A UW student from China was jumped and punched and kicked by "four tall men in athletic wear."

I'm reading in the student newspaper The Daily Cardinal, in "Updated: Asian international student assaulted near campus Tuesday, campus community rallies to #StopAsianHate." The quoted description comes from the Cardinal, and is based on this security camera photo. You can ask yourself why the newspaper chooses not to guess the race of the alleged attackers.

The Madison Police Department reported that the Tuesday night assault was the third of its kind to occur in the downtown area in the past week, though the two other incidents did not involve students and the “victims were from various backgrounds,” the university said in an email. 

The department suspects the same group of people were responsible for these attacks, which appear to be random in nature. In an incident report released Friday morning, the department stated that detectives do not have any evidence that leads them to conclude that the incidents were motivated by race.

The victim himself, Wentao Zhou, did characterize the attack in racial terms — when he posted on Weibo (Chinese social media). That post was shared — in translation — at Reddit, where I saw it 3 days ago:

I was walking home alone tonight across University Avenue, which is the main street in downtown Madison. I was about to turn the corner and head towards my residence when a group of very tall and well-dressed young guys sped up to me and surrounded me, a black guy punched me in the left side of my face all of a sudden, then I was pulled to the ground by the people behind me, followed by punches and kicks. I was so dazed and dumbfounded that for the first 20 seconds, I didn't even realize I should call for help. It wasn't until I was spotted by the people around and I heard there were girls yelling that I realized I should call for help. After I shouted HELP twice, they ran away. When I stood up, my glasses were knocked off, my head was numb, and I couldn't see anything. I continued to yell HELP and crowds started coming from all over. A group of black girls who were partying at a bar across the street witnessed the whole attack, and they came over and sat me down, helped me call the police, handed me tissues and water, and took pictures of me. A passerby white guy, presumably a medical student, checked all parts of my body, checked the wounds, asked some questions, and made sure I was conscious. The police arrived about 5-10 minutes later and took statements from me and the passerby. The location where I was attacked was just across the street from a store, and I was attacked almost right under the store's security camera. The police will request the footage. And there were security cameras all over that busy street.... 

[I]ncomprehension/violence/conflict can happen in/with any country/era/race. I don't even feel any anger or rage at the young men who attacked me. They are just those who have lost their basic rationalities and common sense under certain ideologies/hatred/cultures. The limited resources in society/education almost decided that it’s impossible to raise everybody into a decent person with common sense. While trying to fight against violence/hatred, we need to raise our own awareness of safety and learn to protect ourselves. 

Tonight it's my turn, and I'm glad it's my turn and not the turn of anyone else’s, at least I could still take a few punches.

He talks about race, but in a distinctly sensitive way.

I didn't post about it then, because I couldn't see a story about the attack in any newspaper or on the Madison police report page. I don't rush to share things that are inflammatory and may not be true. The police were on the scene, so I would expect that not only to appear on local news sites but to result in a text warning me of a danger in the area. I am signed up for those police reports and get them with regularity. 

Back to the Cardinal article:

The university [emailed students:] “While we don't have evidence these incidents were motivated by race, we know that each time incidents like these occur, it has an impact on the well-being of all our students, and particularly our Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi American students, faculty, and staff, and other communities of color,” read the email from three UW-Madison leaders. “We are committed to creating a safe community at UW–Madison where everyone feels they belong, and we know we have more work to do.”

They're using the phrase "we don't have evidence" to mean we don't have conclusive proof. I'd like to see the word "evidence" used correctly, and I'd like some assurance that they'd resist speculating about a racial motive if the victim had been black. 

We're told that "many students are concerned that the incidents were racially motivated and have taken to social media to call out anti-Asian violence on a campus they say doesn’t do enough to support them."

Still,  “Many international students chose @UWMadison because we thought Madison was safer than other big cities. BUT we feel REALLY REALLY upset now,” Luhang Sun, a Ph.D. student at UW-Madison, tweeted. “Where's the support you claim to have for us?” an Asian student commented on Instagram. “What are you going to do to protect your Asian students going forward? How many more times is this going to happen before you realize this is an issue you need to address and shut down.”

You can see that this is very damaging to the university's reputation, but clearly the university is also keen to maintain a reputation among black Americans. Yet it is insulting to virtually all black Americans to patronize the assailants. 

ADDED: From the comments at Reddit: "Ironically we got police alerts on the tornado yesterday, but no alert on this one"/"Ikr! I didn’t know about this until I saw this on Reddit!"/"Yeah idk why we don’t get alerts about this. We get alerts about this stuff normally."