Students, faculty and police officers came together Thursday night to address tension between law enforcement and the public following controversial grand jury rulings this past fall.
Sponsored by Newing College, “Can We Stand Together?” took place in the C4 Multipurpose Room. Representatives from Binghamton University’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and University Police Department (UPD) spoke about law enforcement’s use of force and conflicts between officers and civilians.
The event began with a discussion of the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, in which two African American men were killed by police officers who were then controversially not indicted. Following this discussion, UPD Lieutenant Steve Faulkner went into detail about Article 35 from the New York state Penal Law, which discusses justification for the use of force.
“We have to judge and say if [force] is justified or not, do I have the right, and is it reasonable,” Faulkner said. “We have to make these split-second decisions.”
Later in the event students split up into two groups and discussed the recent cases and their own personal experiences with the police. Some students recalled times they said police officers were unhelpful or unreasonably suspicious of them.
“You could feel a lot of hurt in the room,” said Patricia Cholakis, a junior majoring in biology. “I think people should walk away with the understanding that not everyone has had the best interactions with the police, so that’s where a lot of the hurt comes from.”
Cholakis, a resident assistant from Endicott, helped host the event with fellow Newing RAs. She said that the event helped bring clarity to the different perspectives of the cases.
“I come from a different background, so I can’t relate to certain things,” Cholakis said. “Coming out of this event, I understand more of people’s positions on it and it makes me feel more comfortable about the event. I can understand everything more clearly than I did before.”
According to Faulkner, UPD chose to be involved in “Can We Stand Together?” to explain its position and help students feel more comfortable about having discussions with the police.
“We thought, based on the topic of discussion, that it would be good for the police department to show up and we’d take a positive approach to this topic,” Faulkner said. “We want to try and get our word out there, too.”
Desborne Villaruel, a sophomore double-majoring in management and accounting, was also involved in hosting this event as an RA for Delaware. Villaruel wanted to make sure that discussion surrounding police brutality at BU did not end after the school-wide protest following the court cases in the fall semester.
“Some of the comments that a lot of people were saying was that this was only temporary and this was only in the now and I wanted this conversation to continue,” Villaruel said. “This is something that should be discussed throughout the whole entire year.”
He added that the open discussion was important.
“Our intent,” Villaruel said, “was for students to come in with one opinion and leave with two.”