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Students engaging across difference

Through listening and honest communication, BSU and UMD students continue the conversation about race and racism on campus

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September 22, 2026

Four students of colour stand together, three listen to one student speaking, who wears beige sweatshirt and pants, in a room with floor to ceiling windows, trees, grass and pathways are seen in background — BSU and UMD students discuss issues of race and racism on campus at a workshop at Bowie State University.

The Bowie State University-University of Maryland Social Justice Alliance (SJA,) continues to work towards positive change, by making space for conversations about race and racism as part of an initiative founded after Bowie State student Lt. Richard Collins III was murdered by a UMD School of Public Health student 10 years ago on UMD’s campus.

While rooted in this painful past, SJA’s going continue to resonate, including across the country, where last week UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center released a four-part documentary series, “Connecting on Campus: Stories of Courage, Curiosity, and Empathy,” on YouTube.

The episodes feature moving and thought-provoking interviews with Lt. Collins’ parents, Richard Collins Jr. and Dawn Collins, and students from both universities.

“We have to take a stand and engage one another to have these complex, uncomfortable and sometimes disheartening conversations if we’re ever truly expecting to be able to recover from a nature that dismisses one another’s humanity,” said Rihard Collins Jr.

The second episode follows the students attending an SJA bridge-building workshop at Bowie State University.

“Engaging with Bowie [State University] students was really rewarding,” said Pratiksha Das, a UMD public health practice senior, “and just being in the space to speak to them was something I didn’t know I needed until today.”

For Bowie State University students, the exchange was just as important.

“We got this next generation that’s coming up,” said Donell Pettus, a Bowie State University graduate student studying organizational communications, “I want to continue pouring into them like how the last generation poured into me.”

Dawn Collins spoke a powerful truth about how to bring her son’s legacy to today’s generation of students grappling with how to approach ongoing racism in the wider world and on campus.

“Be willing to listen,” she said. “You don’t have to talk all the time. Listen.”

Sometimes big change starts with the courage to try something new. Students at Bowie State University and University of Maryland show us that spending time with people from different backgrounds can be a powerful first step towards building alliances that create a more loving and just world.

Lt. Richard Collins, III, a Black BSU student, was murdered on the University of Maryland campus by a white UMD student in 2017. To honor his memory and to dismantle systems that perpetuate racist violence, Lt. Collins’s parents created the BSU-UMD Social Justice Alliance, a first-of-its-kind collaboration between an HBCU (historically Black college or university) and a PWI (predominantly white institution). In this episode about the alliance, students from both campuses share their motivations and apprehensions as they prepare to meet one another for the first time at an upcoming bridge-building workshop.

Can we create spaces where everyone’s voice truly matters? Equipped with patience, courage, and curiosity, a group of students from Bowie State University and University of Maryland meet for the first time and show us what’s possible when we listen to one another’s perspectives. In this episode about the alliance – students from both campuses participate in a bridge-building workshop. New friendships and visions for the future take shape as they listen to one another’s perspectives.

These episodes are part of Connecting on Campus, a documentary series from the Greater Good Science Center that shows how students are practicing bridging differences in higher education.