Tips for student clubs seeking to foster dialogue and defend free expression

Create a statement of values, upholding commitments that can help guide your thinking and actions, including free speech and inclusion. Engage your membership broadly to help shape this statement.

Strive to reach a diverse audience. If your organization should appeal to the student body at large but you find that your membership is homogeneous, reflect on whether you should undertake steps to make the club more welcoming.

Partner with other campus organizations on events and initiatives. Create coalitions to address common concerns. Consider opportunities to pool resources, contacts, knowledge, and experience to strengthen your actions.

Recognized student groups often have direct lines of communication to administrators and opportunities to make clear and concrete requests of them. Use your position to advocate for free speech and diversity and to represent the concerns of the student body at large.

Student groups are well positioned to mobilize large groups of people around issues they care about. Take advantage of that position to organize events and to bring attention to any causes about which your group is passionate.

Try to engage respectfully with organizations that have different perspectives from your own. Consider engaging them in dialogue or co-sponsoring debates. Clubs can be built around bipartisanism or debate, to deliberately bring together students from different backgrounds or who disagree with each other on key social and political matters.