Thoughtful Thursdays at Towson’s Freedom Square

This guest blog post is an update to an earlier blog post on Towson University’s On-and-off-line Freedom Square. A hybrid example of a Democracy Plaza (see this blog post about IUPUI’s Democracy Plaza concept). Students at Towson recently received an “Ask Big Questions” grant from the Hillel Foundation to fund “Thoughtful Thursdays” programming in their physical and online Freedom Square spaces. I had the opportunity to visit Towson’s Freedom Square for their inaugural “Thoughtful Thursdays” program in December. Below you’ll find photos and a short video I took during my visit.

– Jen Domagal-Goldman, National Manager, American Democracy Project

Angie Hong and another TU student at one of the Freedom Square chalkboards

Thoughtful Thursdays at Towson’s Freedom Square

By Angie Hong, Program Assistant in Civic Engagement, Towson University

Thursdays at Towson University now have a new meaning. The Office of Civic Engagement has created a program called Thoughtful Thursdays with the help of a grant from the Hillel Foundation’s “Ask Big Questions” initiative. You can find out more information on this initiative at go here.

For this program, we have four undergraduate interns, which we like to call our Freedom Square Fellows.  Our Fellows ask one big question –like “What are your thoughts on the recent explosion of KONY 2012 on social media?”– at the beginning of every week and post it on our online blog, TUFreedomSquare.com. We encourage students to answer the question on the blog and let us know what they think about the given topic. Throughout the week the Fellows promote the question anywhere that they can, whether it is on Facebook or on their Twitter account. We didn’t want to stop there because we realized that the most powerful way to catch someone’s attention is in person and by word of mouth.

On Thursdays, the Freedom Square Fellows head to Freedom Square, our physical space where students are encouraged to write their thoughts on two large chalkboards. If students did not catch the question from our advertisement, we have scrolling marquees above the chalkboard that allows the students to read and understand the question of the week. If they need more information, we have used the iPAD that is connected to TUFreedomSquare.com. The Fellows then go around campus and talk with students, encouraging them to have thoughtful conversation. This enables diverse groups of students to share their specific understanding of the week’s questions. We have had giveaways such as frisbees, tote bags, pens and pencils, notepads, lemonade, chocolate, etc. to serve as encouragement for students to participate. The chalkboards have been filled with opinions and even responses to other people’s opinions. By physically writing their opinions on the chalkboard, the students are taking ownership of their responses and making sure they are communicating them effectively for the next person to see.

In the future, we hope that these thoughtful conversations become a part of the culture at Towson for students. We want students to believe that being knowledgeable about current events and having an opinion on topics is “the cool thing to do” during their time here and beyond. Currently on our campus, our students are having conversations about the distinction between freedom of speech and hate speech. We are hoping that our Freedom Square initiatives will put into practice the power of freedom of speech for students. Also, we want to challenge the students to no longer take an apathetic approach to issues but, become passionate about them.

Visit TUFreedomSquare online here.