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Two UConn Students Arrested After Being Captured On Video Shouting Racist Slurs
By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 22, 2019
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Oct 22, 2019
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Two students at the University of Connecticut were arrested by campus police yesterday, over a week after they were captured on video shouting racist slurs, causing outrage both on and off campus.
UConn students Jarred Karal and Ryan Mucaj, who are both 21 and white, were charged with ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race. It's a misdemeanor charge which is punishable by a maximum of 30 days in jail, a fine of up to $50, or both.
The video, which you can see below, was taken by another student in the Charter Oak Apartments and showed three men walking in the apartment complex's parking lot on October 11th. You can hear them saying the n-word louder and louder in the video. Police did not arrest the third person in the video, because they found that they did not participate in saying the racial slur, university spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz told The Washington Post.
According to the arrest warrant affidavits, the student who took the video is black, and was playing video games in his apartment around midnight when he heard several students outside his building shouting “penis.”
“I ... took out my cell phone thinking that I would get a funny video of the group of males as they walked past my apartment building,” the student told police, in a written statement. “I had begun filming hoping to get the group of males saying or doing something funny; however, as they continued walking down the road past my apartment building they began to say [the racial slur]. As the group transitioned to saying [the racial slur] they began to speak in a much softer tone and were not screaming nearly as loud as they had been previously.”
Once he realized what they were saying, he contacted the police and provided them with the video, which was then disseminated on Twitter and other social media platforms. According to the Hartford Courant, UConn police used surveillance video and ID scanner footage from a bar just off campus to track down the two suspects.
“It is supportive of our core values to pursue accountability, through due process, for an egregious assault on our community that has caused considerable harm,” UConn President Thomas C. Katsouleas said in a statement late yesterday.
After the video was released, another student alleged that two fraternity members used a racial slur against her at a party, the university’s NAACP chapter wrote in a letter published this week. “If the university does not adequately address and handle these occurrences of racism appropriately, it will create a culture in which racism is tolerated and normalized,” the NAACP letter said. “We demand for your full assurance that you will take appropriate measures to hold the students involved in these heinous acts of racism accountable.”
In a written statement to police, Karal admitted that he and Mucaj had yelled the racist slur after a night of drinking. “As we made our walk up the hill, Ryan and I thought it would be funny to play the penis game,” Karal told police, describing the game in which people yell the word "penis" louder and louder until someone gives up. "As we made our way past the bus stop into the entrance of Charter Oak Apartments we switched from playing the penis game to then shouting [the racial slur] instead of penis.”
Karal added that he and Mucaj shouted the slur for about two minutes, but didn’t think anybody else had heard them. “I sincerely apologize if we had offended anyone," he said, according to the arrest warrant affidavit. "This was not our intentions at all. We were acting dumb, idiotic and childish. We should have never used that type of language at all. It was not our intent to broadcast what was said to any one person, we were just being immature. I sincerely apologize again for our actions.”
On Monday, before the arrests were made public, hundreds of students protested on campus and chanted, “It’s more than just a word." And the Daily Campus, UConn’s student publication, also posted an editorial Monday ripping administrators for their “painfully slow and underwhelming” response to the video.
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racism
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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