Students Lead Black Lives Matter March through Campus, Middletown

On Dec. 8, approximately 1,000 students, faculty and staff participated in a Black Lives Matter March. The participants marched as a show of solidarity with national protests against discriminatory treatment of blacks in the criminal justice system and incidents of police brutality.

The group started at Exley Science Center, marched across campus and proceeded down Washington Street to the intersection at Main Street in Middletown. They chanted “black lives matter,” “hands up, don’t shoot,” and “we can’t breathe.”

In The Hartford Courant, Abhi Janamanchi ’17 said he he hoped the event would serve as a “dose of reality” about the racial issues many people face every day. “We like to think these issues don’t affect us when we’re in school,” he said in the article. “This isn’t a police state. For a lot of the students here it’s something we have to live with.”

In a Dec. 7 blog, Wesleyan President Michael Roth, who also participated in the march, wrote, “We are preparing for finals, writing exams [and] grading them. These are important things. But all around the country people are speaking out against the outrageous injustices that people of color face on a regular basis. We must acknowledge these issues. The time to speak out is now. At Wesleyan we affirm that we are an institution that values boldness, rigor and practical idealism. One doesn’t have to be an idealist to recognize that change is necessary, and that we must demand it.”

Read more about the event in The Hartford Courant and The Middletown Press. Photos of the march are below: (Photos by Dat Vu ’15)