This week (13 – 20 October) is National Hate Crime Awareness Week, which is coordinated by charities including the Stop Hate campaign.
At the University of Sussex, we are proud to have a diverse community, and that we are a place which promotes kindness and inclusion.
We also have some of the UK’s leading academics working on the topic of hate crime. Professor Mark Walters is the co-founder and co-director of the International Network for Hate Studies and has published 30 papers and two books on the topic.
We know that the vast majority of our students are kind and respectful of one another; however, we also know that some students have experienced hate incidents.
As part of our work to lead the way in tackling the issue, Professor Mark Walters and his team are opening a new project called Restore Respect which offers a way to respond to hate and prejudice with restorative justice.
Any student who has experienced a situation which goes against our unstinting values of inclusion and acceptance on our campus is invited to come along to the project, or to attend a confidential drop-in session on Thursday 18 October from 12noon-2pm at the Meeting House, where Bonita Holland (Restore Respect project coordinator) and Lynn O’Meara (from the Student Life Centre) will be happy to hear from you.
If you can’t attend the drop-in session, but you would like to speak to someone at the Restore Respect project, you can do that here.
In time, the University of Sussex intends to create a tool kit for other universities to use to create similar projects for their campuses too.