H.A.L.T. Week strengthens campus awareness of diversity and tolerance

By Tara Pizzo
Senior Staff Writer
April 5, 2006

La Salle’s campus has been a bit more colorful lately. This is due to the countless number of students wearing the colorful T-shirts and bracelets that were handed out during the week of March 27 to celebrate H.A.L.T. Week.

This year's HALT Week was even more succesful than previous years, with
more activities and more campus involvement. -www.lasalle.edu

Standing for Hope, Acceptance, Love and Tolerance, H.A.L.T. week was sponsored by La Salle’s multicultural organizations and organized by The Alliance. The week used to be known as Anti-Hate Week but was changed to H.A.L.T. week to stress a more positive message in October 2003.

Co-Coordinator of Alliance, senior Melissa Meyer, noted some of the various activities that occurred throughout last week.

“On Monday night, the movie Crash was presented and there was a discussion afterwards that went very well,” she said. “Wednesday night was the Third Annual H.A.L.T Rally, which started in the fall of 2003 as a rally against hate graffiti on campus. Last year we made it into a H.A.L.T. week event by having it in the spring.”

There were also events held last Monday, Wednesday and Friday during free period, as well as a round table discussion held last Thursday during free period and a cultural performance that took place Thursday night. The round table discussion occurred in Olney 100 and was presented by the Cross Cultural Association and A/Asia. Members of the associations discussed their experiences with different cultures.

Meyer commented that Alliance members were the “general managers” of the week, as they organized some of the events and worked with student organizations for others. Throughout last week, Alliance members asked students to read their pledge to respect diversity and then to sign their name on a traced hand. In doing so, they were given a free bracelet in return. Another event organized by Alliance was the “Wall of Hate.”

“The ‘Wall of Hate’ started out as a [wall of] derogatory language which students had to tear and rip up and they had to erect a wall of H.A.L.T. They then had to put messages up that had to do with the week’s messages to respect diversity and love for human beings,” Meyer said.

Compared to previous years, this year’s H.A.L.T. week proved to be more successful. Co-coordinator of Alliance, sophomore Stephanie Brown, was greatly satisfied with the week’s turnout.

“I think that H.A.L.T. week went great. We had a lot more people and support than we usually do and we gave out almost all of our gifts,” Brown said.

Meyer also mentioned how pleased she was with this year’s events.

“This year has been so much better. We’ve gotten our name out there more and we put up more advertisements. We put up more than 400 posters around campus, we had portal announcements, we invited people to events on Facebook and we’ve gotten a better reception for every single event than we have in the past,” Meyer said. “I think that’s also due to the fact that we had more organizations participating this year than we’ve had in the past. Before it was mostly Alliance-run events, and now we’ve gotten more and more student organizations involved.”

H.A.L.T. Week fulfilled its main purpose by bringing about awareness of diversity and tolerance around campus.

“There are still acts of hatred that go on, like graffiti and the destruction of the Rosa Parks memorial and just people in general using casual language that is hurtful to people,” Meyer said. “We just wanted to bring awareness that those things are going on and to try to get people to act a little differently to respect their environment. There’s just so many differences in everyone but we’re all human and that’s what we’re trying to get across to people.”

pizzot1@lasalle.edu