KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Some Kansas City students have walked out of a speech Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon was giving in an apparent protest of the police shooting in Ferguson.

Nixon was talking Thursday at Lincoln College Preparatory Academy when a handful of students raised their hands over their heads in a gesture associated with the Ferguson protests. The Kansas City Star  reports that the students then left through an auditorium door without disrupting the speech.

Nixon was at Lincoln to recognize its status as a National Blue Ribbon School, one of the nation’s top awards for academic excellence.
Nixon says he understands the students’ concerns. He says they’re “going to be — and need to be — a force, so that we can be a better state and better society after this.”