University President Dr. Kenneth W. Dobbins held a meeting with resident assistants on Thursday evening to discuss safety on campus and to make sure that RAs were making international students welcome as much as ever in response to a former Southeast Missouri State University international student being arrested in a terrorist plot.
Former Southeast Missouri State University student Quazi Mohammad Rezwanul Ashan Nafis was an international student from Bangladesh who was arrested Wednesday for his involvement in a plot to bomb the Federal Reserve Bank in New York. He was enrolled in 12 credit hours at Southeast in spring 2012 semester, his only semester at Southeast, and was the vice president of the Muslim Student Association.
"I just hope by reading your article ... that people understand that there are bad people and sometimes you don't know who they are, but thank heavens we have this network of security that ferrets those folks out, and that's what happened. It worked," Dobbins said in an interview with the Arrow earlier Thursday. "I hope that people realize that there are individuals that aren't international students that would like to do terrorist activities or what we classify as terrorist activities. We shouldn't stereotype every one of our international students. That's not right. It's a wrong assumption.
"I'm going to be meeting with all the international students today to assure them that we appreciate what they do. We want to make sure they know that if there's some issues, we want to know about them. We want to let them know that we appreciate what they do at our institution and that we feel that this is just a one-person incident."
Logann Driskell, an RA at Dearmont Hall said, attended the meeting. She said that safety was a focus of the meeting.
"We just need to be supportive of our residents is kind of what the meeting was about. As you've seen in the media already what's going on ... It's pretty much just basically to be there for our residents and let them know that we are a safe campus and that we are doing things to help them be more safe," Driskell said.
Driskell said that residents on her floor had not been talking about Nafis prior to this meeting and that most college students do not keep up with the news.
"This, like, makes me realize there's bigger things going on around us that we need to be aware of and we need to realize, but at Southeast I think we're genuinely safe as a university and Dr. Dobbins is doing a great job," Driskell said.
Towers Complex RA Bradley Beran said that he heard about the incident involving Nafis online Wednesday night. He attended the RA meeting with Dobbins as well.
"There was no private information shared, public information, just kind of informing the RAs and other professional staff what's going on and to make sure we're still remaining a presence on the university. And that more than ever now we need to be here for the rest of the international students and remember that they're still at home," Beran said.
