ACU’s psychology department held a come-and-go support hour to support students and their mental health due to the aftermath of racial injustice protests and the shooting of Jacob Blake.

Psychology department faculty attended the event Friday in hopes to talk to students about how they are being affected by the nation’s recent events. 

“I want to support our students recognizing that there’s continued racial injustice in this world and that potentially can be impacting our students who are resilient and strong but we want to let them know they are not alone too,” Dr. David Mosher, professor of psychology said. 

One big conversation on campus this year is the improvement of diversity issues and discussing movements such as Black Lives Matter. 

Mikey Hernandez, senior nursing major from Rhome, attended the event Friday afternoon. 

“I’m very passionate about Black Lives Matter, and I think that it’s really important for especially ACU students to be plugged in to stuff like that because it’s something that really matters today,” Hernandez said. “We have a lot of African students; we have a lot of black students and we as Christians need to do better.”

 In addition, this event took place on the 57th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech and featured a livestream of the March on Washington playing in the background. 

“We wanted to honor that legacy and save some time at the end of this event to share a few words to encourage us,” Mosher said. “I definitely feel like seeing these things in the news can have different reactions, emotions, anger, despair, hopelessness, so we wanted to have some encouragement to combat that hopelessness because we think that hopelessness can be the enemy of justice.” 

ACU’s Psychology Clinic is open to assist students in their mental health needs. 

“We just want to let people know we’re there for them; feel free to drop in anytime and set up a time to talk to us,” Mosher said. “We just want to support our students.”