Samuel Linstead-Atkinson
Connector Staff
In response to the events that took place in Ferguson, Mo., the Office of Multicultural Affairs hosted a forum Wednesday to discuss the incident and the ethical issues surrounding it. The conversation was an informal one, and the two microphones made it into the hands of nearly everyone in the room.
Michael Brown, 18, was fatally shot on Aug., 9, by Officer Darren Wilson with the Ferguson police department. Brown was unarmed at the time of the shooting, and was reported by some witnesses to even have his hands in the air.
The Department of Multicultural Affairs had called for this discussion as a way to respond to the case of Michael Brown and to draw out similarities to others like it. As Leslie Wong, director of Multicultural Affairs put it, “we’re not here to find a solution.”
What was found by all of the attendees was a sense of communal togetherness. Each person to take the microphone offered their own perspective on the events in Ferguson, and many related it back to their own experiences with police.
“We know that Ferguson is not a singular or an isolated event,” said Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History. Names such as Eric Garner, Amadou Diallo and Trayvon Martin were brought up and linked to the same theme of discrimination by police. “The issues surrounding Ferguson, Trayvon Martin and Amadou Diallo are all indicators of something much greater at play and something much more deeply rooted in our society,” said Wong.
Robert Forrant, a professor in the Department of History, thought this supposed inequity of criminal profiling by police to be a result of the wealth distribution amongst society. Forrant offered, “the growing economic inequality is…exacerbated…by the question of race.” Many students agreed with this statement, as some suggested personal examples from their own experience in Lowell and the surrounding towns.
There was dispute on whether something on the scale of the Michael Brown case could happen here in Lowell. Many reported that the same basis of racial discrimination by police already exists here, while others claimed that this was unlikely to occur on such a drastic level in Massachusetts. Regardless of this, the consensus of the room was that this conversation needed to be sustained and extended.
“I think this is something that should definitely continue,” said Henrique Urey, 23, a senior at UMass Lowell. With this and similar comments from others, many corroborated that this would be the first chapter in a much larger discussion. It was also agreed that dialogues like this do not take place frequently enough. “It’s important for people to have these conversations,” said Ikechukwu M. Iloputaife, 22.
Also expressed was the aspiration of reaching out to larger numbers of people as the event came to a close. “I wish that we could take this conversation…to the whole campus,” said Ahmad Lassonah, 26, a local resident.
The notion to extend this forum to the entire UMass Lowell and the Lowell community was agreed upon by everyone that had a chance to speak. “It is a necessity to understand how we are all impacted,” said Leslie Wong.
