Four students stood in front of a fluorescent map of the world in Ballantine Hall, but they weren’t dressed like most students.
They wore sneakers and t-shirts and jewelry, but orange full-body jumpsuits covered their clothes. Bandannas blindfolded their eyes.
A whiteboard stood next to them.
“Meet a PERSON OF COLOR at a PREDOMINATLY WHITE INSTITUTION,” the whiteboard suggested. “Do we look like criminals? Do we look like rapists? Do we look like thugs?
“Do we look COLLEGE EDUCATED?”
Below that, the sign encouraged onlookers to attend an “intergroup dialogue talk” at Wells Library Thursday night. It was part of Semana Dorada, or Golden Week, a week of events seeking to catalyze change.
The week is carried out by Latino fraternity La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda, said Mateo Perez, a LUL member.
By Thursday afternoon, the demonstrators — members of LUL, as well as some from sororities Gamma Phi Omega and Sigma Lambda Beta — had already spent an hour at the Kelley School of Business and another hour at Wells.
Later, they would move to the Indiana Memorial Union.
In these places, they kept hands held out — an act of visibility, of starting dialogue, of challenging stereotypes.
Some passers-by, when they stopped to shake the demonstrators’ hands, thanked them. But others said different things.
Some said, “Get a job.”
Some said, “All lives matter.”
Some asked, “Who is this for?”
But after all, Perez said, they were there to start a dialogue.
