Walking on a college/school campus should never be something that a student dreads to do. Unfortunately, the flaws in today’s society make student life a lot more difficult than it ideally should be. Violence, racism, gun laws, and police brutality heavily impact American society and are leading the next generation to an uncertain future. 

In early Jan. of 2023, 23-year-old college graduate Jaahnavi Kandula was struck by a Seattle Police Department officer Kevin Dave as she was crossing on a crosswalk. According to CNN, almost eight months after Kandula’s death, the streets of Seattle were enraged after the release of a body-worn police camera footage in which another Seattle police officer Daniel Auderer was mocking Kandula’s death. “She had limited value,” Auderer said. “Yeah, just write a check.” Auderer showed no sympathy towards Kandula’s family and their loss and instead proceeded to mock the value of Kandula’s life. 

This case sparked a movement across the country to support Kandula’s family and shine a light on one of the most overlooked issues in today’s society: police brutality. For centuries, civilians of color have been mistreated and subjected to unlawful harassment by U.S. police officers. This unfair treatment is a direct effect of white supremacy and shows that the country as a whole needs to take a step back to address this issue. This can be traced as far back as the Jim Crow laws that were in effect in the 1900s. Segregation of people of color from white people isn’t anything new, even though these practices have been outlawed for decades. This leads us to an important question that needs to be answered: If U.S. civilians cannot trust the people in uniform who have sworn to protect them, who can they trust? 

As police officers, it is their sworn duty to protect their citizens. Using brute force and biased opinions to harm civilians contradicts everything that they stand for. 

After Kandula’s case, the South Asian community did not stay silent about the atrocious remarks made by Auderer. Influencers, like Canadian television host Lilly Singh, openly voiced their outrage on Kandula’s case. “At what point does the world stop dismissing the value of girls and women, specifically Indian girls and women?” Singh wrote on Instagram. “Do you know what has no value? The patriarchal and racist systems that uphold this kind of gross thinking because it factually and statistically holds us all back.”

Police brutality against people of color must be taken seriously and the government must take prominent steps to combat this issue. 

Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Baker feels strongly about upholding his duty as a sheriff. “The [Loudoun County] Sheriff’s Office, and myself, do not condone [police brutality] and we don’t agree with it at all,” Baker said. “If something like that happens, we take the necessary action to either discipline it and file criminal charges.” 

Baker agrees that police brutality should be combated as soon as possible to minimize harm to civilians. “That’s just personally something that I don’t agree with,” Baker said. His priorities as a sheriff are to always keep students and staff safe. “[I always] make sure that [the school] is a safe area for everybody,” Baker said. “If I had to pick one [reason], that’s why I’m here: to keep everybody safe.” 

Students should never feel the need to be cautious on school grounds where their main priority is to learn and become educated. Students should never have to worry about whether or not law enforcement will forcefully act upon them on campus. 

As the world becomes more advanced, certain people get more access to power. Thinking from a moral perspective, every human life is valuable and by no means should be viewed as “worthless” to someone who is supposed to protect it.

As a society, reaching the perfect balance is ultimately the end goal. The existence of bad cops who don’t have good intentions doesn’t give officers an excuse to act in a harmful way to civilians. There can never be a “perfect” society where everyone only has good intentions at heart, but we can always strive to stand up for our own beliefs and justify them. “There’s bad apples everywhere,” Baker said. “99% of every police department is good and [the officers] want to do good things and help protect. But you always have that 1% that isn’t good.” As a society, let’s stand up for school safety. We can start implementing more awareness sessions, such as assemblies, into school schedules to discuss and prevent societal issues. Every life matters, make that 1% count.