“Mr. & Mrs. Shepard are two of my personal heroes,” said UW Mental Health Counselor Ty Tedmon-Jones, “and I cannot begin to articulate how much gratitude and respect I have for them and the way that they have transformed enormous, unthinkable tragedy to move into the roles that they have. The positive impacts on a national level that these two individuals, along with the handful of staff they employ through the foundation, is both staggering and undeniable.”
It’s the twentieth anniversary of the death of Matthew Shepard, student of the University of Wyoming, and “The Heart Challenge” has started up again this year to commemorate it. This challenge consists of a white picket fence, symbolizing home and community, with a strip of yellow across it, to symbolize anti-violence, and three green circles symbolizing the international sign for peace. In 1998, when Shepard was murdered, his fellow students and Wyomingites wore the same colors in response to the hate shown to the LGBTQ community in Laramie. To this day, University Fraternities and Sororities still wear these colors on armbands in remembrance of the horrid murder that faced Mr. and Mrs. Shepard’s son.
The Heart Installation is a non-stationary picket fence, unlike most fences seen in the world. Each week the UW Heart Challenge Fence Installation will move to different locations on the UW campus. It was at the Coe Library this past week and is now in the Washakie Dining Center. It will return to Coe Library again this coming week, then the fence will be in the Wyoming Union Breezeway from Oct. 22-26. The rest of the locations the installation will be moved to have not yet been decided by the Matthew Shepard Memorial Subcommittee.
“The Matthew Shepard Memorial Subcommittee “Heart Challenge” workgroup decided that in order to engage as many members of the UW Community as possible the installation needed to move to numerous high-traffic locations around campus,” stated Tedmon-Jones. “Our generous campus hosts and numerous partners have made this possible and the workgroup on this project is grateful for this support. The Matthew Shepard Memorial Subcommittee is made up of numerous UW administrators, faculty, staff and students who were charged with the development and organization of the two-month long calendar of events that has memorialized UW student, Matthew Shepard’s life, 20 years after his murder.”
The partners in association with the Matthew Shepard Memorial Subcommittee, which works closely with the Shepard Foundation but are not a part of, are as follows: SLCE, Coe Library, Spectrum, RCC & MRC, MEChA, ASOPA & Department of Theater & Dance, ASUW, United Multicultural Council, Student Art League, and the Honors/SOAR. Each of these organizations help fund and move the Heart Installation each week for the two months of remembrance the university has on campus in association with the non-profit Shepard Foundation.
At each installation, there are numerous cut outs of hearts on which students may write their respects to Matthew Shepard, or students may use the chance to spread love to the LGBTQ community and anyone else who may face hate because of who they are as individuals. These installations represent the destruction of social inequality including hate based on race, gender, disability and class. They represent love around campus and not hate.
