Isa Pham, 22, a student at the university, received an email from the university’s Student Affairs department saying she had received racist e-mails and text messages from someone she knew with the university’s email address, and then posted it online.

“It was racist, hateful and derogatory,” Pham wrote in an e-mail to CBC News. “I am not at the University of Windsor. I didn’t make the emails.”

The university sent a note to students of color to avoid attending this summer’s Pan Am games due to security concerns, but Pham says she wouldn’t want it to be a racial issue.

“When you are a student, you are there to learn,” Pham writes in her e-mail to CBC News. “But you also have to understand that in the world of social media, people will use you.”

Racist tweets

E-mails to CBC News show Pham started receiving harassing e-mails and tweets — mostly from the same account — while she was at the university over the summer.

“Can you tell me you are not a racist,” one said.

Pham says she was surprised that her emails continued into her freshman year, especially since she didn’t make any explicit comments about race. She never considered going on the road with a group to show her support for marginalized students of any race — until she saw an email from the university’s Student Security.

“They were calling me racist. I was like, ‘Wait a second there, that’s not what I was thinking. I didn’t think I was talking about them the whole time’…. My first day there, all I thought about was, ‘How is this a racist?”

Pham says the e-mails and tweets she received were racist and offensive, and that she tried to stop using social media.

“I told them that I would be unable to attend the summer games that were supposed to be at the university because of security reasons,” she said.

Titled ‘I’m not racist,’ Pham received e-mails that mocked the diversity of her home region, said the email to CBC News. (Dwight J. Mitchell/Twitter) Pham claims the university had no reason to think she was talking about marginalized students, but that still doesn’t mean she can’t take a stand against the people behind those messages.

‘Heaven forbid someone