Students, faculty and staff gathered on the steps of Frost Library on Monday, Dec. 1, to participate in the Ferguson National Call to Action. The national movement follows the grand jury’s recent decision not to indict ex-police officer Darren Wilson, who fatally shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old.

About 500 people came to observe a moment of silence at 1:01 p.m. to commemorate the death of Brown, which occurred at 12:01 p.m. CST on Aug. 9. The length of the silence, four and a half minutes, was meant to represent the four and a half hours during which Brown’s body was left unattended at the scene of the shooting.

Following the silence and short speeches by President Biddy Martin and student activists, participants marched around the main quadrangle with their hands up, responding to the student leaders’ calls of “Hands up,” with “Don’t shoot,” a call-and-response adopted by protesters against police brutality across the country.

“I think it was poignant that today’s action happened on the steps of Frost, a place where we work, study, learn and sometimes sleep,” said Athri Ranganathan ’16, an organizer of the Black Lives Matter Awareness Week. “We can show solidarity by having the courage to initiate serious conversations on Ferguson and race in America with those who we are close to, and the care to not let those conversations devolve into name-calling or thoughtless insults.”

Many students walked out of their classes in order to participate.

“Seeing the turnout at the walkout made me immensely proud of the Amherst community. It was a campus-wide recognition of police brutality’s disproportionate effect on black lives and, by extension, institutional racism,” said Elaine Vilorio ‘17, a participant in the walkout.

The walkout was a national event, and saw strong participation from other areas in the Pioneer Valley. Protesters also marched across Memorial Bridge in Springfield and gathered in front of City Hall in Northampton.

Christine Croasdaile ’17 collaborated with students from Mount Holyoke College to bring the event to the Five Colleges. Most of the work of spreading the event took place on social media, through a student-created Facebook page named Five College Mass Walk Out #HandsUpWalkOut, and reached Five College students before the school administrations. After being contacted by the Multicultural Resource Center, Martin notified students and faculty about the walkout through a school-wide email.

“I think this is just one of the many demonstrations that needs to be done on this campus,” said Croasdaile, who also co-led the march around the quadrangle. “At the end of the day, vital communication is key, so hopefully people are having more conscious conversations on race, racial misconduct and race relations on campus.”

“It is one thing to talk about the national impact of police brutality against people of color. It is another to bring it back to our microcosm in an effective manner,” Croasdaile said.