The recently and widely publicized racial epithet levied at USC’s student body president, Rini Sampath, by a fellow student has brought racism once more to the fore of student discussions. Ms. Sampath’s experience, sadly, is not an isolated incident. Just a week prior to her reported racial abuse, individuals in a pickup truck yelled racial slurs at Mizzou’s student body president, Payton Head. That these incidents occurred at or near institutions of higher learning is galling. The brutish ignorance displayed by Ms. Sampath’s and Mr. Head’s aggressors, within or a few miles from campus, raises important questions about the role that universities should play in creating a safe haven for students that extends beyond the immediate vicinity of professional schools and libraries. 

The travails of Ms. Sampath and Mr. Head resonated too close to home: Barely 48 hours before Ms. Sampath’s story had trended in social and national media outlets, a classmate and I were racially abused at a popular bar barely a mile from Stanford’s campus. We are foreign graduate students: I am African, and she is Asian. The two of us can sympathize with Ms. Sampath’s reported statement that she remains in a “state of shock.” We have yet to stray too far from campus since the incident, which has led us to question just how safe and open Palo Alto is to the many foreigners that live or work nearby.

The bar in question, a popular destination among Stanford University students and alumni, thanks in no small part to its free peanuts, is a self-described “divey local bar” that does not pretend to care much for customer satisfaction. A quick read of TripAdvisor and Yelp reviews for the bar reveals prior dissatisfaction with the “extremely rude” bar staff and overall “terrible service.” More worrying are the Google reviews warning prospective patrons of encounters with a “racist drunk” bartender. I had the misfortune of confirming the veracity of all these negative reviews on a Friday night a few weeks ago.

I can only speculate as to whether the bartender on duty was drunk at the time. Her movements were labored and her speech patterns slurred. She scrawled a barely legible amount for me to settle. As it turned out, I misread the amount — as $14.50 instead of $34.50.

“You better pay up or else,” she said. Somewhat stung by her demeanor, I settled the difference, adding a tip for good measure. I then explained to her that her writing could have been clearer — or indeed computerized. “No,” she bellowed. “Your kind always underpays.” As if to remove any lingering ambiguities, she followed up with: “Why don’t you go back to Afghanistan?” This was met with worryingly raucous cheers and applause by bar patrons. Sensing that something was wrong, my classmate intervened to protest the bartender’s tone and demeanor. She was met with a terse: “Bitch, go back to Africa.” To add insult to injury, we were then invited to leave by waitstaff after patrons became more menacing towards our party.

There was no manager on duty that night (or indeed throughout the weekend). When we finally reached the bar’s owner by telephone a few days later, we gave him a blow-by-blow account of our sordid encounter with his racist staff. We expected an apology and a promise to discipline the staff involved. Instead, and after a bout of laughter that lasted some 15 minutes after reaching the bartender’s apparent “Africa” punchline, he suggested that, to the extent his staff had racially abused us, “she probably had good reason to.” “Stanford University students,” he continued, “are our worst customers, as they are rude and cheap.” To the extent that we as individuals, or Stanford students as a collective, were dissatisfied with his bar, he invited us to take our patronage elsewhere.

My classmate and I reported this incident to some student associations in the hope that they would encourage students to steer clear of the bar in question. Sadly, the reactions we have received have been lukewarm. While these associations have been quick to express shock and outrage at the abuse we suffered, the consensus seems to be that any boycott of the bar will cause more harm to the Stanford community than good, as students stand to be deprived of a fount of cheap beer and snacks.

If the lure of free peanuts at faux local dive bars is indeed too strong to avoid for us fiscally-challenged scholars, I would urge my fellow students — of all colors — to be wary of the hostile environment they may encounter at some local bars. This great nation is rightly celebrated across the world for the great strides that it has made in redressing past racial transgressions. It is thus truly anachronistic that the racial proclivities of a bartender should be tolerated and sanctioned in this era of instant social media and heightened national scrutiny over even the most local of controversies.

Ravi Soopramanien