Following last Sunday's incident at Colby College between students, security, and Waterville police, Colby administrators have begun to interview witnesses to bring clarity to the series of events. Early Sunday morning, a conflict between a few Colby students and security guards heightened to a physical altercation.
This past week, student protests and demonstrations criticized the level of physical force used by security guards and suggested that their behavior was racially motivated. Colby President William Adams has reassured the college community that, "These events do not represent the standards of mutual respect, trust, and personal responsibility that we as a community aspire to observe."
The incident has also prompted concerns and discussion within the Bowdoin community. This Monday, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster, along with select faculty and staff, will host a forum in Daggett Lounge. This event, according to a campus-wide e-mail from Foster on Wednesday, will serve as an opportunity to have a "conversation to reaffirm our community values."
The ordeal at Colby began early on Easter Sunday morning, when a Colby College security officer arrived at a dance near the campus's Pugh Center to find a student passed out on a couch. The security officer called for backup, as is typical. What happened after, however, was not so typical—ending with three students spending the night in jail.
The student paper the Colby Echo gave an account of the incident based primarily on interviews with student witnesses. According to the Echo, as students began to trickle out of the dance just after 1 a.m., a few students approached the security officers, who were standing near the couch, and began to question them. The officers requested that the students leave and, according to witnesses, when they didn't, an officer yelled at one of the students and attempted to push him out of the room. When the student resisted, he was wrestled to the floor.
By this time, a few dozen students had begun to gather and a security officer called in for all available police officers to come to the scene. A second male student approached the scene to ask why they were restraining a student and after what appeared to be a heated conversation, the second student was also restrained on the ground by security. Shortly after the police arrived, according to an account on iReport.com, a CNN-affiliate, the police used mace on the second student.
Some of this scene was captured on camera by another student, and the video made its way onto the Internet early Tuesday morning. In the video, which is about two minutes long, the first student is pinned to the ground by a security officer, a pool of blood from a bloody nose spreading under his head. The second student, also on the ground with a security officer kneeling on his back, is in the periphery. Near the end of the video, a police officer comes into the frame and enters the altercation.
The two students were arrested and charged with assault and criminal trespass.
A third student was arrested later in the evening elsewhere on campus on charges of disorderly conduct. According to the story posted on iReport, the student approached a police officer as the crowd dispersed to ask for an explanation of the events, and was handcuffed and taken to prison.
In an e-mail on Sunday afternoon to the campus, Colby Dean of Students Jim Terhune, who declined to speak with the Orient, wrote, "This is a profoundly distressing series of events that are in no way reflective of the sense of personal responsibility and mutual respect which are hallmarks of the Colby community."
Several Colby administrators declined to comment on the incident, forwarding Orient requests for interviews to Director of Communications and Marketing David Eaton, who did not return numerous phone calls.
On Sunday afternoon, several hundred students gathered on campus to protest the incident. These demonstrations have continued throughout the week.
According to the Facebook page of "Colby United," a group "for continuing information on the unified student response to the violence that occurred on Colby College Campus in the early morning hours of Easter Sunday," which currently has 1,655 members, the incident demonstrated a use of overly aggressive force by security and police officers. A document titled "Colby United Grievances and Calls to Action" reads: "The actions of the parties involved, including Campus Security, local law enforcement agencies, and students illustrate a greater problem of lack of communication, lack of trust, and a lack of common respect within our community."
Members of the Waterville Police Department and Colby Department of Security did not return requests for interviews.
However, in an article posted on the Web site of the Maine Public Broadcasting Network (MPBN), Waterville's Police Chief Joseph Massey said, "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."
A team of three Colby administrators was named to investigate the incident, and have been interviewing witnesses since Sunday.
"A full and complete understanding of the facts and circumstances of that morning is required if we are to have any hope of addressing productively the many concerns raised," wrote President Adams in an open letter published on the Colby Web site Thursday afternoon.
The college has also reinstituted a policy that security personnel must wear voice-recording devices whenever on duty, according to an article in the Kennebec Journal.
April is, of course, also a busy month for admitted students to visit campus. In an e-mail to the Orient, Colby Director of Admissions Steve Thomas wrote, "It would be way too early and way too speculative to have any sense of how Colby's yield might be affected by Sunday's unfortunate series of events. With regard to admission, there have been few comments regarding Sunday's events and the reaction thereafter, but those comments we have heard have been both positive and negative."
The incident was a topic of much discussion at Wednesday night's Bowdoin Student Government meeting, which was attended by Dean of Student Affairs Foster, as well at Director of Safety and Security Randy Nichols (see story, page 4).
Foster said, "The danger with this situation here is that it's really easy to quickly pass judgment on what's happened...I think Colby needs our support."
Foster was quick to commend Nichols and Bowdoin's Department of Safety and Security. "I really admire that our security seeks to build relationships with students," he said. "When these incidents happen, it's all about relationships and trusts, and that's fundamental to the work that [Bowdoin security does]."