Volume 93/Issue XVII
THE
February 24th, 2020
ANCHOR
Rhode Island College’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1928
Yusef Salaam speaks out at RIC the media’s role in his conviction and subsequent acquittal saying, “Originally there were only about 400 articles written about us when it happened, nobody ever came to us and said ‘Hey tell us your story!’ and so people were making things up. People were defining for the rest of the public what it was that they were seeing.” He then went on to further state that the media’s coverage “gave a great disservice to the people.” He said “If the people wanted to be able to ensure justice, by ensuring justice that means
Sean Richer
News Editor
Alexis Rapoza
Opinions Editor One night in the spring of 1989, the body of a woman who had been raped and assaulted was discovered in the woods of Central Park. Soon after, five African American and Latino boys were arrested and convicted of the crime, despite their innocence, which was proven over 13 years later in 2002. One of those boys was then 15-year-old, Yusef Salaam. Dr. Yusef Salaam is now 45 years old, has received an honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Anointed by God Ministries Alliance & Seminary and received the Lifetime Achievement Award from President Barack Obama in 2016. He now travels the country as a motivational speaker sharing his story and speaking about criminal justice reform. Dr. Salaam and the four other men, Korey Wise, Antron McCray, Raymond Santana, and Kevin Richardson, also now known the Central Park Five, stories’ were recently produced into a 4-part Netflix series directed by Ava DuVernay entitled “When They See Us.” The series
garnered over 230 million views in its first week of release and won two Primetime Emmy Awards. The Anchor had the privilege of sitting down with Dr. Salaam when he visited campus for an event organized by Harambee in celebration of Black History Month on February 21. When referring to the Netflix series Salaam said, “We were fully involved. We loved the fact that Ava DuVernay and her
you are going after the right people. You’re not presenting a scapegoat and in many ways you see that happen all the time, especially if you have my complexion.” Dr. Salamm explained, “They automatically present you in the public eye and you then have to prove yourself innocent. But the system says you’re innocent until proven guilty. Whereas in the black and brown community it’s the exact opposite.” Continued on pg. 4 Photos by Grace Kimmell and Thomas Crudale
team allowed us to be fully participant in everything that was going on,” Dr. Salaam stated. “We sat down with the writers individually, my session was over eight hours, and when we actually began to film, when we were actually on set, they would ask us questions like ‘Was this how it was? Did we get it right?’ And when we saw the final product we knew we had something very special.” Dr. Salaam also criticized
Misaligned vision for 2020 strategic plan Opinion
Alexis Rapoza Opinions Editor
Inside this week:
Alexis is a Communications & Journalism major from Warwick, RI (Class of 2021). If there is one thing Rhode Islanders should pride themselves on it is our diverse institutions of higher education. The smallest state in the nation is home to three public schools, six private institutions, an ivy-league and a Naval War College. News R.I. bill seeks Constitutional change pg. 3
The Anchor Newspaper
Jobs have become much more difficult to land without a college degree, prompting Rhode Island’s population of college students to grow exponentially. However, there is one school that hasn’t been fortunate enough to bask in this revived interest in higher education. Yes, you guessed it -- its RIC. When I logged into MyRIC, I was greeted with an ad pro-
moting RIC’s new strategic plan entitled “Vision 2020.” It boasts that Vision 2020 promotes three goals for it’s a five-year plan, increased investments in academic and teaching excellence, increased quality of student experience and a strengthened resource generation and financial stewardship. On the surface that sounds great but a deep dive into Vision 2020
revealed some concerning statistics about RIC’s future. According to RIC’s website, student enrollment has declined by 13.5% since 2015. Furthermore, 31% of undergraduate students stated that they seriously considered leaving RIC within their first semester. This can largely be attributed to the in-
Opinions From abroad: culture shock pg. 7
Arts & Entertainment Warhol exhibition on view in Bannister pg. 9
Sports Basketball postseason preview pg. 16
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Continued on pg. 7
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