Raymond Santana Yusef Salaam

Yusef Salaam and Raymond Santana, two members of the Central Park Five—now known as the Exonerated Five—will speak at CU Boulder's Glenn Miller Ballroom at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 10. Salaam and Santana are being hosted by the student-led Cultural Events Board. The event will feature an introduction followed by a Q&A.

The event is free and open to the public, and attendees will be seated on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors to the event will open at 6 p.m.

Salaam and Santana were two of five boys (ages 14–16) who were wrongly convicted of brutally attacking and raping a young woman in Central Park in 1990. After spending years in prison, the convictions of the five men were overturned in 2002. Now known as the Exonerated Five, members of the group work to bring light to disparities in America's criminal justice system. The story was re-introduced to the public in a four-part Netflix series released in 2019.

Before being released, Santana spent five years in prison. He now works closely with the Innocence Project and is a member of the New York City Justice League. He owns the clothing company Park Madison NYC, named after his home city of New York.

Since his release, Salaam has committed himself to advocating and educating people on the issues of false confessions, police brutality and misconduct, press ethics and bias, race and law, and the disparities in America’s criminal justice system. He received the President's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016 from President Barack Obama and was appointed to the board of the Innocence Project in 2018.

The Cultural Events Board's mission is to provide programming that brings culture, diversity and social awareness to the CU Boulder campus.