Tigist Yifraw, a third-year Political Science undergraduate is suing Eastern-Occidental University, a small private liberal arts college, for years of personal pain and suffering.
The affair started out as a complaint Tigist filed with the student-teacher affairs committee for what she claimed was the repeated use of an offensive term in a lecture. The lecture in question was for a World history class taught by associate professor Dr. Richard Blanco who made 3 explicit references to Ethiopian famines.
Tigist, a second-generation Ethiopian immigrant claims that she was triggered by the “F word” because it surfaced unpleasant memories and activated deep ancestral trauma.
She remembers that her strong emotional reaction led her to immediately correct Dr. Blanco’s use of the word, disrupting the lecture. Immediately after the lecture, she followed the professor to his office insisting that he should change the F word to the more politically correct IMCR (Involuntary Mass Caloric Restriction) or FIMCR (Fatal Involuntary Mass Caloric Restriction).
After multiple attempts at expressing her discomfort with the word, Tigist claims that the word was not changed and triggered her again during the following week’s lecture.
She claimed that the professor had verbally conceded to the name change but did not act on it. Her patience was exhausted when the professor finally told her “Sorry, I don’t have enough room on my slides for a new acronym.” Frustrated by the indifference, she succumbed to posting about the incident on various social media platforms using the hashtag “#IMCRNOF”, and started a petition at Change.org titled “No F word in lectures (not f**k, the other one)”
In an early video she posted, she complained “I mean, it’s like, you’re making fun of our ancestors, alright? It’s not ok, that word brings up shocking memories of children… I have a right to not be triggered in school.”
We reached out to Dr. Blanco on his official school email. We were forbidden from reproducing the actual email because of school policies so we have paraphrased the essential points of his response.
In his response, Dr. Blanco called Tigist a “melodramatic lefty” who is using the recent incident to satisfy a personal vendetta. He confessed to inadvertently offending Tigist in a different Political History class two years ago, where he served as a teacher’s assistant. In one of his small discussion sections (for which Tigist was tardy), he claims to have casually mentioned that he liked Ethiopian food as she walked past him to her chair. He remembers it as an innocuous gesture to start a cross-cultural conversation, he was simply trying to be friendly and could clearly tell she was of East African descent, and likely Ethiopian due to her distinct features. He claims to have apologized after she told him that she would prefer not to be identified by her ethnicity or have it mentioned.
We reached out to Tigist over a Zoom call to get her thoughts:
“Okay, so East African that’s what he said? huh… there’s like Eritrea, Somalia, how’d he know where I was from? What a ደደብ. He was making fun of the way I smelled, and I can’t help how I smell. I admit, I was living with roommates and my clothes would soak in a little ቁሌት but it was unprofessional. Would he make any other girl uncomfortable? Did he say ‘I like Tacos’ when a Latina student walked in after me? No.
Everywhere I go, all I get is either famine talk or food talk, I want some real human conversations.
Tigist, what’s that oniony dish I smell on your hair?
Tigist, what’s that smelly red stuff around your nails?
Tigist, I didn’t know you guys had food
Tigist, oh, I like Ethiopian food, I like rolling the little burritosTigist, how did they starve when they had such delicious food?
Tigist, what do you call that edible grey towel thingy? [yells It’s f**ng injera! ]
Tigist, why are you so skinny when you have such amazing food?Tigist, how can they diagnose Anorexia where you are from?
Transcript of Zoom interview
They either wanna talk about how great our food is, or how little of it we have, nothing else. This is why it’s a trigger. Now, I have to be reminded of this again? I’m standing up to all PDRTVs when I say replace it with IMCR.”
[we asked what PDRTV means]
People distantly related to victims of crises
In spite of her increasing number of followers on social media, she hasn’t received encouraging support from her fellow classmates.
We spoke with Alexandra, a Ukrainian foreign student who took the same class as Tigist shared a different opinion.
“So.. what? Next thing you know, they will replace genocide with the G-word, come on! That’s reserved for happy time, you know?
My ancestor also had famine, no big deal and it was even worse, Ethiopia had baby famine compared to ours.
My great uncle was eaten by sister.
I fine now, I am normal.
At least Ethiopians have good food, have you had Ukranian? Borscht…. soup, you literally need to numb tongue with vodka to enjoy. This isn’t right.
What you now gonna call Holocaust? Involuntary mass Jewish mortality event? [chuckles]What about other difficult past? Americans need thick skin, weather too good here, make them soft”
Attempt to transcribe recording of Alexandra Shevchenko
Tigist claims that her reputation was ruined after the hashtag started trending in her community, and her Ethiopian friends and family members slowly distanced themselves from her. The lawsuit claims that the History department is responsible for the resultant pain and suffering she experienced from “wanting to be heard”.
She claims to have contracted depression after she grew estranged from her family. Her mother accused her of not living up to her name, which means patience in Amharic. Since an Ethiopian pastor used her as an example in a sermon, referring to her activism as “የ ፈረንጅ ቅብጠት”, she has stopped engaging with her community.
“I don’t even smell habesha anymore, just like f**ng shampoo. Nobody cooks for me at home, I have to save money to drive to restaurants, and they give me funny looks. Americans can only identify my habeshaness if they see my big forehead, otherwise, I’m just another person — nobody unique. It’s lost me many dates. Omg, you know how long it’s been since I’ve had Emama’s Genfo? All this started because they were not willing to change a single word, how hard is that #PDRTV #IMCRnoF”
A public Facebook post on her profile
We consulted a Sociology professor ( who asked to remain anonymous, referred here as They. ) The professor confirmed that Tigist’s experience was a valid sociological phenomenon that is being actively studied. They speculate that Tigist’s complaint was denied because of her minority status, and other demands for lecture revisions have been granted to students of a “more privileged background”. Without providing supporting context or evidence, they further accused their colleague Dr. Richard Blanco of being a typical “white d**k” who “thinks he can mistreat his cis-female students and get away with it.”
According to the professor, the word famine, along with war, disease, and crisis should be banned and replaced with non-triggering emotionally neutral acronyms. They call these words “imminently pejorative” and hopes that departments will listen to brave and outspoken students like Tigist.
The trial is scheduled to start on January 17th, 2023, and is expected to attract the attention of social media activists nationwide. TACLU, TBLM, and academics (mostly STEM professors) have expressed their support for Tigist.