Fall 2020 Protest

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During the Fall 2020 term, a protest was held outside of Raub Sellow for 2 days, which resulted in one student being suspended.

Day 1

First year at the time and objective cool person Abigail King was not happy with the actions of some other first year students living on the first floor of Raub Sellow. As it was an election year, many conservative students had Trump 2020 flags posted in their windows facing the courtyard. King was not happy with this decision, and took it upon herself to buy small pride flags and stick them in the ground outside underneath their windows. She placed the first one at 4pm, went to dinner, and noticed it had disappeared when she returned. She then placed a second flag under a different window at 6:45 and left to go to CTL tutoring. When she returned around 8pm, the flag had been noticeably kicked over, so she replaced it and had a friend take a photo (which I will post here as soon as I can figure out how to add a photo to a wiki page). After having taken the photo, King and her friends noticed a small group of boys curse them out and steal the flag. They got the entire event on video, and sent it to admin.

Day 2

A bunch of students talked about how they had noticed the flags, and wished to annoy those who stole the flags, and so grabbed chalk and wrote many wholesome messages on the concrete in the courtyard. These included statements such as "Love is Love", "Donkey Kong says Trans Rights", "Black Lives Matter," and the controversial "Only D3?" which was a reference to how Raub Sellow is full of atheles, and how Knox is a Division 3 school, as these athletes were not good enough to get into a school with a higher division. Many students who lived in the dorms tried to erase the chalk by stepping on it or trying to wash it away with water. Many students placed post it notes in the windows of their suites which read along the lines of "Love is Love", or "Love has no gender".

Day 3

A silent sit in was organized outside of the dorms, and about ~75 students came. Protests organized by students of color who I don't know the names of but deserve 100% of the credit, continued all afternoon and into the night, where students played music, flew the flag of Mexico and a pride flag, and had a great time. This was an especially important protest, as it was the night of one of the presidential debates. At this point, the student in the video who had stolen the pride flag was identified, and rightfully suspended for theft.

Day 4

King's friends pressured her to do a police report as her property was technically stolen. She filed one, but never heard back anything from Campus Safety or the Galesburg Police. She doesn't care about getting the flags back, she's just happy she was the catalyst for big changes to happen on campus.

Aftermath

An article in The Knox Student was released, an email sent out by Teresa Amott, and Abigail King was referred to once as "hey you're that kid who put the pride flags down". Literally credit the students of color with everything.

Source: Literally King herself. Will update when I find the article that credits other students because I didn't have anything to do with the protests and they deserve the credit.