Because of acts of discrimination that were reported on Ball State University's campus last year, nine graduate students created a Web site to raise awareness and encourage people to take action against the problems.
Ball State's Stop Hate Web site, which debuted last week, was a group project for students in a Social Justice class in the Counseling Psychology and Guidance Services department.
One of the students, Marlon Rollins, said he and his peers launched the Stop Hate campaign last April to raise awareness about all types of discrimination.
Assistant Director of the Multicultural Center, David Taylor, said he hopes the site will be used as a reference for students, as well as faculty and staff.
"Hopefully it will be a good outlet for bringing awareness to the issues that may go underneath the radar," Taylor said.
A major case of discrimination reported last year included a group of predominately black students who were playing tag at midnight at Lafollette Field. Residents complained to police about the students being too loud, so an officer arrived to tell the students to leave. According to students, the officer was using inappropriate language and gave out noise ordinance tickets while trying to get them to leave. The students felt discriminated against and formed a rally in response. As a result, the police officer was reprimanded for his actions.
Rollins said he and his classmates wanted to make the community aware of the issue in a positive way.
"We want to be more proactive than reactive," he said. "We wanted people to know that this isn't the type of place where discrimination and acts of hate would be tolerated."
The class designed a 30-by-50 foot banner that read "Hate" in a circle with a line through it. The banner had 3,000 signatures from faculty, staff, community members and students who supported the campaign.
Rollins said the class wanted to make a resource available for Ball State and other universities to refer to when faced with an issue of discrimination. A Web site seemed like the most dynamic way to present the information, he said.
"We decided to design a Web site because the Internet is much more accessible to other schools," Rollins said.
The site includes an audio introduction on the home page, as well as pages dedicated to learning more about the campaign and educating people about discrimination. The site also provides links to stories about the reported discrimination on campus and a timeline of documented acts of hate.
Rollins said he encourages people to visit the site guestbook where people can make comments and have open discussions as well.
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