Dear Editor,
We would like to offer our sincerest thanks to those individuals and groups who showed their support for the recent Stop Hate campaign. The original idea for this campaign started off small but soon took on a life of its own because of all of you. Over the course of two months, what had started as an idea thrown out in a social justice class garnered more than 3,200 signatures and more than 70 co-sponsors supporting the simple message of stopping hate in our community.
This simple message represented a concern we all shared, that prejudice and discrimination against anyone not only hurts those who experience it, but it also profoundly hurts the community it occurs in. Prejudice and discrimination are both individual and societal problems to be addressed. Individuals perpetrate these acts of prejudice and discrimination, but it is the community and larger society that allow these hurtful acts to continue by not addressing or even acknowledging that they occur. The Stop Hate campaign was conceived to raise the level of awareness and begin a dialogue about these issues.
Based upon the number of comments written in the Daily News about the campaign, we believe we have met this goal. As those critical of our campaign have correctly noted, simply hanging a banner against hate on the side of Bracken Library does little to end prejudice and discrimination on campus. That was never our intent, though. Our purpose, much like our message, is simple: Prejudice and discrimination still happen. They happen in our community, to the student sitting next to you in class, and they effect everyone on campus.
The Stop Hate campaign members are committed to continuing this semester's campaign. We are in the process of forming a permanent social justice group within our department that will facilitate this. During this project, we made connections with organizations and individuals on campus, which we hope to maintain and strengthen to work together in trying to make a greater impact. We have seen how the campus community can rally around a simple message, and we hope to bring about more opportunities for individuals to address these difficult topics. We plan to offer public forums and educational opportunities so individuals can be better informed about the cultural climate on campus.
Ultimately, prejudice and discrimination are allowed to persist because people remain silent. As we move into the future, our new goal becomes to provide an opportunity for the voices of acceptance to be spoken and heard.
We can only do so much, though. We can address and try to enact change on the campus level, but racism and prejudice are also individual issues that people must address in their own lives. We all must start with recognizing that we posses biases, prejudices and values that can be discriminatory. Only through honest self-reflection can we all move forward and become partners, allies and activists in trying to make our small part of the world better than we found it. Discrimination and prejudice are difficult topics to acknowledge and talk about, but those are the first steps toward ending them.
We found that as the project progressed, it started to take on the feeling of a community art project. Good art is meant to make individuals re-examine what was once ordinary, to take a second look at the world they belong to. It is our hope that our message rises to this level.
To all those who helped make the Stop Hate campaign what is, thank you. To all those who took a second look at their worlds and reexamined the ways in which prejudice and discrimination are perpetuated on campus, thank you. For those who leveled criticism toward the campaign, thank you for sharing your voices and keeping the dialogue going.
Finally, to all of those who have experienced acts of discrimination and prejudice on campus, thank you for sharing your stories with us. Your courage and voices gave us the strength to move forward with the campaign.
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