Black SUNY Albany Students Indicted, Expelled

Two black female students who generated national headlines by claiming they were attacked by whites have been indicted by an Albany County grand jury and expelled from the State University.

The University at Albany has expelled two black female students and suspended a third after they were indicted for allegedly lying about being victims of a hate crime.

Ariel Agudio and Asha Burwell have been dismissed from the university and Alexis Briggs has been suspended for two years, according to an email sent to the school community Thursday by President Robert J. Jones, the Albany Times Union reported.

The women grabbed national headlines — and a sympathetic tweet from Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton — after claiming that a group of 12 to 20 white men hurled racial slurs and attacked them on a CDTA bus about 1 a.m. Jan. 30 while others stood by and did nothing.

The alleged incident sparked a large on-campus rally defending women of color and the social media campaign #DefendBlackGirlsUAlbany.

[...]The three women were indicted this week by a grand jury and arraigned for 10 misdemeanor charges, including assault, attempted assault and false reporting, along with a violation for harassment, the Times Union reported. They have pleaded not guilty.

Story here.

SUNY Albany had this to say about the entire incident:

Joseph Brennan, a UAlbany vice president of communications and marketing, who testified that the school suffered "reputational harm" as a result of the conduct of the three women.

Brennan testified that the women's actions impacted the school's recruiting and created a disruption that exceeded that of "floods, hurricanes, power outages and fatalities" he had encountered in his 25-year career. He said UAlbany has already received notifications from families that they would not send their children to "such a place" and that his office has had to cancel production of a fundraising video and a social media campaign as a result of the three women's actions.

Life's a beach, next time wait until the tide turns before you sound the racism alarm. Just talk to the University of Missouri in case you missed the memo.