College of Arts and Sciences Newsroom

By Lauren McCarty ’26

When Lila Acott ’25 was looking into college human rights programs, the University of Dayton's Moral Courage Project caught her attention. Four years later, Acott is a part of the 2025 project, where she and 11 other students created a multimedia presentation applying ethical storytelling techniques centering an Atlanta community in crisis. 

“I applied to join this unique storytelling project because I saw it involved audio production and an exhibit,” said Acott, a May graduate of human rights studies and political science from Wilmette, Illinois. “I was interested in experiential learning and I wanted to do field work.” 

Launched in 2015, the Moral Courage Project takes UD students into the field to document communities during times of crisis. Students from all majors receive training and application in interviewing and human rights storytelling.

This year’s project, “At the Root: Policing and the Right to Protest,” focuses on the Stop Cop City movement, which emerged to confront a proposal to build a public safety training facility in a clear-cut forest near Atlanta. The exhibit opened April 24 at the Roger Glass Center for the Arts in conjunction with the UD Human Rights Center’s presentation of the Oscar Romero Human Rights Award to Kerry Kennedy.

In May 2024, students studying journalism, English, political science, human rights and photography visited Atlanta for two weeks to chronicle lives affected by the destruction of a local forest and the threat of over-policing in their community.

“Fundamentally, the approach of the MCP is to learn from people's experience about what they did and why they did it,” said Joel Pruce, associate professor and Human Rights Center director of applied research and learning. “Why did they take on this risk to fight for this cause?”

During the 2024 spring semester students took a course with Pruce that focused on preparing to interview residents and document the Stop Cop City protests.

The plan for the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, commonly referred to by critics as “Cop City,” was introduced in 2021 — the same year a report from the U.N. revealed an increase in the criminalization of the right to protest. 

The Stop Cop City social movement has faced significant challenges: non-violent protesters have been jailed, and a protester lost their life to police officers while demonstrating against the destruction of the forest.

While in Atlanta, the students met with community members and organizers, including the family of the protester who was killed. Their project, which includes a written-visual exhibition and podcast, highlights the environmental, democratic and policing aspects of the issue through personal accounts from community members.

“I am grateful for the connections I formed with people who welcomed me into their home, told me their stories, trauma, joys, hardships and everything in between,” Acott said. “One of the things we learned in the beginning is that you carry the weight of that story. UD preaches a lot about community and being a global citizen, being an active citizen and I truly lived that out.” 

Moral Courage Project students are selected through an application and interview process based on their curiosity and motivation for human rights issues and storytelling.

The exhibit was displayed at UD and will be shown at other institutions across the country. The accompanying podcast, “Moral Courage Radio,” is hosted by Acott and tells the story in five episodes available on all podcast platforms.

Pruce and faculty co-facilitator Aaliyah Baker, assistant professor of education and health sciences, introduced “At the Root” at the Glass Center opening, joined by several students who worked on the project.

“The storytelling became an important and unique vehicle for consciousness raising and learning,” Baker said. “The stories that were told helped the MCP team think very intentionally about our own identities as we navigated and shifted our thinking.

“We transformed our ways of learning together in community. We centered positionality, we discussed and grappled with conflicting social realities, and we delved into the politics of community, historical tensions, and acts of courage during moments of crisis.” 

Students tackled the project in teams based on their skills and interests. Sebastián De Léon, a May graduate in graphic design from Barranquilla, Colombia, led the graphic design team. He spoke at the opening about his contribution to the visual presentation: “We tried to make this really hard information easy to look at.”

The head of the exhibit team was Kathryn Horning ’25, a human rights studies major from Springboro, Ohio, who graduated in May. She wrote the text for the exhibition panels displaying information about the cause and the citizens’ stories. 

“We have hours and hours of transcripts of our interviews, and there are only a couple of quotes on here — picking and choosing was a big part of it,” Horning said. “The most amazing thing was the relationships and the application of the skills we worked hard for.”

December graduate Ximena Silva-Aguirre ’24 was part of the project’s democracy team.

“The MCP allowed me to build strong connections with not only the students, but the staff,” Silva-Aguirre said. “I learned a lot about myself, and I learned a lot about what I wanted to do with my human rights major.”

The project’s future goals include having the exhibit travel more widely to reach a broader audience.

“Nowadays it's easy for us to sit in a classroom and talk about topics like these, or watch videos or a documentary, but you won't make that connection with the community you're learning about unless you go out there and have face-to-face conversations with them and put yourself in their shoes,” Silva-Aguirre said. “And that's easier said than done. It requires a lot of hard conversations. It requires you to be uncomfortable. 

“UD emphasizing experiential learning for students is important because that's going to give you a competitive edge after graduation.”

Top photo: Kathryn Horning and Sebastián De Léon with a display panel at the Moral Courage Project exhibit opening.

Middle photo: Students and faculty interview Jackie Echols of the South River Watershed Alliance near the "Cop City" site.

Atlanta photos by Anastacia Zartman-Robb '26