TAs take classes, meet with language partners and are regularly evaluated during the year.

I think we(undergraduates) forget sometimes that graduate students who come to Cornell are very very smart. Their English is not an indication of their intelligence. If you read the article, you will see that trying to listen just a little bit harder to your TA who may be lost in this American culture might do some great things for your GPA, and you might even end up being friends with someone from another culture.