Above: Judith Huerta, photography/Spanish senior, and Bailey Perkins, political science/history senior, hand out information about the Trayvon Martin case March 28 outside the caf in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center. Photo by: Farris Willingham
By Farris Willingham, Editor-in-Chief
Campus minority student organizations are attempting to enlighten the campus community about racial profiling, but some students said they were greeted with indifference.
OCU NAACP, Multicultural Student Affairs, Hispanic Student Association, and Muslim Student Organization collaborated last week for the “I Am Trayvon Martin Movement.”
Martin, a black teenager from Florida, was shot and killed Feb. 26 by a neighborhood watch leader. George Zimmerman is claiming self defense in the case and has not been arrested or charged in Martin’s death.
The movement’s purpose is to use Martin’s story to perpetuate unity and promote the idea that racial profiling in many issues is pertinent to all people, not just African Americans, said Bailey Perkins, president of OCU’s NAACP chapter.
“We’re standing up for the fact that a kid was killed by a man, and no justice has been brought to the forefront,” she said.
The organizations’ members handed out Skittles outside the cafeteria last week and provided passersby with information about Martin’s case, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law and Oklahoma’s similar “Make Your Day” law.
The laws allow residents to defend themselves in life-threatening situations within the confines of their homes, but Florida’s law extends that right outside the home.
The demonstrators plan to hand out buttons this week that read, “We support justice for all people. I am Trayvon Martin Movement.”
“I encourage everyone to wear the buttons to symbolize that everyone deserves justice and everyone represents Trayvon Martin because he could’ve been anybody,” Perkins said.
Students donned “hoodies”, representing Trayvon Martin’s outfit at the time of his death, as they passed out Skittles on March 25-28 outside the cafeteria in Tom and Brenda McDaniel University Center.
One man shook his head as he walked by, Perkins said. She said she asked him why and learned that he thinks the issue is being “blown out of proportion.”
“It’s just disheartening that you use false or ignorant information to base your opinion about something,” she said. “Rather than seeing the bigger picture of a kid being killed, and no one being brought to justice, you just see black and white.”
Demonstrators are requesting that people don’t discriminate based on a person’s outfit.
“That’s where we need to be in America is where we can look at anybody and not think anything of it,” Perkins said. “We just need to think that they’re a person or human, and not that they’re a certain way because of the way they dress.”
People were passive on the issue when demonstrators passed out information last week, said Judith Huerta, Hispanic Student Association president.
“People pass by, you offer them Skittles and kind of see where their eyes wonder,” she said. “I can’t help to think that they’re just walking by.”
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