Three black female college students in Albany have been accused of assault after originally claiming they had been the victims of a racist attack from “10-12 white men” on a city bus. The alleged attack happened on January 30th and Ariel Agudio, Alexis Briggs and Asha Burwell (all 20) claimed that they were the victims of a racist attack. However, after the videotape was reviewed the police found that it was the three students who allegedly initiated the attack and then participated in rallies denouncing racism in America. Hillary Clinton tweeted support for the women in their claim as victims of racist.
Investigators say a review of multiple videos of the incident showed no evidence the women were victims of a crime or subjected to racial slurs. In fact, police said the women were the aggressors, assaulting a 19-year-old white woman. The white men involved claimed assaulted them were actually trying to break up the fight. The police concluded that “[t]he evidence indicates they were actually the aggressors in the physical altercation, and that they continued to assault the victim despite the efforts of several passengers to stop them.”
University of Albany officials announced that two of the women, Ariel Agudio and Asha Burwell, have been charged with misdemeanor assault and falsely reporting an incident. The third woman, Alexis Briggs, has been charged with misdemeanor assault.
One of the students, Asha Burwell, was due to graduate in 2017 and is pre-law. She and her friends reportedly said that up to a dozen “white men” attacked them without cause. Burwell, a junior from Long Island and student manager of the women’s basketball team, tweeted “I just got jumped on a bus while people hit us and called us the ‘n’ word and NO ONE helped us.”
In addition to the message from Clinton, the President of the University issued the following statement:
Dear Students, Faculty and Staff:
Early this morning, three of our students were harassed and assaulted while riding on a CDTA bus on Western Ave. in Albany.
The students, who are Black women, stated that racial slurs were used by the perpetrators, whom they described as a group of 10 to 12 white males and females.
I am deeply concerned, saddened and angry about this incident. There is no place in the UAlbany community for violence, no place for racial intolerance and no place for gender violence.
I am out of town today. I have decided to cut my trip short and will be returning to Albany as soon as I can to address this situation.
In the meantime, I have been in direct contact with the Provost and executive leadership team and have directed that the University respond rapidly and forcefully.
Our police, our student affairs personnel and our Office of Diversity and Inclusion staff are working together to support our young women.
We are working closely with the Albany Police Department to identify the persons responsible. If those individuals are UAlbany students, we will hold them fully accountable for their behavior.
I call upon all members of the University at Albany to unite. We must show the world that we stand for inclusiveness and stand against bias, violence and hatred.
Our annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration will be held on the evening of Monday, Feb. 1. As we reflect on the principles and values that Dr. King stood for, let us come together in solidarity to reaffirm our values.
Now is the time to recommit to our principles of inclusivity and diversity and send a strong message that we will not tolerate bias, hatred and violence in our University.
Sincerely,
Robert J. Jones
President
Jones later said that the false statements of the women were “unsettling.”
Here is the videotape and it certainly appears to contradict the claims of the three students that they were attacked by 10-12 white men.
The charges are only misdemeanors which seem a bit light for an assault on a bus and then falsely accusing others of a hate crime. However, Burwell’s interest in becoming a lawyer would be more challenging and unlikely if she is convicted of these charges.
@VietVet
Thanks!!! I try.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Courts 1 Crybullies 0
Excellent Squeeky!
@Philly T
No, you are wrong. I am not above calling people names, but I almost always add some explanations, argument, and commentary. Around here on this website, it is most often the libs who hit and run with the ad hominem stuff. And, you see a lot of snarky comments about how “right wingers” have taken the place over. I suppose the implication from those sort of overly anal-retentive twerps is that because there are sooo many of us, they simply can’t deign to explain the pearls of their positions to us conservative swine. Sort of a neo “Qu’ils mangent de la cracher.” (Which I think is French for “Let them eat a cracker” ???) 🙂
Anyway, I am more jaded, and I just think the libs are mentally outgunned, know it, and are beating a hasty retreat.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
“White privilege” is racist horse hockey.
Liberals think the Emmet Till case would have been fine if the races were reversed.
Silat13.
Excellent points.
In case you haven’t noticed the pattern, you can put your keyboard away for the evening when the regressives on the board start posting lots of LOL!’s HAHAHAHA!s and ROTFLMAO!’s
It means you’ve stumped them and they are one step away from foaming at the mouth and calling you names. Notice how they start trying to make sexualized insults. Big boy pants. Mom jeans. Prissy. Sissy.
Well done. Well done.
ROTFLMAO!!!
Let’s see, now we have silat13 and loo’observer chipping in with the name calling, and a nary a fact or decent argument disputing anything presented by all us on the troglodyte side. Lots of prissing and posturing, but nothing of substance.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Paul S. you said: “We keep seeing these made up “racist” attacks. What is it that either is being taught in the black community or on our campuses that makes these girls think they can get away with this?”
Do you ever wonder about all the white lies to police and the media? Is it being taught in the white community or in our schools? What is it that makes white people think they can get away with it?
silat13 – I worry more about the ones that send me to jail.
PaulCS
I picked Cain and Carson precisely because successful black republicans are so rare. Thanks for noticing that!
Being white and not understanding white privilege is like being a fish and not recognizing water.
I do believe Trump is the one who just came out and said “we love the poorly educated.” And lord knows they love him. It’s 95% of the republican base now.
phillyT – “white privilege” is one of those phrases that I would add to the mythology of secular humanism. I don’t pray to the gods of secular humanism.
