On Wed., March 27, starting around 7 a.m., pairs of shoes began appearing around the front of the Quad on Wheaton College’s campus, next to a small pile of makeshift rubble and signs stuck in the grass that listed casualty counts from the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. As students walked to their first classes of the morning, the memorial turned their heads.
The shoes and signs were a peaceful demonstration organized by an unofficial group of students, encouraged by faculty members and with the quiet support of the administration. The students said they were inspired to take action by recent peaceful demonstrations in the local area, including a month of off-campus prayer walks and a March 13 department-sponsored lecture by Daniel Bannoura, a Palestinian theologian. In the lecture, Bannoura explained in strong terms the effects of the violence in Gaza and condemned what he described as white American church’s complicity in supporting Israel.
The students met over the weekend and chose a date during Holy Week, the week before Easter, which in the Christian tradition symbolizes lament and acknowledgement of suffering. The choice to display shoes came from Lombard Mennonite Church, where some of the organizers attended and where a shoe memorial was planned for Good Friday.
It was important to the organizers to display casualty counts for both sides of the conflict. Liza, a senior who asked to be identified by her first name, said the pairs of shoes were all placed together to show that casualties on both sides mattered.
“Something that we really wanted to emphasize is, life is life,” Liza said. “It’s all life and it’s all been lost. God doesn’t value certain people’s lives more than others.”
On Sunday night, the organizers circulated a statement to a few professors, asking them to share the information about the memorial with students and, if they were willing, to donate shoes for the day.
“As Christian students in the United States, we acknowledge and deplore the atrocities, crimes, and violence perpetrated by both Israeli forces and by Hamas with other Palestinian armed groups,” the statement reads.
Alexander Massad, assistant professor of world religions, served as an informal adviser for the group. Since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, Massad has been gathering groups of Arab Christians among Wheaton’s faculty, staff and students to pray and talk about the conflict. When these students, most of whom are not Arab, reached out to him on Sunday night about the memorial, he was encouraged to see their conviction.
Massad counseled them on how to navigate potential controversy while expressing their cause. He helped them finesse the language in their statement and assemble resources for viewers to get involved and learn more about the conflict, which were displayed on a QR code on one of the signs at the memorial.
This was the first demonstration of any kind related to the Israel-Hamas war on Wheaton’s campus. Massad said he attributes this to the lack of Muslim or Jewish students at Wheaton, by nature of its Protestant Christian faith statement, which all students sign. He also said that the lack of protests could be caused by students being inundated with different perspectives online to the point where they do not feel confident to develop their own concrete opinions.
“The refrain I heard from most students about this issue was, ‘I don’t know enough to actually have an opinion,’” said Massad. “Which can lead to apathy. So I would say the memorial for today is not really pushing back against any agenda, if it’s pushing back against anything, it’s apathy.”
The student organizers also met with Paul Chelsen, vice president for student development, to tell him in advance about the memorial, ask for his feedback and ensure that they were within the bounds of the Student Handbook’s assembly policy. Chelsen said the students had read the guidance on assemblies in advance of the meeting.
With Chelsen’s feedback, and after briefing facilities and campus safety staff, the memorial went ahead. In chapel around 11 a.m., Chaplain Angulus Wilson mentioned the memorial and invited students to add pairs of shoes. A few minutes prior, Eric Larson, ministry associate for discipleship in the chaplain’s office, closed his chapel message on Christ’s suffering by voicing lament for the lives lost on both sides of the conflict.
Throughout the day, many passersby stopped to look at the memorial. Liza said the response was largely positive, although she overheard some conversations from students passing by who didn’t understand what the memorial was supposed to do, and at least one cynical comment in response to the signs.
Several of the organizers visited the memorial throughout the day and saw more shoes added. Some students had heard about it from professors, and had brought extra shoes to leave on the grass. Noah, another one of the organizers, said he watched students examine the memorial, take off the shoes they were wearing, place them alongside the memorial and walk off barefoot on the cold pavement.
By 7 p.m., as the organizers began to clean up the shoes and rubble, they were surprised by how many shoes had been added. One professor donated 88 pairs, many of which were children’s shoes. Elizabeth, another organizer, said she was surprised by people’s interest in the memorial and how some passersby seemed to be learning about the facts of the conflict for the first time.
“It was just so moving seeing how many people, even early in the morning, were here,” she said. “It was lovely to see how much people wanted to know.”
