“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.”

The numbers, symbolizing the number of bullets that police officers fired at Breonna Taylor, echoed against the buildings of the East End during a vigil held Saturday. Taylor’s murder at the hands of the officers has further fueled a nationwide movement fighting for justice.

More than three hundred students gathered together on the East End steps and grass lining the hill to Brookings, carefully spacing six feet apart.

“We really wanted this space to be primarily for students to stake their claim on this campus and make their feelings known,” Junior Nana Kusi, one of the organizers of the vigil, said. “I think on this campus there’s not many spaces or avenues through which I feel particularly represented or seen as a Black woman at Wash. U.”

Morad Suliman | Student Life

Kusi, senior Sabrina Sayed as well as juniors Nafi Seife, Rene Kina and Yohanes Mulat organized the vigil to recognize Taylor and repudiate the system that killed her and failed to bring her killers to justice.

The ninety minute vigil featured speeches from the organizers of the event, an open mic and a moment of silence at the end of the night.

“For me, it was really impactful to hear from my peers with very similar experiences as me express their feelings, really be able to be candid, and put people on the line as to how they’re treated and how they navigate these spaces on campus,” Kusi said.

The ground rules for the vigil were laid out at the beginning; it was to be a space primarily for Black students, and individuals were asked to be mindful of the space they chose to take up that night. Students were asked to be respectfully quiet, and to stay masked and socially distant.

“I thought it was really powerful, how we got so many people to show up,” Kina said. “I didn’t know if it was going to be a popular event because this has been so controversial these past few months. So just seeing all this support, for me, was really really eye-opening.”

Calls to action on both national and individual levels rang through the night.

“It is time to show our Black sisters the respect they deserve,” Sayed said in her speech. “It is time we fight with our sisters and brothers and nonbinary family members the same way we would for our blood. Ask yourself if any Black woman in your life sees you as her ally, as someone who fights for Black women.”

Kusi echoed this sentiment in an interview with Student Life.

“Nobody thinks that they’re a racist, and nobody thinks that they’re discriminatory or prejudiced against Black women, but many people are,” Kusi said. “In their actions, absolutely, they exclude and silence Black women in a variety of spaces and axes, and I want people to interrogate that.”

Maya Phelps, a freshman who spoke during the open mic portion of the night, similarly wanted the vigil to encourage people to question their actions.

“For people that chose not to come, I guess I want to question really why,” Phelps told Student Life. “What inside of you makes you want to ignore the death of Black people, especially Black women? And why are you not advocating for the lives of people who are still living?”

Before the vigil started, tealight candles were placed approximately six feet apart from each other for students to stand behind. After the organizers of the vigil spoke, students walked around to light the candles in commemoration of Taylor’s life.

“I definitely thought that the image itself, with the candles and people standing socially distant but definitely together in a sense, was very powerful,” freshman Kayzad Bharucha said.

As students stood apart from one another, cupping their hands to the candles to prevent the wind from blowing them out, the open mic section of the night began.

One of the students who spoke during this section of the night was sophomore Aaliyah Allen, the president of QUEENS, a Black women’s affinity space on campus. Allen spoke to how the unique oppression of Black women stems from the intersectionality of their identities.

“We talk about the loss of Black men at the hands of the police very often,” Allen said. “Gender disparities have been a racialized issue in America; we talk about white women’s inability to maintain their home life and juggle to climb the ladder of corporate America. But where does that leave Black women? Where did that leave Breonna?”

“‘You catch more flies with honey than vinegar,’ they say,” Allen continued. “All while America catches flies with the body of millions of slaughtered Black women since the first of us was stolen and taken to stolen land. Well frankly, I don’t give a damn about your feelings anymore. Your feelings over my life, my mother’s life, my sister’s life, my friends’ lives, women I haven’t even met—their lives? Absolutely not.”

In addition to calls to end racist and corrupt governments, societal and educational systems, the vigil was a declaration of support from Black upperclassmen to the younger Black students at the University.

“We wanted to show some of the underclassmen who didn’t get the opportunity to meet a lot of the upperclassmen on campus… that there is a strong Black community on this campus, that there is a unified Black community on this campus,” Kina said. “And I think that’s something that you wouldn’t have had otherwise because we’re, for the most part, online.”

Phelps agreed, noting how difficult it had been for her to get to know Black upperclassmen prior to the vigil. “It definitely felt like they just weren’t there because of COVID,” Phelps said. “[But at the vigil] it just felt like they put their arms around us, and it was definitely something that I needed.”

Some of the themes of the night were manifested in the cardboard signs that some students held up, bearing phrases such as “Be the Change,” “Protect Black Women” and “What crime did she commit in her sleep?” At the end of the night, students were encouraged to bring their posters and candles to a shrine for Taylor at the top of the steps.

“I hope what people took away is that it’s really, really important to check on yourself and how you interact with your Black friends and friends of other marginalized groups,” Kusi said. “If you don’t have friends of any marginalized identities, why is that?”

Ultimately, Kusi said she hoped that the vigil showcased the power and importance of collective community care.

“The event was such a beautiful reminder of the solidarity that we could have as a campus, like what can be done when students care, when we check up on one another and create space for one another,” Kusi said.