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The Official Newsletter of The University of Maryland's Black Student Newspaper
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May 7, 2026 | Volume 1 | Issue 12
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This will be our last newsletter of the semester! We hope you all enjoyed our new edition to the paper, and we look forward to appearing on your screens again in September. This week in news, we have a College Park potentially looking into a new police department, the UMD group Serotone and a story on the Student Entertainment Events spring Fetty Wap performance.
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2025-2026 Editor-in-Chief
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The City of College Park is taking another look at the feasibility of having its own police force as part of a public safety study.
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This study, which should wrap up its final report by the end of the year, comes after the city learned that public safety was a high priority for residents on a community satisfaction survey, Mayor Fazlul Kabir told The Black Explosion.
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The mayor said the study isn’t just looking at policing. It also explores other ways to improve safety, such as improving street lights and understanding the underlying reasons behind crime.
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As part of looking into the feasibility of a College Park police force, the study will investigate the costs involved with starting and maintaining a police department. The idea was last investigated in 2018, Kabir said.
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🔗: Read more here
✍️: Lillian Glaros
📸: Sophia Parkins
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With just a turntable and a saxophone, four students at the University of Maryland aim to uplift College Park’s social scene and bring dance-minded people together through the high-concept parties and events of their recently formed DJ collective, Serotone.
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“‘Serotone’ the name comes from serotonin, the feel good hormone, and we added tone because of music, but I also wanted to think about tone like skin tone, where everyone is coming together for the love of music,” said junior marketing and French major and one of Serotone’s founders Arden Lawson.
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Three students founded the group in UMD’s entrepreneurship and collaboration space Startup Shell last fall to host spontaneous, energetic house parties in College Park after its creators felt musically unfulfilled and less than satisfied with the bar-centric options in the area.
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🔗: Read more here
✍️, 📸: Cameron Lee
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Christina Torres, 38, stood in the packed arena with her two elementary school-aged children.
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Many people around her questioned whether or not fulfilling her 9 and 11-year old’s request to see rap artist Fetty Wap was a good idea. But for Torres, her terminal cancer diagnosis made it an easy decision.
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“At the end of the day, you live now,” she said. “You don’t wait to be like ‘oh, do the thing.'”
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Fetty Wap performed to a sold-out crowd of around 9,800 people at the University of Maryland on Friday at the Student Entertainment Services Events Art Attack 42 held in the Xfinity Center.
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Fetty Wap was joined by fellow Rapper Monty, who is also a member of music group Remy Boyz. The headliner became popular after his song “Trap Queen” was released in 2014, reaching number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
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