Bowie State Sends Hundreds of Graduates Out Into the World, and Mourns Another

Richard W. Collins III stood at attention: arms at his sides, heels together, toes pointed slightly apart. His parents stood on either side of him and pinned the epaulettes on the shoulders of his dress uniform. They were blue for military intelligence, Mr. Collins’s chosen specialty. He was due to report next month to Fort Leonard Wood, in Missouri, then be sent wherever the Army needed him to be its eyes and ears.

But first, he had to graduate from the Reserve Officer Training Corps, then Bowie State University.

He was close. Mr. Collins kept his gaze forward, his mouth still, a pilot light behind his eyes. His mother leaned over and planted a kiss on the 23-year-old cadet’s cheek, and a reluctant smile broke across his face. The audience chuckled. The soldier was still his mother’s son.

The video of the Bowie State ROTC commissioning ceremony on Thursday is heartbreaking to watch in light of what happened next: Around 3 a.m. on Saturday, Mr. Collins was waiting for an Uber with friends on the nearby campus of the University of Maryland at College Park. A Maryland student named Sean Christopher Urbanski approached them. According to the police, Mr. Urbanski told Mr. Collins to “step left if you know what’s best for you.” When Mr. Collins refused, Mr. Urbanski stabbed him in the chest, then fled the scene. Mr. Collins later died at the hospital.

Authorities soon learned that Mr. Urbanski followed “Alt-Reich: Nation,” a racist Facebook page. The F.B.I. is investigating the murder of Mr. Collins, who is black, as a possible hate crime, although the police have not ruled out other motivations.

The case made national headlines. Many news watchers have connected Mr. Collins’s murder to an uptick in racist propaganda on college campuses. Colleges have struggled with the obligation to accommodate figures like the white supremacist Richard Spencer and other members of the so-called alt-right who, emboldened by the anti-immigrant rhetoric of President Trump’s campaign, have emerged to recruit students to their cause.

Several institutions, including College Park, have seen racist fliers appear on their campuses. Some people see Mr. Collins’s murder as an example of latent racial resentment turning violent. “Make no mistake about it,” wrote Dave Zirin, an editor at The Nation, “this was a lynching, a lynching committed by a UMD student.”

At Bowie State, the historically black college a 25-minute drive east of College Park, the mourning has been focused on the particulars of Mr. Collins, the self-assured young man who nicknamed himself “Mr. Handsome and Wealthy” after a lyric from the hip-hop group Migos. Classmates and professors remembered him as a “military-minded” man with a quick smile, strong beliefs, and a clear vision of who he wanted to be.

The campus was quiet Monday afternoon as students counted down the hours until their graduation ceremony on Tuesday. Richard Lowery III, an assistant professor of management and small business, sat in a mostly empty academic building and reflected on Mr. Collins, who had been his student in two classes.

He struck the professor as outspoken and somewhat conservative in his worldview. “Richard had gumption,” said Mr. Lowery. He would “propose ideas and concepts, even if they seemed to be unpopular.” (In March, Mr. Collins wrote on Facebook: “I’m proud to live in a country with a hard nose leader who understands it is imperative to protect American interests first.”) But he was respectful and charming in his dissents, said the professor, and everybody liked him.

“Over time he gained the respect and even admiration of other students, because he never stopped,” said Mr. Lowery. “It didn’t matter what you thought of his views, if he had something to say his hand would go up.”

Mr. Collins majored in business, but his ambition was a career in the Army, and he put his ROTC training at the center of his college experience.

Valente Ortiz, a master sergeant and senior military instructor in the Bowie State program, led Mr. Collins in lessons not taught in the business program: how to forage for food, build a shelter, ration food and water, and stay alive in the elements. “I yelled at him a lot, we slept in the woods a lot,” said Mr. Ortiz. The cadet picked Mr. Ortiz to give him his first salute as a commissioned officer at Thursday’s ceremony.

On Monday night, hundreds of people gathered for another ceremony to honor Mr. Collins, this time in mourning. Television network trucks parked along the circular drive near Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza. Newscasters spoke solemnly into camera lights, with the backdrop of students, alums, people in suits, and people in uniform in front of the communication arts center, also named for King.

Inside, people greeted each other with handclasps and hugs. Some wondered aloud about the last time they had seen Mr. Collins. Soldiers in fatigues sat solemnly in a row near the stage. Near the back, a pair of protesters from the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense silently held up a pan-African flag and a sign that said, “Expose ‘Alt Right’ Neo Nazis on UMD Campus RIP 2nd Lt. R. Collins III!” Reporters roamed the aisles asking people if they knew Richard directly, expressing condolences, and asking if they’d be willing to do an interview. The auditorium gradually swelled to capacity.

After a prayer, Lt. Colonel Joel Thomas, a professor of military science at Bowie State, took to the podium. He wore fatigues and his face was clenched with grief. It didn’t matter that the young officer was killed on a college campus and not on a battlefield, said Mr. Thomas. “Second Lt. Richard Collins was my guy.” Mr. Thomas told people in the audience they shouldn’t be afraid to cry. During the last lines of his speech, he broke down in tears.

There were echoes of the commissioning ceremony throughout the vigil. Talitha Royster, a fellow ROTC cadet who sang the national anthem at the Thursday event, fought tears as she sang the gospel hymn “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” The organizers replayed a video slide show of Mr. Collins set to Aloe Blacc’s “The Man,” which had been part of a montage at the commissioning ceremony. Mr. Ortiz stood near the side of the stage, this time in street clothes.

“Thursday at the commissioning ceremony, that was the most premier time of my entire life, and he was right next to me,” said Julian Harrell, another ROTC cadet, his voice breaking. “Right next to me.”

Afterward, the crowd gathered near a giant stone torch at the corner of the Bowie State quad. Some students held candles, and others held green, blue, and orange balloons. As night fell, they let go of the balloons and watched them drift into the sky. Then most of the crowd dispersed. A smaller group stayed behind to listen to a woman from the New Black Panthers yell through a megaphone: Mr. Collins was “a soldier in the sky,” she said, and he needed them to be soldiers on the ground — to “do something about this.”

The graduation ceremony was held Tuesday morning in College Park, in an arena a mile from where Mr. Collins was attacked. Officials draped his regalia over an empty chair. His father walked across the stage to accept his degree, accompanied by Richard’s sister and other family members. Then they returned to the audience to collect his mother. Holding hands, they walked out of the arena.

Steve Kolowich writes about writes about ordinary people in extraordinary times, and extraordinary people in ordinary times. Follow him on Twitter @stevekolowich, or write to him at steve.kolowich@chronicle.com.