At 2:30 p.m. on April 22, the university came together to honor the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings on Patriot’s Day. Reverend Adrienne Berry-Burton from the Interfaith Campus Ministry introduced speakers Chancellor J. Keith Motley, Student Body President Jesse Wright, and Student Trustee Alexis Marvel.
Motley, who was the first to speak, told the audience that he had met with the family of Krystle Campbell, a former UMass Boston student killed in the bombings, a few hours before. “They want you to know,” he told assembled students, staff, and faculty, “that their daughter was proud to have been a student here.”
Motley told the audience he felt “sorrow for the families of both the victims and the perpetrators.” He encouraged community members to “weaken the impulse to criticize or demonize any group, people, or human community,” and to “strengthen [the] resolve to cling to the purpose that fires [the] soul.”
Wright, who spoke immediately after Motley, announced that he planned to introduce a resolution to the Undergraduate Student Government in two days that would make the third Monday of every April UMass Boston Strong Day.
Finally, Marvel encouraged everybody to start building community by “talking to one another, reaching out to each other, maybe saying hi to someone in your class who you’ve never spoken to.” She also reminded the audience to take heart in the fact that “something beautiful can come out of evil.”
At 2:50 p.m., exactly one week after the explosions, those present stood quietly and held hands with the people next to them. Berry-Burton was the first to break the silence. “Be the peace you seek.”
Nursing students Stacey Tosado, Theresa Rodrigues, and Arlene Shwartz also attended. Tosado was one of 30 volunteers from the College of Nursing and Health Sciences who ended up treating the injured after the explosions at the marathon finish line, and Rodrigues lives a street away from the younger of the two bombers, Dzhokar Tsarnaev in Cambridge. “I passed him every day when I walked my dog … my dog peed in his yard,” she said.
Kathleen L. Yorkis, Interim Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs and Interim Executive Director of University Health Services, handed out commemorative ribbons. Health Services offers emergency counseling, and according to Yorkis, she and the other staff “welcome people coming to see [them].”