An Easter Sunday encounter between students at Colby College and campus security has thrown the campus into turmoil. College officials say that security was trying to restrain students who were interfering with their task of helping another student who was ill. But a student-made video of the incident now widely viewed on campus has drawn cries of excessive force from the student body, who turned out by the hundreds this afternoon for a rally.
At noon, about 800 Colby students, roughly half the student body, stopped what they were doing and converged on the campus center to protest a Sunday incident at the Pugh student center that resulted in the arrest of two students. They wore red shirts in solidarity.
"So on the night in question I also was there in the Pugh Center," said Cynia Barnwell, one of about 10 students who shared eyewitness accounts with the crowd from under a towering flagpole. "The security officers knees was on the back of student A's neck and I began to cry and I questioned why this was happening, I questioned why they were using such force, what did he do, things of that nature."
The two students arrested were identified as 22-year-old Ozzy Ramirez, of the Bronx, New York, and 21-year-old Jacob Roundtree, of St. Albans, New York. Both were charged with assault and criminal trespass.
Police, who were called to assist campus police, say the incident unfolded after a college dance, when Colby's emergency's response team was trying to help an intoxicated student.
Joseph Massey is Waterville's police chief. "It all stemmed from apparently some students not wanting another student, who was intoxicated - and medical treatment was trying to be delivered to that student by some EMTs who were also students, and for some reason this large group of students, who obviously a lot of them had been drinking, didn't want the student to receive medical treatment."
The college says one student -- a reference to Ramirez, according to student eyewitnesses -- reportedly took issue with what was going on, and intefered with what the emergency response team was doing, both verbally and physically. The second student, identified as Roundtree by students, also verbally and physically interfered. Police say both were also drunk.
But fellow students say that campus security was overreacting and they point to a video that student Reesa Kashuk captured with her digital camera. The video shows two security officers restraining a man identified as Ramierez to the ground, as a small pool of blood collects around his face. The man screams "Let me go!" as his friends alternate between screaming and urging him to calm down.
Students demanded an apology from the college administration, who were invited to speak at the rally. They didn't get one. But college President William Adams expressed his sympathy toward the students. "I hear you, I understand, and I understand the level of upset that has been expressed today and previously and will continue to be expressed, and I need you to know that I share a level of profound upset."
Adams said that the college was conducting a thorough and fair investigation into what happened. The school has not taken any action against the students who were arrested or the security officers. "I'm working on identifying somebody from outside the institution to look at all these pieces that we're putting together, an independent voice, if you will, an investigator to take stock of what we gather and what we have said and what is being said by students and others."
Adams said the college administration would also sponsor a forum with the public that would allow students to ask questions.
The fact that the two students arrested were Hispanic and African-American, respectively, has prompted student complaints of racial discrimination. Juniors Lane Phillips and Kelsey Gibbs, who are white, said they didn't think that white students would have been treated the same way. I don't think it's a coincidence they happen to be two minority students on a campus of predominantly white, odds are against it being possible. There's no doubt in my mind," Phillips says.
"At the same time, I don't think security had the intention of beating up minority students. But at a same time, I don't think, in that same situation, I don't think it would have escalated to that level if they had been white.
Waterville Police Chief Massey said there have been no charges of racial discrimination filed. He says the allegations distract from the real issue: excessive college drinking.
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