Eleven years ago today, a horribly racist scrawl was reported to have defaced the Asian Student Association's (ASA) bulletin board just outside their office on the ground floor of Keefe Campus Center. The Amherst Student reported that the ASA members returning to school in late August were confronted by the chilling and threatening message, "Fuck You Japs, Go Home."

The Student reported that Ed Zaniewski, assistant director of public safety at the time, had no leads. The fact that the act had been perpetrated over the summer made it especially difficult for Zaniewski to pin down the violators, or even discover whether or not the act perpetrated by a student at the College. Despite weeks of work on the case, Zaniewski was able to make virtually no progress on the case.

The lack of resolution on the case stirred much controversy on the campus and protest efforts were led by then-ASA President Bryan Oh '94. The ASA saw the supposed lack of effort on the part of the administration as a method of ignoring the problem of racism on campus. The Student reported that Oh was largely unsuccessful in his efforts as the administration limited his protests to a letter in The Student and a meeting with Dean of Students Ben Lieber. This meeting followed with several educational efforts organized by the ASA and co-sponsored by various other organizations.

Oh claimed that the incident spoke to the disquieting increase in racist sentiment on campus and in the United States as a whole. Oh pointed to Michael Crichton's movie "Rising Son" (1993), which told the story of a young American model killed by a Japanese business man. The movie painted the Japanese as corrupt and greedy while the Americans were portrayed as innocent victims. The movie expressed the strong anti-Japanese sentiment circulating at the time as more and more Japanese businesses became successful in America.