The vicious  10/22/2010 beating of a sixteen year old boy in the entrance of the Administration Building was a deplorable miscarriage of justice.  Even though RCC was not involved as an institution, we must speak out, for the fight against injustice is everyone’s concern. This incident of police brutality is not an aberration, and Black youth in Boston and around the country continue to be disproportionately targeted by police and the criminal justice system.

In order for our students and community members to feel safe on campus, they must know that they will be protected by the college if a similar incident should ever happen to them. We find it shameful that the administration’s only public statement was to distance RCC from the victim, rather than to reassure our students and community members that at RCC, they are safe from racist beatings. The victim, who has been for many years connected to our RCC community as a relative of one of our community members, has visited our campus many times over the years.  He could just as easily have been one of our own black male students. What would the RCC administration have said then?

Furthermore, would police have taken the liberty of invading the campus and brutalizing this child at schools like BC or BU? This attack shows a remarkable disrespect for our school and for Roxbury.  As RCC faculty and staff, our primary job is to assist students in learning to become effective citizens. Since RCC students and staff showed real courage by helping to bring this incident to light and organize a community response, we must defend them from any retaliation by RCC administration or police and unite as a community against racist police brutality.