Students as well as other individuals address the crowd at the walk-out,
standing on a bench and using a megaphone on Monday afternoon.
SAM CARAVANA / THE DEPAUW
Senior Ashton Johnson picked up a megaphone and chanted, “Hands up. Don’t shoot.”
On Monday, students, faculty and staff walked out of classes and meetings to gather in the Holton Memorial Quadrangle as part of a national protest for the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for shooting and killing Michael Brown, and unarmed man, in Ferguson, Missouri. Despite the day’s high being 42 degrees Fahrenheit and a wind-chill that made it feel much colder, there were approximately 300 people in attendance.
“I knew that I personally wanted to participate in it, so I thought instead of just me, one lone person participating in it, let me get the whole campus involved,” Johnson said.
She used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to notify other students that she was organizing a walk out at DePauw.
“This incident is not an isolated incident,” Johnson said of the events in Ferguson.
She read off a list of eight names of unarmed males of color and 20 unarmed females of color that were shot and killed by a police officer across the nation since July 17. These were just the cases that were reported by media outlets and that Johnson could find online.
“All of these incidents happened within a span of 130 days,” Johnson said.
She passed around the megaphone and allowed whoever felt comfortable speaking to do so.
Junior Joel Borders is from St. Louis and felt that the events in Ferguson personally affected him.
“I’ve walked [those roads] myself,” Borders said. “I’ve been there.”
The variety in turn out, which spanned all races, encouraged Borders.
Students and other members of the DePauw community
gather in the Holden Memorial Quad on Monday at 1 p.m. as
part of the nation-wide day of action in reaction to police violence.
SAM CARAVANA / THE DEPAUW
“You’re here standing in solidarity and that gives me hope,” Borders said. “It gives me hope for the future. It gives me hope knowing that we have people who care not only about black people but all people.”
Johnson included two discussion times at the rally. The first was to talk about the events in Ferguson. The second was to relate those events back to the discussions surrounding multicultural inclusiveness on DePauw’s campus.
“The Ferguson case was necessary to wake the country up to show them that this is an institutional problem that is happening all over the country,” senior Courtney Cosby said.
Cosby said that these problems even happen in Greencastle, but she is encouraged by President Brian Casey’s letter that acknowledges that there are biases that exist at DePauw.
“DePauw is not this separate entity outside of the rest of the world,” Cosby said. “All of the problems that happen in the world happen here at DePauw.”
Johnson believes it is important to have these discussions on campus.
“The events that kind of lead up to things such as Ferguson, Missouri… are based on assumptions and stereotypes of people that are other.”
Her hope is that conversations on campus will break down stereotypes.
“We all matter,” Johnson said. “All lives matter.”