Sixteen minutes for 16 shots. That’s how long a “Black Lives Matter ‘Die-In’” lasted last Thursday in front of the Gengras Student Union at the University of Hartford. Graduate psychology students laid on the ground in the rain for 16 minutes — each minute for each of the 16 bullets fired into Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer in 2014.
Following the trend of what many graduate psychology students across the nation have been doing to coincide with the anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. (April 4, 1968), University of Hartford students wanted to participate as well.
“As psychology students, recognizing the social injustices that minority clients are facing on a day-to-day basis and how that carries into the therapy room and how that can affect mental and physical health in so many ways,” Sonia Altavilla said, who is a second-year student in the psychology graduate program.
In Oct. 2014, 17-year-old McDonald was armed with a 3-inch knife and was shot 16 times in 13 seconds by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke from approximately 10 feet away.Video of the shooting was captured by a police cruiser’s dashboard cam, but footage wasn’t released until Nov. 2015, over 13 months later. The police officer was charged with first-degree murder, and numerous protests rose up against police brutality and of how the case was handled.
“The point of the die-in being not only to honor and remember that, but to move the movement forward and to realize how structural racism is and how it still continues in everyday life,” Ramya Rangamannar said, also a second-year psychology graduate student. “We, as being in a privilege position in terms of race, need to take the responsibility upon ourselves to do something about it because if people in a privileged position don’t, then it doesn’t get heard.”
“A lot of us want to use the privilege position that we’re in to inspire others who do have privilege to speak out for those who do face some danger when they speak out,” Nick Galef said, another second-year psychology graduate student.
The group of students had support from the Connecticut chapter of Association for Women in Psychology and the multicultural and diversity committee in the Graduate Institute of Professional Psychology at the University of Hartford.
“We really just wanted to raise awareness on campus and hopefully make a difference in one person’s mindset even for just one minute,” Rangamannar said.