The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is big and it’s diverse, with students from many backgrounds and with many points of view. Students often find a home within that expanse, but can also easily feel marginalized, without a voice, not part of the culture.
Stir in the tensions of polarized politics or the shouting on social media, and a student can feel even more on the margins.
So where might such students find a home?
Janice Collins, a U. of I. journalism professor, thinks one place is in a news website where students can tell stories and find resources not common in other media.
Another is in creating spaces and events for diverse, inclusive and respectful conversation.
Both fall under the banner of Hear My Voice (hearmyvoiceonline.com), which Collins started in spring 2016.
Student reporter Avi Samuels, discussing a point with professor Collins, joined Hear My Voice because he wanted to make the case for treating people with disabilities on an equal plane.
Photo by L. Brian Stauffer
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The idea arose from hearing about students “having more and more issues with depression, anxiety, feeling invisible – not really knowing where to have their voices heard in a way that will make positive change,” Collins said.
She’d heard similar things from an academic adviser. And she had concerns, as well, about issues causing tensions on campus. She saw disconnects between students and administrators, between the campus and the community.
“I started hearing this more and I had to do something,” Collins said. “I thought, we’ve got to build a platform … a platform where we can all come together to learn.”
She wanted a central location for “demarginalizing the marginalized,” chiefly by reporting on issues and sharing opinions.
“One of the highest forms of frustration is when you feel you’re not being heard,” Collins said. “We have to tell people that we do care, you do matter, we want to hear your opinion. We may not agree with it, but we want to hear it.”
Hear My Voice brought in not only journalism students, but also students from a variety of other majors, as well as contributors from beyond the campus.
“I started getting students just wanting to be a part of it, and not just to have a voice. They wanted to be a part of something that they felt was a positive, proactive step toward healing this community,” Collins said.
One of those students was Avi Samuels, a junior in liberal arts and sciences from Buffalo Grove, Illinois, who came to an informational meeting early on, then joined the team as a student reporter and content creator.
Samuels, who has physical disabilities, could relate to the goals of Hear My Voice. “One of the largest groups of marginalized Americans are those with disabilities,” he said. “I consider it my duty to educate people on why and how people with all types of disabilities can be treated on an equal plane with their able-bodied peers.”
Indira Midha’s biracial background helped shape her interest in the website and organization, as did her blogging and concerns about social issues.
Another student participant was Indira Midha, a sophomore in media and cinema studies from Schaumburg, Illinois, who showed up at a Hear My Voice meeting early in the spring semester of her freshman year.
With immigrant parents from India and Spain, she hadn’t found a comfortable fit with any particular group in high school. “I felt like I didn’t have a voice. I felt very invisible,” she said.
As an outlet, Midha had started a YouTube channel, then moved to blogging, where she addressed issues like social activism and female self-image.
So maybe it was no surprise when Midha left her first meeting feeling inspired by Collins and wanting to play a part.
“I went every single week. It was the highlight of my week, because the dialogue there is so open and it’s so inclusive. Nobody’s beliefs are put down, as long as they’re not attacking somebody else,” she said. “You can hear perspectives from people who are completely different from you in terms of labels, but you can find that common ground.”
Midha is now the student president of the Hear My Voice registered student organization, which organizes events like a diversity fest last spring.
Samuels said the two great lessons from his experience have been “how to connect with people, and how to understand their unique experiences.”
A look at the Hear My Voice website shows that Collins and her team don’t want it pigeonholed as representing one viewpoint or set of concerns. The subjects range from club sports to hate crimes, biracial identity to pro-life protest, and Middle Eastern stereotypes to freedom of speech.
The site also doesn’t categorize stories based on the groups or interests involved. There’s no easy route to finding all the stories related to African-American issues, for instance, or women’s issues, Collins said. “I don’t separate by tabs, just like I don’t separate by people.”
Traditionally marginalized groups are a concern of Hear My Voice, but they are not the only concern, Collins said. As she’s seen in her classrooms and in the community, “Everyone can feel marginalized in some way.”
Collins spent more than two decades in the news business, primarily in television, before coming to academia. She teaches courses in broadcast journalism, multimedia storytelling and leadership development. And teaching journalism is central to the process of selecting and editing stories for the website.
In fact, Collins and Hear My Voice each received awards at the August convention for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
But also central to the Hear My Voice project and its demarginalizing goal is a teaching method Collins has developed over her years as a professor. She calls it “Active Centralized Empowerment.”
The general idea is for individuals to accept what is special and unique about themselves and use that to move from the margins to a place of empowerment. Instead of feeling limited or victimized by surface characteristics or experience, you use them as your strengths and a means for relating equally with others, Collins said.
“The dream of Hear My Voice is learning to live and work and thrive in a world of respecting differences,” Collins said. “It’s the dream of a classroom of inclusiveness, a newsroom or learning or working environment where everyone is welcome and encouraged to be the best person they can be.”
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