Students called the last slogan performative, at Monday night’s Student Senate meeting, guest speaker Dr. Joanna Ravello Goods, Vice President  for Equity and Inclusion and Chief Diversity Officer, previewed a new campus-belonging campaign—“Community starts with me, thrives with us”—positioned as a response to student critiques of the university’s prior “Racism Stops with Me” campaign.

Goods said students last spring expressed a common sentiment: the old campaign “put the effort on the individual” to confront racism while sidestepping structural issues where change also must happen, The new tagline adds a collective responsibility clause to match the institution’s priorities around cultivating a thriving community.

Students described the earlier campaign as performative. Several felt the signs read as negative or “problematic,” and some criticized imagery choices (crossed arms, stern expressions). Others asked why the effort wasn’t more intersectional, raising gender and disability alongside race. A final worry: centering only “me” risked individualizing a systemic problem.

Goods traced the new phrasing to student input—first, “Community starts with me,” originating in a conversation with the HAWES; and then her addition “…thrives with us.” The add-on is meant to signal that when harm occurs, responsibility doesn’t end at personal virtue, it instead extends to the community’s shared response.

Those meetings also surfaced specific campus climate issues that the reboot seeks to address: students with accommodations reported faculty mishandling privacy, and residence hall culture included slurs shouted in hallways. Goods urged continued use of the bias-incident reporting form and proactive conversations to develop in residence life.

To seed cross-organization solutions, Goods introduced the Community Bridge Builders Fund, a competitive mini-grant of up to $600 for projects that create “meaningful community, connections, inclusive care,” and “collective learning and growth. Proposals are open to recognized student orgs and clubs, and must involve at least two groups collaborating, and will be reviewed on a rolling basis through November 14th while funds remain.

So Student’s didn’t just critique the last campaign but authored the fix. “Community starts with me, thrives with us” blends the call for individual integrity with a demand for community wide action—and this time, pairs the slogan with programs and student-led projects designed to move beyond mere posters