Jordan Kissane

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Aug 29, 2024, 6:42 PM

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Updated

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Last year's spring semester ended quite divisively on college campuses around New York City following protests over the Israel-Hamas conflict and their associated arrests. Now, students at CUNY have come together to do their part to foster unity on campus this coming fall.

On their first day of school, students launched Our CUNY - a campaign aimed at inspiring community and ending hate across its 25 campuses. "Hate divides us, diversity defines us" is the slogan for the university's newest anti-hate initiative.

As the 2024-2025 school year officially gets underway and in the spirit of renewal, the student-run initiative is working to combat ableism, ageism, antisemitism, homophobia and all types of hate.

According to the CUNY, its student body and staff are incredibly diverse: 28% of the student body is made up of Hispanic students, 26% is made up of Black students, 23% is made up of white students and another 23% is made up of Asian and Pacific Islanders.

"We are all trying to find our responses to this more polarized society that we are facing; polarizing elections and situations around the world that invite people to disagree in ways where the response is hate rather than coming together. Our students wanted to do something positive. Our students wanted to say, it is not that we want to negate all the difficult issues that we need to discuss, but there is no place for hate at CUNY. The diversity that CUNY has, which reflects the diversity of New York, is a strength. We need to use it to solve our differences. We need to use it to call out hate, and we wanted a campaign that does that and invites people to talk candidly about things that must be difficult," said Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, chancellor of CUNY.

CUNY has a downloadable toolkit full of resources at its website.