Albany

The black female University at Albany students who said they were victims of a racially motivated attack on a CDTA bus will face charges, sources with knowledge of the situation said Wednesday.

The nature of the minor criminal charges was not immediately clear. The women, who were issued appearance tickets, are scheduled to appear in City Court on Monday.

"No arrests have been made," said Frank Wiley, chief of UAlbany's police department. "If that happens, we will inform the public."

Two of the three women who made the accusations have not been identified, and their names were redacted from the police report released to the media.

A third woman, Asha Burwell, has been identified but attempts to reach her were unsuccessful Wednesday night.

The women had initially said they were the victims of a Jan. 30 attack that was preceded by racial insults and allegedly involved at least 10 to 12 white men and women passengers.

One woman told university police that several men kicked her after she fell to the floor.

But doubts about the story came quickly, and Albany County District Attorney David Soares, in an attempt to defuse rising tension amid national attention about the students' story, invited select and influential members of the city's black community, along with university officials, to view video evidence from the bus.

Several who had seen the evidence, including longtime community activist Alice Green and City Council President Carolyn McLaughlin, said what they saw did not confirm the students' claims, although the women did not say they did not believe the students.

"Nothing is clear-cut at all," said Green, the executive director of the Center for Law and Justice, at the time. "People have claimed there was a racial incident. It's kind of hard to tell from the video. ... It's just very confusing."

Asked whether the videos call the women's claims into doubt, Green said: "I think that's the thing you're going to have to leave to other people who are investigating this and talking to them all, you know, because I can't venture to guess what actually happened."

Green and others were also shown statements made by other minority passengers on the bus. Those statements also contradicted what the three students had claimed, sources have said. Authorities have not released the videos to the public.

On Tuesday, more than 200 students and faculty met with UAlbany President Robert Jones to discuss race relations and diversity on campus as the administration looks into possible violations of the college's code of conduct stemming from the incident on the bus. "This has been a very difficult time for the community," Jones said Tuesday.

Jones also said his forceful statement in the immediate aftermath of the allegations was based on compassion. That statement was subsequently criticized for its apparent assumption that the claims were entirely accurate.

"We had to act very, very quickly," Jones said Tuesday. "We responded based on what the women reported and evidence we had at the time."