The Pace community is taking steps to promote unity and support on campus in light of the national outrage that has sparked the conversation about police brutality and the Black Lives Matter movement.

The president of the Black Student Union (BSU), Adina McCray, said that the organization aims to create a space on campus for students to talk about issues or events such as the shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile this summer.

“That’s the space that we want to create for the students on this campus. If they are affected by this issue they can come and talk about it and be educated and facilitate some sort of discussion that will help change the narrative here in the country,” McCray said.

However, even though McCray believes that these discussions are important, her goal for BSU is to also to promote positivity and create unity on campus.

“It’s really important to talk about those issues because not talking about it becomes part of the problem, but that’s not going to be the sole focus of all of our meetings,” said McCray. “We’re hoping to reach out to other cultural organizations and [we] are working on more events for the entire Pace community to bring them together and celebrate culture.”

McCray said that BSU is aiming to unify the campus through education.

“I think that there is a lot of room for ignorance which makes it difficult to disprove stereotypes that are so prominent in the media,” said McCray. “If you don’t hang around people of color you’re going to think those stereotypes are true. We want to educate people and move past that. Yes, [BSU] is a space for black students but it’s also a space where we, as an organization, have a responsibility to have those conversations and educate people instead of having an argument.”

Chair and director of Pace’s Department of Criminal Justice and Security, Joseph Ryan, also believes that education is a key factor in ending stereotypes.

“[The Pace criminal justice department] has always focused on the Constitution and that we have to treat everybody equal under the law,” said Ryan. “That has been our major focus for thirty-five years.”

According to Ryan, there are more than 630,000 police officers in the United States, with less than 5% with a college education.

“I’m trying to have our students think differently when [they] go out there. They have the most important job when they go out there,” said Ryan. “You can have people’s lives on the line and black lives do matter. Black people are dying at the hands of the police. Any good detective will tell you that [America] has a problem but no one knows why this is happening.”

Ryan, who received the Leadership Award from the National Association of Black Law Enforcement Officers (NABLEO) in 2014, has been asked by the New York Police Department (NYPD) to sit in and assess police officers in “implicit bias training.”

“Yes, I think that it’s important to address [bias] but we also have to figure out how to de-escalate situations,” said Ryan. “In my travel courses, one of the things my students learn especially when we go to Ireland is that police officers do not have guns. They have to learn from day one that you’re going to treat the situation differently. Having said that, their training focuses on conflict, resolution, and de-escalation.”

According to Ryan, although it has not been proven, a college education “will make the difference.”

“We need people out there who are educated, who know the difference between a real conflict situation, and a de-escalation strategy [like one] used in Ireland called STEP: stop, think, evaluate and proceed,” Ryan said.

The director of Multicultural affairs, Cornell Craig, and Pace junior Keyshana Dupuy will host a panel called “All Lives Matter?” on September 29^th to encourage open dialogue about topics such as the Black Lives Matter movement, the Blue Lives Matter movement, the first amendment, and the national anthem.