Following the statement issued by Dean Koshizuka on November 26 (Tuesday), the chairperson of the Student Support Committee has delivered the following message to all students of the III and GSII regarding racially discriminatory tweets posted by a project associate professor of the III and GSII. Besides reaffirming our opposition to discrimination and encouraging students to state their opinions, this message also demonstrates our support for the psychological care of students as a matter of the highest priority.

===
To all the students of Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies and Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies,

This is from Aya Ikegame in charge of the Student Support Committee at the III and GSII, UTokyo.

Many of you have already heard from the Internet and news reports that a part-time project faculty member, Shohei OSAWA, has been making a series of discriminatory comments on social media. He has lumped together all the people from a certain country and repeatedly made incredibly aberrant comments, such as his company would not employ anyone from the country, etc. The faculty members of the III and GSII are all shocked and appalled by his comments and feel ashamed by the fact that such a person has been, albeit for a very short span of time, amongst us.

We understand that many of you were deeply affected by his comments and felt betrayed that the University of Tokyo had employed such a person. We are extremely sorry. We believe that we do have some responsibility for preventing such awful comments from being made.

To recover your trust, we, the Student Support Committee, promise you that we will make sure that Dr Osawa is subjected to appropriate disciplinary actions by the University authorities. We will report you as soon as possible about new changes and reforms initiated by the Dean. We will also make sincere efforts to ensure that the III and GSII becomes a truly non-discriminatory and open space where the human rights of everyone are secure. To achieve this goal, we faculty members will continue to work hard, but we also humbly request your help in this endeavor. The diversity of our students is crucial to making the III and GSII a better place for learning.

Last, but not least, we will prioritize our effort to take care of all the students who were affected by this. If you need to talk to someone, you can email me anytime, and you can also consult the university counsellors.

International Student Support Room
https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/adm/inbound/en/support-issr.html

We are ready to hear and accept your views. Please do not hesitate to tell us your honest opinions and suggestions.

We hope that we will make efforts so that you will be proud to have studied at the University of Tokyo when you graduate.

We sincerely apologize again for the unacceptable racist comments made by our colleague.

Very warmest regards,
Aya Ikegame