DeKALB — The pathway from the Holmes Student Center bus turnaround to the Founders Memorial Library is lined with 128 crosses to commemorate the lives of Chicago shooting victims, and if there are any more Chicagoans killed this week, Greg Zanis, not-for-profit carpenter of Crosses for Losses, said more crosses will be added to the arrangement.

Around noon Tuesday, 3-foot crosses with victim names and dates of death were displayed by student-groups on campus to help raise awareness for the high crime rates in Chicago. Planning for this took about a month, said Trenton Hiley, vice president of Kappa Alpha Psi and director of events and programming for Black Male Initiative. But when Hiley got a call from Zanis over the weekend to further explain what he does with his crosses in the United States, Hiley moved to develop plans for this week’s display and Friday prayer vigil and dialogue in MLK commons in short time.

In the Name of Justice, the name a series of campus-based events to help educate students on gun violence, held an event on Nov. 3 where 6,000 tombstones were lined along Lucinda Avenue to represent gun violence-related deaths in Chicago since 2007. Zanis, along with members of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, Black Male Initiative, Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and Zeta Phi Beta sorority is continuing the movements of In the Name of Justice by the lining of the crosses this week on campus.

“I just feel that DeKalb is perfect for raising awareness for what is going on in Chicago,” Zanis said. “There are a lot of students [at NIU] that live in Chicago.”

Hiley said it was needed to have Zanis’s initiative for this project. Zanis has made over 17,000 crosses in his 21-year-long career and has taken his carvings across the United States for people to observe. He began building crosses for shooting victims about two decades ago when his father-in-law was murdered. He then made the first cross to commemorate his life.

He has a long list of locations where he has traveled such as Red Lake, Minnesota for a high school shooting, where he put up eight crosses; Aurora, Colorado for the shooting during the “Dark Knight Rises,” movie where he put up 12 crosses; and Littleton, Colorado for the Columbine High School shooting, where he put up 15 crosses.

On the nine-year anniversary of the 2008 NIU school shooting, Zanis made crosses to bear on the hill near the Holmes Student Center, yards away from the line of displayed crosses. He also carved hearts and crosses placed in front of the “Forward, Together Forward” memorial to honor the victims. Zanis said he reached out to family members of the shooting to attend the prayer vigil Friday.

Last year, Zanis made over 750 crosses to commemorate Chicago shooting victims. He walked the crosses down Michigan Avenue in Chicago on New Year’s Eve and had given them out to all of the families except 13 during the walk.

Since the placement of the crosses on campus, the members of Kappa Alpha Psi have received positive feedback as well as several phone calls from people about the movement. Hiley said he was approached by a current student to thank him for putting together the commemoration as he lost his brother, Iveill Hudson, 20, of West Chicago, on February 20.

The student was not immediately available for comment.

Hiley said this project impacts him in a huge way because his mother, father and close friends are from Chicago. He said if the deaths in the city affect people close to him, it affects him.

“I’m not saying I’m speaking for [the victims].” Hiley said. “I’m speaking for the people who have lost their children because I’m someone’s child as well … everybody that I love is from Chicago. It’s just a snowball effect — that makes it personal.”

The student-groups will hold a campus prayer vigil, along with a brief dialogue, at 3 p.m. Friday in the MLK Commons for families and students in light of shooting victims. Hiley said he will be advocating and helping to spread the word to students about Chicago’s high crime rate. The crosses will be displayed until Sunday.