“That should be enough,” said Jessica David, a graduate student who helped organize the campaign.
The campaign is a project of the Groups Scholars Program. Groups Scholars are IU students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds who meet certain academic requirements.
The campaign kicked off Monday with an involvement fair to promote long-term service in the community.
Additionally, from noon to 2 p.m. each day until Friday, student ambassadors will engage with a different theme of social identity — including race, sexual orientation and religion — by talking to people in the Indiana Memorial Union and residence halls.
Ambassadors will lead people in a discussion of identity and ask them to declare in writing how they will promote peace over the next 40 days.
The written messages will be compiled into a “wall of respect,” which David said will serve as a physical reminder of the campaign.
David said she hopes the wall will be placed in the Groups Scholars Program office on campus.
“We thought it was important to focus on a lot of different aspects (of identity),” David said. “At the end of the day we’re all human. That would be the piece that translates most to MLK’s mission.”
The group will also hand out cards made by students explaining their individual social identities, and reconcile their identity with tolerance of others.
Audrey Hall, volunteer coordinator for the Lincoln Street unit of Boys and Girls Club of Bloomington, manned a table at the involvement fair and said she hopes BGC and the Groups Scholars will work together.
She said kids in BGC might come from similar backgrounds as the Groups Scholars, many of whom are first generation college students.
BGC seeks to level the playing field for poor children by providing low-cost child care. This includes programs such as tutoring or violin lessons, Hall said, which may not normally be available to low-income students.
That kind of care relates to King’s belief in social justice, she said.
Kendrick Washington, a student ambassador working on the campaign, said he is interested in volunteering with BGC and the Red Cross.
“I have a passion for working with kids,” Washington said. “I feel like they’re the foundation where it all happens.”
Keirsten White, founder of the Acts of Kindness Project promoted her student organization at the fair.
The group focuses on doing small things to improve people’s days, she said, from chalking positive messages on campus to placing poems and quotes in random people’s mail boxes.
The organization will also have a motivational speaker Thursday talking about success and how different people define it.
The values of the organization are similar to other organizations represented at the involvement fair, White said.
“Our number one value is acceptance and accepting everyone for who they are and their own opinions and beliefs,” White said. “We’re also very big on empowering students.”
White said the organization encourages students to engage in their own projects promoting kindness.
As another aspect of the campaign, the Groups Scholars donated groceries to the Crimson Cupboard, a campus food pantry. They will be collecting more nonperishable donations throughout the week, and the first 50 donors each day will receive a T-shirt.
“The campaign has a lot of different aspects, but we felt it came together to promote the mission of fostering that sense of awareness of differences,” David said.
#IrespectU was funded with a grant from the city’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Celebration Commission.
David said the campaign is timely, given identity discrimination on and off college campuses. She cited recent protests at the University of Missouri as an example.
“I hope we get our point across, and people take advantage of what we try to promote to them at Indiana University,” Washington said. “Hopefully it expands and expands and expands because it has to start somewhere.”
