University Campus How-To, Student-Led

WHEN STUDENTS LEAD THE WAY, CHANGE INEVITABLY FOLLOWS

WHY HATE HAS NO HOME HERE?

The purpose of the Hate Has No Home Here project is to bring people together, to inspire dialogue, and develop relationships, because these are the things we believe most effectively combat hate. On University campuses, where everyone is in a learning environment, there are numerous opportunities for students, staff members, and university leaders to come together and work on solutions to the specific issues that may be most prevalent in their communities.

GETTING STARTED

Because the project is intended to be a shared endeavor, and is designed to include multiple voices, we recommend student project starters work with a group. Some develop a coalition specifically around this initiative, some work with existing groups on campus. If your school has formal clubs or social groups centered on civic engagement, advocacy, diversity, and/or inclusion issues, these may be great places to start building your team. Working with about 3-5 people to begin is recommended.

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COMMUNICATION 

Some groups have used social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, or websites, to deliver information and draw interest from project participants and followers. One of the things you want to determine at the outset is whether you will be developing a large-scale project to reach your whole campus, residence halls, classrooms, staff offices, etc. or whether you will develop a smaller or mid-scale project to target one particular population/location, at least to start. The way you determine this is simply to put the information out and see what kind of response you get. With that information you can develop a plan and a budget.

FUNDING

When civic organizations develop a project in their neighborhoods, often the local community has funds, or provides assistance via charitable contribution, to fund the printing of signs. It has been an important part of our project that posters and signs be delivered free or at cost, with no profit-bearing whatsoever, so that the signs can be shared as widely as possible. In the case of a university implementation, the school itself may have funding available for this initiative. Make contact with the offices of student affairs and/or civic engagement and/or diversity initiatives to determine whether such funding is available. Many times more than one university department may be interested in supporting the project, in which case you may be able to have costs shared across several entities. If the university does not have funds to support the production, you may wish to work with a private club or begin fundraising using a crowd-sourced tool like GoFundMe.

PRODUCTION

If the university is supporting the project as an institution, you may have access to printing on campus at a reduced cost. If you are working with a private printer, you may need to shop around locally to determine best price for your project. If you’d like to personalize your posters to reflect the languages most commonly associated with your community, please contact the national organization at HHNHHChicago@gmail.com for assistance. Note that in order to use the artwork you must adhere to usage guidelines posted on the website at www.hatehasnohomehere.org, including protecting the material from any attribution or appropriation by the university, any individual, or group.

DISTRIBUTION

You will have numerous opportunities on campus to distribute posters and signs. If you’d like the opportunity to meet project participants you may choose to publicize specific dates, times, and locations where you can be present to distribute. Be sure to contact campus officials at your intended pickup sites to ensure you are complying with university guidelines. You can also make the signs and posters available for pick-up at sites at leisure. Some options might include the student center, library, or a campus student support office, with campus permissions. Note that without controls in place, you may find that posters and signs disappear quickly. As such, you may want to stock in segments, so as to control the distribution/costs.

IMG_0044GETTING ON THE MAP

Once you have established your project, we’d love to amplify your efforts using our national platform. Please let us know by sending us a message on HHNHHChicago@gmail.com with the name of your project (ie Hate Has No Home Here-Main University), your location  (ie Thistown, MA USA), your contact information (Jim Karie 617.891.3322 jimkarie@main.edu), and any social media sites you’d like to include. We also have an Instagram account where we post project photos from around the country, so we’d love to see pictures of your campaign’s success on campus, and we’d be glad to include you in our Twitter feed at @HateHasNoHome.

BEYOND THE SIGN

After your poster and sign distribution if you’d like to move beyond the sign, you can continue your work to combat hate on campus. Work with your campus’s student affairs office to develop events that encourage conversation and engagement among disparate groups. Think about things like guided discussion dinners, potlucks and socials, coffee dates, and so on. Talk to others on campus about their ideas and develop a list that you can work to activate with those who are interested in this effort.

Improve your own ally-ship skills.  There are plenty of excellent online resources to get more information on this. Here are some of them:

We hope these guidelines are helpful to you. If we can provide additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us. If you learn things you think may be useful to improve these guidelines, please let us know so we can update our FAQs. Thanks for helping us share the message – we are glad to have you with us!