Earlier this semester Sehar Macan-Markar ’22 was surprised to hear offensive comments about Islam made by one of her classmates in her Islam class, one of 13 GEP religious difference courses offered in the fall 2019 semester.
The most violent of these comments, according to Macan-Markar, was when the white male student said to her, “When we go there [the mosque], we should act Muslim and kill everyone that we disagree with,” Macan-Markar said.
Visiting a mosque is a required part of the course.
“If I had said something like that about Catholicism or Christianity, it would have been really serious,” Macan-Markar said. “You didn’t have to take this class. You chose to take this religious difference class. You chose to talk to me knowing I was Muslim, and then you chose to be disrespectful. At that point, it feels targeted.”
Macan-Markar said her friend reported the incident on her behalf in mid-October. The Office of Public Safety and Security contacted Macan-Markar, and she then met with Mary-Elaine Perry, Ed.D., Title IX coordinator, and Wadell Ridley, interim chief inclusion and diversity officer. Both are members of the Bias Activity Response Group, a four-member group that meets to assess bias incidents.
The Bias Activity Response Group then passed the case to Community Standards, where Macan-Markar decided she would accept a suggestion by Bill Bordak, director of Community Standards, to go with a restorative justice option to address the bias incident. She then met Bordak and the student who made the comments.
Perry said restorative justice is an alternative option for any bias activity reports.
“It’s more of a conversation,” Perry said about the restorative justice option. “It’s more understanding what happened, why it happened, why it was painful for the complaining party, does the responding party understand that, and are they willing to take responsibility for what they did. It’s trying to heal the community as opposed to necessarily punishing.”
Perry added Bordak is “writing his dissertation on restorative justice in student discipline.”
“He is working on building a model for us to do this more regularly,” Perry said. “So we’re hoping at a point we’ll have people who are trained outside of Community Standards to do this work as well.”
According to Perry, the other two options for responding to reported bias activity are a Community Standards hearing or an academic hearing. Macan-Markar said Bordak told her a hearing would be more formal, involve more work and could go on the student’s graduate school applications or employment records.
Macan-Markar said she did not find the restorative justice process effective, as the student did not show signs of remorse during the meeting. The Hawk reached out to the student, but he declined to comment, writing, “I’m sorry but I would not like to be involved with or speak to you about any comments.”
“In my opinion, if someone is not open to being educated, you can’t really force them to learn, so it felt like I went through all of that for nothing,” Macan-Markar said. “You are telling me that it is my job to educate him, but it’s okay that he as a white student doesn’t know what he is saying.”
Macan-Markar’s friend, Sil Alexander ’22, said this process put a lot of pressure on Macan-Markar.
“The worst part about it is that it is such a long process for there to be no outcome,” Alexander said. “It is weeks upon weeks.”
The incidents were first reported in mid-October and the last meeting with Bordak took place on Nov. 19.
Tiffani Tucker ’22, Macan-Markar’s roommate, said she remembers Macan-Markar returning to their residence hall room after these meetings feeling frustrated with the process.
“It is heartbreaking,” Tucker said. “We have done so much as a community and as minority students to combat these issues and say this isn’t okay, and then it happens to a close friend of mine. You just see this happen, and there is no results from it.”
Macan-Markar said she does not know any other Muslim students with whom she could share her experince. There are no current statistics on the St. Joe’s website about the breakdown of religious affiliations of students.
Umeyye Isra Yazicioglu, Ph.D., associate professor of theology and religious studies, said there used to be a Muslim Student Association four or five years ago, but it did not carry on after the students who started it graduated.
Yazicioglu, who is the professor of the Islam class where the incidents took place, said students in her Islam classes are typically open to learning, and she tries to foster an environment where they can ask questions freely.
“If you take an Islam class, you have a good opportunity to learn about the basics and history and see that some of the myths about Islam,” Yazicioglu said. “But then there are lots of students who don’t take this class or who need more context and information.”
Macan-Markar said she told Yazicioglu about the incident. In class, the same student had joked about “ripping off ” the professor’s hijab, according to Macan-Markar.
“I tell them I am expecting open-mindedness,” Yazicioglu said. “I don’t want students to close themselves off. I want them to be open-minded and willing to challenge the stereotypes they might have heard, but I also don’t want them to be afraid of asking any kind of question.”
Although asking questions is important, Jacob Bender, executive director of the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American and Islamic Relations (CAIR), said free speech does not encompass derogatory remarks.
“We believe that there is a line that can be drawn between free speech and Islamophobia and that has to do with the inherent violence in racist language,” Bender said. “When people use language like that, they are doing it to intimidate and strike fear into people who are perceived as the other or foreigners in American society.”
Bender also said he would urge St. Joe’s administrators to take a clear stance on Islamophobia on campus.
“The reasons for the importance, I would argue as a non-Jesuit, is for the university to take a position against Islamophobia,” Bender said. “The necessity of owning up to the history of the past and learning about bigotry, one hopes that it prevents it from rearing its ugly head again.”
Sehar Macan-Markar’s father, Thahir Macan-Markar ’88 ’91, completed his undergraduate degree and graduate degree at St. Joe’s. Thahir Macan-Markar said he did not experience any Islamophobic comments when he attended St. Joe’s in the late 80s and early 90s. He said he was shocked to hear about what happened to his daughter.
“They’ve got to come up with a plan to discipline students or so that people know if they do things they won’t get away with it,” Thahir Macan-Markar said. “I feel like people are doing things and getting away with it, so they feel emboldened that there are no repercussions.”
While Sehar Macan-Markar said the incident was documented in the student’s St. Joe’s record, she ultimately was disappointed with how restorative justice was used to address her situation and is second-guessing reporting the incidents in the first place.
“It is very mentally draining, and I have to keep explaining again and again what happened,” Macan-Markar said.
