In response to the Lunar New year shooting tragedy in California, some Northeastern students share their concerns about the incident and their place in America: 

Kai Jin-Doran, a second year neuroscience major, believes that as much as the community has had the strength and courage to come together after the shooting and support the families, she feels it is unacceptable that they keep happening like that. She hopes that this time they can make change and help to heal one another.

Jin-Doran said,“I feel like there needs to be a larger kind of systemic action on the part of government officials.California does have laws regulating this. But clearly it wasn’t enough because this still happened.”

Second year computer science major, Qinrong Cui said, “After reading about the case, it seems like more of a personal feud than a targeted racial murder case. However, for Asian Americans we cannot be asked to distinguish the difference.” 

Though many states pass laws to limit the proliferation of guns in the United States, many students consider that it is not enough. Jin-Doran said, “Justice has to include changing the laws and changing just like the circumstances that allowed this to happen, because this shouldn’t be the case anymore.”

Jin-Doran powerfully added, “I’m kind of thinking out loud here, having the Lunar New Year celebrations on that day of all days, and just barely a week after it happened to be holding another celebration, knowing that it was a celebration that was attacked -I think that that in a way is kind of a sign of defiance, as well as a love for our culture and community because we are both defying like the systems that have led to violence and we’re also holding on to that culture and not letting it die just because there’s so much fear. I like knowing that the community persists kind of despite what happened because it’s still New Year, it’s still our holiday. We’re not going to let that go just because people are horrible. That’s never likely to change. But we’re going to stick around regardless.”