Editor’s Note: After careful deliberations and consultation with the SRJC Black Student Union, Oak Leaf editors decided to include potentially offensive language in the following article.

Members of Santa Rosa Junior College’s Black Student Union encountered a spate of racism and bigotry while on a retreat with members of the Sonoma State BSU Nov. 10 at a bowling alley in Rohnert Park.

As BSU members left Double Decker Lanes at closing time, a group of a half-dozen white, college-aged people shouted racial slurs and yelled, “Go back to Africa,” according to five BSU members who attended the retreat.

A female patron of the alley then shoved BSU member Darika Ramsey, called her the n-word and refused to get out of her personal space, BSU members said.

The woman told Ramsey and the rest of the group they were stuck in the past and continued spewing racial slurs as her friend dragged her away from the BSU group, Ramsey said.

When the group of SRJC students started to leave the parking lot, the assailant’s friends drove up in two cars and began yelling and taunting the group, according to Steven Covarrubias, a BSU member who witnessed the events.

A man standing up outside of one vehicle yelled, “You fucking niggers. Go back to Africa,” according to Covarrubias and other members of the group. The taunting lasted several minutes, until the two cars sped away.

“This is mind-blowing that this is happening in our time,” Covarrubias said. “It’s just crazy, how it’s 2014. Our president’s black, come on. It felt like I was in Alabama in 1955.”

The BSU students were shocked to be targets of such bigotry and racism. They were discussing the incident a minute later when four Rohnert Park police officers arrived on the scene.

Tre Webber, an employee of Double Decker Lanes who worked that night, said there were no problems with the 20-plus BSU students in the bowling alley and that the first he heard of any trouble was when someone from the alley told him that five to 10 police cars were outside. By the time he made it outside, the hostilities were over.

According to the students, the police acted in an aggressive and hostile manner towards the black students, and one officer even took his baton out and held it in a menacing manner while approaching the BSU members.

When the students attempted to report the assault and the hate speech, they said police officers told them to go home and that the bowling alley was closed. Other officers asked white patrons of the alley what happened, according to Elias Hinit, a BSU member who witnessed the police actions.

As the students protested their innocence and the injustice of police ignoring them after the confrontation, the police became more aggressive and cleared the students from the scene. One officer told Hinit that he didn’t care if they were assaulted and they needed to leave.

Hinit said the students have since filed a personnel complaint with the Rohnert Park police about the incident. When asked for comment, dispatchers at the police department declined, stating it was a personnel matter that would be dealt with by senior officers.

California Penal Code 422.6 makes it a crime for someone to “willfully injure, intimidate, interfere with, oppress, or threaten any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of this state or by the Constitution or laws of the United States” based on that person’s “disability, gender, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation or association with a person or group with one or more of these characteristics.”

Janae Crosby, an SRJC student and BSU member who was present during the altercation, said she was shocked by what happened. “I’ve let [racial slurs] slide before, but now that I joined BSU, it’s kind of like why would I let it slide? It’s not acceptable,” Crosby said. “If I do hear it, I will tell them straight: ‘Do not call me that.’”

Jasmine Landry, a BSU member who also attended the retreat, said the whole situation was unfair. “No group should ever feel like [that]. They have the right to go out and enjoy their night; they don’t have to constantly be in fear.” Landry admitted the incident has stuck with her days later.

The SRJC students who spoke with the Oak Leaf about the incident agreed that to change the way our society deals with issues like racism and bigotry, everyone has to be a part of the solution.

“It’s all about dialogue and education,” Hinit said. “We see the bigger picture. This is just a product of the racist system that we are living in.”

Hinit said it is hard to make the necessary changes, because we talk about incidents of racism, but then they still happen the next day. “It is everybody’s responsibility to talk about this,” he said.

“Racism doesn’t come with your genetics; it is taught,” Ramsey said.