The bigots really came out for this thread.
Talk about white privilege.
Take off the blinders white folks.
The Girl Reporter is an interesting woman. She coined the charming phrase ‘drooling feral blacks’.
Yes. She is an expert on racists.
I am greatly disturbed by the acceptance of racism and bigotry against whites, especially males.
Racism and bigotry is not OK, regardless if it’s white on black or black on white or black on Latino.
Stop justifying what has no justification. It is not the Republican’s or white men’s fault that girls lied to the police. I don’t care how rich or poor you are, it is your parents’ job to teach you to tell the truth.
Stop excusing behavior if the perpetrator has the right shade of tan. Basal melanin concentration is irrelevant to whether something is right or wrong. If it would be reprehensible, and generate riots, looting, and crying, if this was 3 white men against a black woman, then it’s just as wrong with 3 black women against a white woman.
The country would be a better, more peaceful place if people would just figure out right and wrong, regardless of skin color or politics.
@PaulCS
The Democratic Party leadership does NOT want blacks to do well. Just like an abusive spouse or boyfriend, they need blacks barefoot and pregnant. That way, they can stay in control. That whole “firewall”, thing.
The average Democratic Party supporter is (1) too stupid to pick up on that, and (2)too busy prissing around feeling smart, smug, and morally superior to Republicans to even consider that possibility that they are multitudes of degrees worse than the guys in the white robes.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@Philly T
Hmmm. Maybe me being white is interfering with my message. Maybe it was too difficult for you to look up the stats for “Blacks Killed by White Hate Groups” vs “Blacks Killed by Black Gangs”, which I bet would run about 1000 to 1. Maybe you will listen better to a black dude. . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvdZmtNrkdI
This is 18 minutes and well worth your time.
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
@Squeeky Fromm,
Props to this guy! He has it pat down correct! White people really don’t want to give out handouts. It’s white liberals that do. Every time I encounter a black person, who seems like he’s hostile to a white person, I give him the means to understand that there are books that he can use to inspire himself to betterness, to become great, and achieve a life of his own.
The books I recommended to every black person are books from Napoleon Hill, Laozi or Lao Tzu, Dale Carnegie, etc. and so on. While the majority of books I recommend were made by whites, it still can apply to black people because most of these books deal with the majority of psychological trauma, thoughts, and the means to better or repair thoughts to a better state.
Another book, “The Wild Side of the Problem Child” by Stephen Wolansky(sp?) is an excellent psychological book that helps the observer (or the reader) examine the trauma of his own past that has been bottling himself up. As the observer consciously goes back to observe the trauma not as the participant but as the observer, he realizes that the problem needs to be analyzed and then effectively removed. This is a useful tool, as many people today do not realize they have many inner children effecting them with troubles that drag on for many years without resolving themselves.
Whether they read inspirational books by whites or blacks (it really doesn’t matter; what matters is the content of the book provided by the author), they can find their way back.
But yes! Props to Mr. Sotomayor for figuring this out and urging his people to find their way without asking for a handout.
Sorry Squeeky, it’s not the 1950’s we’re talking about. The KKK is alive and as sick as ever. The number of hate groups, especially white supremacist groups is on the rise, not the decline., And they are not voting for Bernie or Hillary. Of course they’re not voting for Marco or Rafael either because both of them are Hispanic. They are Trump supporters.
It is possible that two things can be true at the same. White privilege and institutional racism is still rampant in America AND black people can achieve, to some degree, what they want. You find a few people like Ben Carson or Mr. 999 Herman Cain who broke out and did well and you think that means it’s true for everyone, and it just is not.
You can say liberals did this until you are blue in the face, but just repeating things does not make them true.
phillyT – I find it interesting that you only mention Republican blacks who did well. It is as if Democratic blacks have not done well. Under the Democrats they have not done well. The unemployment rate for blacks is over 25% under Obama. And yet it is supposedly (and we know this is not the truth) about 5%. We know the real unemployment is about 14% or higher.
@Texas P
You may enjoy this, which explains where a lot of the undercurrent of alleged racism comes from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMRvas6ssq8
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
phillyT
But let’s blame the baby mommas, right?
We’re blaming people who start fights and try to play the victim to incite race hatred which seems a perfectly legitimate reason to criticize something. But you keep pretending it’s about baby mommas. It’s amazing what people will convince themselves of if it helps defend the team.
pernicious pacifist
Hmmm…. Maybe it’s a very long history of white men on every level of American society being able to get away with things like this and far worse.
We’re against those things, why aren’t you? It’s revealing so many people on the left want to reverse roles as if today’s whites enforced slavery or Jim Crow. Hate makes you crazy.
I’ve been following this story early on, including reading through some of the Twitter accounts of those who came out in defense of the three young women from Albany after the alleged attack. I got to see a lot of casual anti-white statements in skimming those Twitter accounts. Yes, this story matters. The distorted account of “racialized violence” (when there is actually much more black on white violent crime than vice versa) presented by BLM and others with similar views matters. It has implications for whites and for our entire society. The fact that so many were so quick to believe an account of a white on black attack of the sort of race-on-other-race mob attack which is so much more commonly perpetrated by blacks on others shows how out of touch with reality people are.
Spare me the “what have you Republicans done” sort of responses. I’m a registered Democrat, but quite disgusted with my party, for many different reasons.