At age 23, your graduate degree is worth more than $11,000. At 23, you’ve probably spent more than $11,000 on survival necessities alone. At 23, your life is most certainly worth more than $11,000. At 23, grown men should not be laughing over your death.
Any of us could have been in the shoes of Jaahnavi Kandula, the most recent fixation in the media movement of police scrutiny. Most of us are Kandula’s age, if not younger. The only difference is that we’ll make it out having completed our degrees. She’ll never get that opportunity.
Law enforcement personnel hold a duty to protect the community that they serve. In the current day, most police officers are simply failing to uphold their commitment to safety and, on the contrary, are becoming perpetrators as opposed to saviors.
Daniel Auderer, who responded to the scene, made jokes about the value of Kandula’s life. He has since claimed that his comments were taken out of context, that he was mocking poor responses often seen in these types of circumstances. This leaves us watching the case unfold, with one of two realities to live with. Either an officer was genuinely minimizing a woman’s life to a value on a check because she was “a regular person,” or he was mocking the industry in which he works, in which case those within that industry are not blind to the problem and yet don’t appear to be pushing for any semblance of reform.
He said that “she had limited value.” Without knowing it, Auderer spoke to every student in the U.S., and he rocked our core with four words. To devalue one of us is to devalue all of us.
If those with more power than us will not band together for change, we at our level of academia must create the first links towards change.
“She was 26 anyway.” Auderer didn’t even take the time to learn her actual age before diminishing the value of her life. She was younger than he had estimated, but despite his miscalculation at the scene, he sold her soul to the police department for a mere $11,000 in a self-proclaimed auction on the street.
Most students at the University of New Haven pay more than $11,000 each semester to be here. Our lives are worth so much more. Her life was worth so much more.
The footage wasn’t released until eight months after the woman’s death, which was in January. For almost a year, the degradation that barely waited for her final breath has been kept a secret.
Kandula’s story should be remembered by her name, but that should not be confused by taking it as an isolated incident. Her accident stands at the intersection of student safety and the ethical and moral expectations of first responders. Too often, another headline reminds us of the fragility of being a young adult in this country, especially one of a protected class, and with such the hesitancy at which we must proceed towards officials in positions that on paper exist to keep us safe.
We hope that Kandula is finally able to rest without strangers laughing over her and we hope that we, lucky enough to be pursuing a higher education, can speak out to protect our peers from future disrespect. Actions speak louder than words, but the first step towards change can be found in breaking our silence.
