This is Why We Fight: Student Activism at Gettysburg College

Lauren White (Gettysburg College)

“This is Why We Fight” is an interactive timeline of student-led social justice movements at Gettysburg College. For each event on the timeline, there is a summary of the events and an explanation its significance, both locally and nationally. Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow Lauren White’s interest in this project was sparked by the amount of campus activism Gettysburg and other campuses witnessed in the 2015-2016 school year regarding racism on college campuses and the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Using Scalar and TimelineJS, this project documents an integral part of college history, and also attests to the merit of those students who fight for their own rights or support those with less privilege than themselves. The timeline will continue to expand, using crowdsourcing to collect stories of Gettysburg students and alumni.

Lauren White is a junior at Gettysburg College double majoring in English and Environmental Studies, and minoring in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This past summer, Lauren worked as a Digital Scholarship Summer Fellow with Musselman Library and created an interactive timeline of student-led social justice movements at Gettysburg College. Her interests include advancing diversity in the digital humanities and interdisciplinary scholarship.

This is Why We Fight: Student Activism at Gettysburg College