Nearly 250 people gathered at the Carrboro High School media center Tuesday night to participate in an interactive presentation of a special class project.

Sophomores, juniors and seniors in Matt Cone’s “Global Cultures and Minority Systems” class spent the semester studying different cases in which an African-American was killed by a police officer. Cone said it was important for students to study these cases to obtain a better understanding of the world around them.

“People say, ‘We talk about race too much,’” he said. “But if you ask those people, ‘What do you mean?’ They don’t really know. And similarly, the other people say ‘I support Black Lives Matter.’ And you say, ‘Well, what do you like about the movement?’ And they go, ‘I don’t really know.’ And one of the neat things about this group of students is I think that they know a lot. And I think they also are aware that the situation is complex.”

The class was split into nine groups, and each group was given a case. The class combed through public records, read articles and interviewed people ranging from attorneys to specialists to gather a better understanding of their cases.

Student Sophie Therber studied the case of Terrence Crutcher, who died after being shot by Officer Betty Shelby in Oklahoma in September. Therber said the class served as a wake-up call.

“We knew about racism and issues but we didn’t realize how deep-rooted in our society they are,” she said. “Especially when it comes to the criminal justice system, how it’s just been a process from slavery to lynching to Jim Crow laws to segregation and now to mass incarceration in situations like this.”

Student Millie McGuire studied Eric Garner’s death, also known as the “I Can’t Breathe” case. She and her group interviewed Garner’s mother, but also interviewed the police officer’s attorney and a reporter. McGuire said she didn’t realize how many factors could go into a death at the hands of police.

“I still do believe that there are racial biases and there is police brutality towards certain races,” she said. “But there’s so much other things that go into it, like how the police respond… like their level of discomfort when they’re responding to certain things and the way it dates all the way back to the initial slavery in America.”

Johnsie Pilkington is a student teacher at Carrboro High. She attended the presentation, and said it’s important that students learn to speak and learn openly about topics such as institutionalized racism.

“It’s so important that we can have these students, as young as they are, teaching us things and showing us how they can approach something from an unbiased standpoint,” she said. “And really showing us that this is really important. And they see it, they see it in their own world, and they have stuff they can tell us.”

Cone said his class also learned much of their information from books such as “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. The class also took a trip to Montgomery, Alabama, and met Stevenson in person. Cone said this was an important class to teach.

“When a student gets excited about something, that’s a million times more powerful than me kind of badgering like, ‘You have to do this. This is worth 10 points,'” he said. “And I think I kind of forget that sometimes. Or maybe I don’t design lessons that are good enough to get them to want to do it. But for a young teacher, that’s a great lesson to learn.”

The class is currently offered as an elective at Carrboro High School. Cone said although it is open to everyone, it’s mainly taken by honors students and upperclassmen. He said his next step is emphasizing that the class is open to any and all who want to take it.