Student organization Color of Love shared updated demands for the Iowa State Police Department (ISUPD) during the ISUPD Student Advisory Board meeting Monday.

During the meeting, members engaged in conversation with ISUPD Chief Michael Newton in response to the department’s statement made regarding demands shared by the organization during a protest in February.

The protest came after the release of body and dash camera footage that showed Officer Frankie Contreras using force at a traffic stop, ultimately injuring a student.

Color of Love posted on Instagram on Monday afternoon about the organization’s plan to protest at the meeting, and to issue updated demands to Newton and ISUPD.

Endi Montalvo-Martínez, a co-facilitator for Color of Love, spoke on the impromptu nature of the protest.

“We wanted to minimize the risk of [the board] switching the location or room number without our knowledge and us showing up to an empty room,” Montalvo-Martinez said.

The updated demands called for the reevaluation of incentivized practice, which Color of Love added to its previous list of actionable steps.

After Bela Banegas, a member of Color of Love, read the demands to the board, Newton told the organization he would take them into consideration and respond “sometime in the next couple weeks.”

“Obviously, I want to take time to think through these and give an appropriate response,” Newton said.

After Newton’s remarks on the demands, Lyric Sellers, a co-facilitator for Color of Love, asked Newton about the appropriate way to go about making change in response to his statement on the organization’s protest in February, in which he said, “Demanding things isn’t the way to make change.”

“I would welcome you all to continue to come to these meetings, have a dialogue and conversations,” Newton said.

Sellers responded, asking, “How long is it a conversation before we see things actually changing?”

“We’ve been communicating this since last year… if anything, it’s getting worse,” Sellers said. “We see articles that are explaining someone that went through a traumatic experience and then counter-arguments explaining why it was just… I think we’re being counterproductive.”

In response to Sellers, Newton discussed ways ISUPD has changed its operations and ways he has worked with the ISUPD Student Advisory Board to address concerns from students. Newton also referred to a newly implemented protocol for all ISUPD officers who engage in traffic stops to issue, at minimum, a written warning about why they were stopped.

“What we were hearing from people is, ‘Sometimes I don’t know why I’m being stopped,’” Newton said. “We’ve instituted some policy and practice changes to make sure people understand why the officer is having contact with them.”

Later in the meeting, Montalvo-Martinez asked about Newton’s feelings on Contreras continuing to work for ISUPD. Newton said this was not something he could not talk about due to a state law prohibiting him from discussing personnel matters involving officers.

Montalvo-Martinez also voiced his opinion on Newton’s response to the organization’s protest in February.

“It kind of dismisses our previous attempts to have collaboration with him… we have tried collaborating with him in peaceful ways,” Montalvo-Martinez said. “I think that, historically and currently, anything worth changing within our lifetime has never been met by asking kindly.”

Montalvo-Martinez said Color of Love will continue advocating against racial injustice at Iowa State and plans to hold a multicultural event in April.