Members of the Greencastle community participated in a walk on April 21 to show support for students protesting the recent racist incidents on DePauw University’s campus.
The walk began at Gobin Church and circled around DePauw’s campus and the Greencastle town square.
According to a press statement, the group gathered “to break the white silence coming from our community. There is no wall between the city and the University campus- and while we did not commit the racist acts, we are responsible for what happens in our community. There should be no place for hate in Greencastle.”
Leslie Hanson, one of the coordinators of the event, reiterated the same idea. “We are frustrated about the lack of voices coming from Greencastle condemning the racist acts that have happened on and around campus,” she said.
The walk was thanks to “a loose collaboration of different individuals who came together,” Hanson said.
Bryan Langdoc, pastor at Gobin Church, was one of those individuals who helped bring the idea to life. As a four-year resident of Greencastle, Langdoc said this was not his first exposure to racial issues in the town. “I would say it’s been a pretty steady three years, at least in my time here, of folks feeling unsafe in the community.”
However, Langdoc did not want the purpose of the walk to be unclear. “We are very aware that we are white allies, that we are not swooping in to save the day, but rather just wanting to be present. We’re all planning to listen and hear how the students are doing and what else we can do.”
Rick Provine, dean of libraries at DePauw and Greencastle resident, echoed Langdoc’s intent. “I think there are a lot of students for whom this is a really difficult time and a really serious situation, and I just want them to know we’re thinking of them and standing with them,” he said.
Though both Langdoc and Hanson did not specifically identify future events of this sort, they expressed their desire for continued awareness.
“Yes, there will be more action. We have a few ideas of other actions we would like to take, but they have not yet gelled,” said Hanson. She also expressed her hope that the community will contact on-campus multicultural groups, saying, “We have been reaching out [to multicultural groups]. We did fail in doing that early enough, but we are working on correcting that.”
Langdoc agreed, saying, “We’re certainly going to keep having conversations in and around Gobin and we’re planning to keep moving forward and seeing how we can tackle this injustice together.”