PINE BLUFF, Ark. — Assistant Attorney General of the United States Kristen Clarke, has been making her way across the country on a civil rights tour.
On Monday she made a stop in Little Rock, and on Tuesday she continued her listening tour in Arkansas.
She and her team stopped in Pine Bluff at the University of Arkansas Pine Bluff.
Trenten Wills is a student at UAPB and part of the student government association. He explained that voting rights are something very important to him.
As a young black undergrad student, he said recent voting laws that have been passed across the country have hurt people in his community.
"We're going in the opposite direction," Wills added.
Aereyon Wallace is a political science major and told us that for him, representation in higher offices is important.
Assistant Attorney General Clarke talked about the Department of Justice's efforts to address law enforcement accountability and cracking down on hate crimes around the country.
"We're faced with a lot of extremism in our politics today instead of actually serving the people we are supposed to be serving," Mar'Tavius Proctor, a student leader said.
He's someone who has been passionate about prison reform— something that Clarke also spoke about on Tuesday.
"We focus more on imprisonment and not rehabilitation in our criminal justice system," Proctor said.
He said being able to talk with some of the country's leaders from Washington, D.C. has left him optimistic about his opinion being heard.