From March 11-16, 2023, Princeton University students will travel to George Floyd Square in Minneapolis, MN, as part of an “immersive learning opportunity” hosted by the Office of Religious Life (ORL). There, the trip participants will study “the sacred work of memorial preservation and protest” while engaging with community leaders to better understand their pursuit of racial justice.
The ORL announced the trip following increased attempts to address “systemic racism” by the Princeton University faculty and administration. Such efforts include public statements denouncing the death of Floyd in its immediate aftermath and the removal of Woodrow Wilson’s name from both the School of Public and International Affairs and Wilson College in 2020. The ORL itself has also presented racial justice-themed programming, including hosting Jeanelle Austin, the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the George Floyd Global Memorial in October of 2022.
George Floyd Square, at the intersection of 38th and Chicago Avenue in Minneapolis, was created to memorialize Floyd and the social justice movements sparked by his death at the hands of a police officer in May 2020. In the aftermath of Floyd’s death, crowds of protesters gathered around the police precinct in Minneapolis, and eventually a makeshift autonomous zone surrounded by barricades blocked off the area. This protest zone later became home to what is now known as George Floyd Square.
The site features two memorials, specifically a sculpture of a raised fist which symbolizes the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, and the Say Their Names cemetery, composed of headstones for more than 100 Black individuals who were killed during interactions with police. BLM is a social justice organization dedicated to fighting white supremacy and “acts of violence” against African Americans.
When asked what led the ORL to create a trip to a site centered around political activism, Rev. Alison Boden, Dean of Religious Life and the Chapel for the ORL, wrote in an exclusive statement to the Tory that she does not view this trip and its central site as “related to political activism.”
Boden explained that the trip is meant to “educate students about the faith resources that have evolved at the very site of the death of George Floyd” and give them the resources to “marshal their faith as they reckon with racism.”
She argued that George Floyd Square “has taken on great spiritual significance for many, as have other sites of suffering” and likened the location to “Auschwitz, Ground Zero in NYC, the dome in Hiroshima over which the atomic bomb was detonated, etc.”
(Image Courtesy of Princeton Office of Religious Life)
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