Recently, Ohio University has been going viral across huge media platforms. These platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat. All these videos and statements that have gone viral, have not been all good. In fact, many of the posts have been very negative and has put a bad view on the way this Fall Semester 2019 at Ohio University has been going. One of the biggest controversies has been over the video of a young African-American male, Ty Bealer, being aggressively handled by the Athens police.
As we all know there have been many injustices increasing the past few years between African-American males, as well as females, and America's federal department. In fact, for every ten-point increase in the state racism index there’s a corresponding 24 percent increase in the ratio of unarmed black people killed by police compared to white people killed in same conditions. This just makes the event and the way things were handled for this situation even worse. There are so many questions students, faculty and observers everywhere want to know. They want answers and from the looks of many different comments under these viral posts of the incident, they want justice.
Social media has been a gigantic way for news to get out fast. One simple like, retweet, share and reaction can go a long way and that is what exactly happened for this horrendous event that occurred on Ohio University's very own, Court Street. The video showed three Caucasian police officers put Ty Bealer, a student from the University of Cincinnati, face down in the Athens bricks with aggressive force and action. People wanted justice for Ty Bealer, not only at Ohio University but throughout Ohio and across the country. The video showed all three officers hitting, slamming and tasing the 21 year-old young man. The video made ones cringe and very upset, as you can hear in the back of the entire video.
After the video went viral and petitions started to arise, the Athens police department had to speak up and so did Ohio University. They decided to do a press conference and campus meeting for students to come and get their questions answered about the situation. I went to this meeting and something that stuck out to me, as well as others, was a statement the Athens police chief made. He said "if I knew the video would have gotten as big as it did, I would have never said my statement before." You see before the viral video the police chief defended his cops and said they did nothing wrong. That is why he took back his statement, because to the public that statement and those cops were wrong. His statement caused uproar and more disappointment to the attendees at the meeting.
The press conference and meeting did not give attendees comfort or hope but instead people walked out more confused and angry than before. Like the Athens police chief, people always slip up and say how they feel not being aware of consequences that may come later. You have to think about what you are about to say before you say it and this was a perfect example of this. The video is still going around and has been taken to television around Ohio and used in court for trial. No verdict has been made yet but people are waiting to see if Ty Bealer will get his justice.
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