Purdue students protest alleged racist treatment from local restaurant owner

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Around a dozen Purdue University students marched to the Blue Nile Restaurant earlier this month in hopes of demanding an apology from the owner who they allege mistreatment of Indian students.

Students claim the owner of the restaurant, Wesam Abu Ghanieh, created a hostile environment for Indian students looking to dine at his restaurant or simply walk past his establishment. Comments, they alleged, come through his in-person and online interactions with the community.

Events that lead to Blue Nile protest

Kshitij Mall, a post-doctoral research associate at Purdue University and the protest organizer, said several students who’ve attempted to dine at the restaurant were aggressively asked to leave when they entered his establishment.

The comments from Ghanieh centered around the restaurant's call-in-order policy the business had been operating with since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mall said.

On the restaurant’s website, Blue Nile requests customers call in their orders ahead of time, either for pick-up or dine-in. For those who may not visit the website or who may not be frequent customers of Blue Nile, this policy isn’t immediately known by the public, the student said.

A faded sign requesting people call in their order is taped to the front door. According to students at the protest, they were under the impression people could walk in and still be seated in the restaurant or order food to go.

This assumption was the catalyst that led to Ghanieh telling students to leave his establishment, the students said, and telling them that he was unwilling to provide them with service.

“This is a public space that invites people as customers, and I’m choosing that option amongst so many other options. He could have told me in a very nice way, but he just shooed me out and he was just very rude from the start,” Mall told the Journal & Courier.

“But he was only rude to me and not my Italian friend. That’s when I sense that there’s something against just me being from India maybe. I do not know.”

This interaction led to Mall leaving a review on the Blue Nile Restaurant Facebook page, stating, “The owner doesn't know customer service. Terrible delivery service,” the post reads.

The review led to a response from an administrator of the Blue Nile Restaurant Facebook page, and in turn a thread of replies primarily between the restaurant and Mall.

The thread features posts referring to commenters as “stupid Indian rude idiot pathetic behavior” and “Pathetic Indian idiot."

“Will see you then and be ready for it, I hope you can afford the money that has been paid to the lawyer against lies and let’s see what Indian flag has to do with with that, maybe they send an international pilot with crystal clear mission to west Lafayette  (laughing-crying emoji) I like your picture tho, you looked like an Indian when you were filming and talking. You are right somehow, maybe I need to be dangerous and buy a weapon to protect myself from other pilots or bharachouts [sic] falling inside my business. Pathetic Indian idiot,” reads one Facebook comment reply to Mall’s review.

These comments lead to several individuals review-bombing Ghanieh’s restaurant online, which have since been removed from Google for violating Google’s spam or inappropriate content policy.

In one of these reviews, the administrator of the restaurant's Facebook page responded to some of these comments

"I noticed many Google activities earlier and text messages and calls, you Indians are really good in technology and movies and listen to each other so quickly, I may wake up in a rate from 4.2 to 2.4 and I may have zero sales which cause not having money to pay rent and bills then I go back home Jordan to see my wife and kid," reads the Facebook comment.

Within those reviews, observed by the J&C before their removal, the Blue Nile Restaurant responded to several of those reviews with negative comments referring to Indians as “monkeys,” “lower class” and stating “when your DNA can supply a small country filled of stupid, idiots very rude Indians just exactly like you” in one review response.

The J&C could not confirm that Ghanieh was the author behind each of those responses, but at the protest, as students were demanding the owner apologize for the comments made about Indians, Ghanieh told protesters that he would not apologize for the comments he wrote.

“Which comments? I’ve made hundreds of comments. I’ve made hundreds of comments on Google,” Ghanieh said.

“I’m not apologizing. I’m not forgiving you. Even if you remove that video, I don’t care. I will see you on the judgment day,” Ghanieh said, pointing at Mall.

Ghanieh referenced a TikTok video Mall took of him entering the restaurant and being asked to leave, with Ghanieh citing restaurant policies. The video ended with profanity directed at each other as Mall left the restaurant.

Students share their concerns regarding Blue Nile's owner

During the protest on May 5, students emphasized that all they wanted was an apology for the comments Ghanieh allegedly made toward Indians. The students said that if he apologized, then they would have looked past the interactions they’ve had with him and moved on with their lives.

But Ghanieh refused to apologize for the comments.

The students said this issue went beyond just Mall’s experience, claiming Ghanieh had exhibited a similar level of rudeness when they tried to eat at his restaurant or walked past it to get to school.

Within Purdue’s Indian student community, students were advised to avoid interacting with and walking near the restaurant out of fear of retaliation.

Mall explained that the protesters were expecting more to participate in the protest, but believed many canceled out of fear of how Ghanieh would react to the protest.

The protest ended after 45 minutes of demonstration.

After protesters left the storefront, the J&C entered the restaurant to ask Ghanieh if he had any comments regarding the protest and the allegations lodged against him.

Ghanieh demanded the J&C leave and provided no comment on either matter.

Local officials and law enforcement's knowledge of allegations

Following the protest, the Journal & Courier reached out to the Tippecanoe County Health Department and the West Lafayette Police Department to determine if local officials were aware of the situation regarding Purdue students and the Blue Nile restaurant.

Prior to the J&C reaching out, neither department had heard about any racial or harassment complaints regarding the restaurant.

The health department’s restaurant inspection and complaint department stated that within the three years that the restaurant had been reopened, a formal complaint about the ownership had not been received.

The only records that the department had were the restaurant’s health inspection report, which gave the restaurant a passing score.

West Lafayette Police said the department had been aware of Ghanieh due to his tendency to call the police station over what they described as petty parking matters. However, the department was not aware of allegations of racism until the protest organizers informed the department about the protest.

When asked why students had not filed any formal complaints regarding the alleged harassment, Mall explained he had initially gone to Purdue University’s police department to complain about the owner’s alleged conduct.

But Purdue’s police department had explained the restaurant fell under the West Lafayette Police Department's jurisdiction and that it couldn’t help him any further.

West Lafayette police, he said, advised Mall to inform West Lafayette’s Better Business Bureau; Mall said he didn’t find that useful.

Mall decided to inform Purdue University’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging regarding the matter. This eventually led Mall and other Indian students to organize the protest, he said, in hopes of spreading the word to avoid Ghanieh’s restaurant.

The J&C again reached out to Ghanieh for comment regarding the protest and the allegations that students were making.

Ghanieh stated he preferred not to provide a comment regarding the matter.

Noe Padilla is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. Email him at Npadilla@jconline.com and follow him on Twitter at 1NoePadilla

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Purdue students allege racist treatment from local restaurant owner