B.U. Student Objects to Kong Hat Ban

A Boston University (B.U.) student who was denied access to the dance club at the Hong Kong restaurant last week for wearing a religious head covering is attempting to make the Kong reverse what he calls its discriminatory no-hats policy.

Deeptej Singh, a first-year medical student at B.U. who is a Sikh, said that when he tried to enter the club on the night of May 14, the Kong’s general manager David T. Hayes denied him entrance, citing a Cambridge-wide no-hats policy.

However, Cambridge Police Department (CPD) spokesperson Frank T. Pasquarello said he was not aware of the policy.

“We have no idea,” Pasquarello said. “We’ve never heard of it; I don’t think there is such a policy.”

Singh, 22, said he believes he was a victim of discrimination, and he is calling upon the New York-based Sikh Coalition to help him make the Kong change their policy.

“We did not discriminate against anyone,” Hayes said. “We blanket it on everyone, whether it’s a turban, or a do-rag, or a baseball cap, or a birthday hat.”

Hayes said that CPD provides detail officers for the Kong’s bar and dance club on Friday and Saturday nights and the club instituted the policy as a favor to the CPD after an individual took a knife out of a do-rag and cut an officer’s face.

“We want to make sure they feel safe here,” Hayes said. ‘It’s easier for us to abolish everything than to make an exception.”

Singh said he had been on the third floor earlier in the evening, and it was only when he was returning to the third floor with a group of friends around 11 p.m. on May 14 that Hayes stopped him in the staircase and told him he could not enter because he was wearing a hat.

“I tried to tell him I’m a Sikh, and it’s part of my religion,” Singh said. “As soon as I said this, he said ‘This is not discrimination, this is a blanket policy.’”

Singh said that Sikhs do not cut their hair and wear a turban because it symbolizes their commitment to Sikhism.

“It is one of the five religious symbols that all Sikhs should have,” he said.

When Singh tried to explain that he wore his turban for religious reasons, he said Hayes responded that the Kong, as a private establishment, makes no exception to the rule.

“If he needs to wear his turban, he can go to the bar,” Hayes said in an interview yesterday. “He just can’t go upstairs.”

Hayes added that the Hong Kong is a private establishment and said the establishment’s guests must abide by their rules. “I’m running a business,” Hayes said. “If I had prejudices it wouldn’t be cost-effective.”

Although he said he understands the Kong’s safety concerns, Singh said he finds the policy unacceptable.

“I understand businesses are concerned with their security,” Singh said. “I just feel the way they responded to this security problem was very irrational.”

Singh said that after arguing with Hayes and a bouncer he and a group of friends decided to go to Redline to see if a no-hats policy was enforced there, but the bar’s long line caused them to go home.

Michael Cheezum, another B.U. student who witnessed the conversation between Hayes and Singh, wrote in an e-mail that he was shocked the incident had occurred.

“They singled out Deep for his turban—a case of unlawful profiling,” Cheezum wrote. “And he is afforded the right to wear it by the articles I’ve described...Deep did not provoke nor deserve this.”

MAKING THEIR CASE

Shortly after the incident, Singh said he called the legal director of the Sikh Coalition, an organization that “seeks to safeguard the civil and human rights of all citizens” and “communicate the collective interests of Sikhs to civil society,” according to its website.

Singh, a Philadelphia native, worked for the organization last summer.

“When the whole event was going down and it became obvious the guy wasn’t going to budge I knew what I was going to do,” Singh said. “I’m outsourcing the legal side of things. In addition to my classwork I don’t have time.”

Amardeep Singh, legal director of the Sikh Coalition, said he has handled six cases of this nature in the past.

He said the Sikh Coalition has come up with a “standard operating procedure” for handling such cases.

First the Coalition sends a letter to the establishment laying out “their non-discrimination obligations under the law [to] see whether they will change their policy and allow Sikhs free access to the premises,” Amardeep Singh said.

The Coalition then contacts the Anti-Defamation League and, because these cases typically affect Muslim women who wear a veil, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The group also contacts a relevant state civil rights agency and the federal government if necessary, he said.

Amardeep Singh said no case has gone to court thus far.

“The restaurant, bar or club in question changes the policy when they know they are violating the law,” he said.

Amardeep Singh said he called CPD to confirm the existence of the no-hats policy.

“The gentleman I talked to was clear in saying there was no such Cambridge-wide policy,” Amardeep Singh said. “The Hong Kong is doing this of their own volition.”

Amardeep Singh said that he sent a letter to the Kong management on Monday and is awaiting a response.

“Now it’s up to them to absorb it,” Amardeep Singh said. “If things don’t work out we’ll pursue other legal options, whether through a state commission or through the federal government or a lawsuit on our own. We’ll just have to see.”

Deeptej Singh said that he hopes the issue is resolved “amicably.”

—Staff writer Hana R. Alberts can be reached at alberts@fas.harvard.edu.