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A VICE Intern Is at the Center of a Racism Row

VICE Alps Tori Reichel is a black Austrian whose photo was plastered all over his university's website as an example of a foreign-exchange student. Except he's not foreign.

Austrian VICE Alps intern Tori Reichel, left

Tori Reichel is a journalism student at the University of Vienna. He is also interning for VICE Alps. Around the beginning of the new semester, he happened to sit down on the stairs to chat with two of his friends when a photographer took their photo. So far, so not racist. But when the university's new website launched earlier this year, Tori noticed that photo of him was being used… like, a lot. Especially on pages that said things like "INTERNATIONAL" and "WE WELCOME STUDENTS FROM ABROAD." Which is weird, because Tori is a native Austrian. He just happens to be black.

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Tori responded to this in an open letter to the uni published at VICE Alps (read the whole thing in the original German here), which has since made headlines, both nationwide and in Germany's Der Spiegel. In it, Tori wrote:

The funny thing about the photo is this guy in the photo is not "from abroad." He is not part of Erasmus [the name of the university's foreign exchange program] student. I know this, because it's me in the picture. I study journalism here and I have no idea how I got to be your poster child for international diversity.

I probably wouldn't have noticed that I'm all over the website. But a lot of other students have sent me the link to the picture because they find it absurd that I've become the symbol for exchange students.

If you are advertising your scientific research programs, you show people in white coats. If you are advertising your library, you show people with books. And if you are advertising your international diversity, for some strange reason you show me.

I don't want to be a hater-I simply expected more of you. Don't be angry: I like you and I am grateful for just paying €1,850 [about $2,300] per semester to get a more or less useful education. One more thing: I don't feel good talking about my skin color and making this an issue. But I am tired of being your poster child for international diversity without  being asked. I hope you understand this.

For their part, the university reacted quickly, promising Tori that the photo selection was not deliberate and pulling the picture from the website immediately, telling him, "We will endeavor in future to be more sensitive in our photo selection." But damn, people. Maybe in 2015 it would be cool if we all promise to stop being racist, latently or otherwise. Especially if we are universities.

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