Our Door is Open: KUmünite
KUmünite is an open-to-all platform that is beyond the students’ clubs and independent from a particular group for the Koc University students. KUmünite project started its own channel in discord platform, and has been actively used by the Koc University student during the online semesters due to Covid-19 pandemic
In the beginning, our aim was to eradicate categorization at Koç University as a result of the prejudices of people towards each other. To reach our goal, we came up with the idea of building a Koç community by creating a space that is free, cozy, and safe from prejudice. Before Covid-19 pandemics, we planned to build a physical place that every member of Koç University can join, and share something with other people. However, during quarantine days, such a physical space lost its meaning, so we transformed this idea into an online platform. We chose Instagram to create our platform because we thought that our platform could reach many more people via Instagram. So, what can you do on this platform? With the help of KUmünite, anyone who is a Koç University member can create meetups without being a part of any student club or association, as s/he please and feel safe from prejudice. Aside from that, this person can share your events via the Drive link in KUmünite Instagram bio, without needing the help of Koç staff. Well, is there any rule that people should strictly follow? Actually, the doors of KUmünite are open to everyone who embraces the beauty of diversity and acts to enhance this. The only rule might be being respectful and communicating with understanding, and of course, not sharing the links with people who are not a part of the Koç community. Lastly, KUmünite always makes us remember that no one is alone, and we are stronger as a community!
We started this project with an aim to create a safe environment for a diverse range of people. We dreamt of a campus that is cozy and reassuring for every member of it. Throughout our investigation, we had many difficulties. We had a hard time figuring out what is wrong- or if anything is wrong. Prejudice is a human aspect, should we even interfere? We did many interviews, we read articles, we looked at ourselves. Then we realize that this was, in fact, a Koç problem. 39 of 40 people that we interviewed did not describe themselves as a “Koç person”. To figure out what was wrong was our first milestone. Our second milestone was to decide on our action. The deciding part got interrupted by an unexpected pandemic, we redirected our project. Instead of creating a cozy and reassuring place on Koç, we decided on creating a Koç community platform to connect Koç people. Our third milestone was to actually create the platform and see people actually using it. We created an Instagram page to catch people’s attention, then we redirected people to a Drive link for sharing events and activities. We started a game that could be played on Zoom using a basic drawing online tool, Paint. We decided Koç as our theme and watch people laugh and play while drawing about the key features and figures of our beloved university. Therefore our third milestone got completed.
Our target is to include every person in the Koç community: students, graduates, academicians, employees to create an inclusive platform. We aim to also involve every type of activity: these can be talks about films/books, informative seminars by academicians, study groups, sports sessions together or just drinking a coffee with a stranger to talk about a problem. For now, we have 82 followers. To test our platform, we organized an online game activity which is announced from our Instagram account. 11 people joined our activity in which we drew Koç University items, places, and people on Paint and guess. Our aim is to see this kind and other activities will be organized by everyone. Also, the participation procedure will not be by our account but by the effort of the organizer when the follower number increases.
In order to find the needs of the people in the school, we made several researches, observations, and interviews. We talked to 40 people approximately. We asked people do you feel as a Koç student. Some of the students said that they don’t feel like a Koc student because they don’t have a car or they don’t feel comfortable at school. Some of the students indicated that they are not successful thus they don’t feel as a Koc student. In the minds of the people, there are several typologies of being a student in Koc. We go through these typologies while detecting the main issue. We found out that there is a problem in the state of belonging to the school. Also, people don’t feel comfortable because people care about others’ behaviors and thoughts a lot. The reason for this is because people don’t respect and accept differences. We all prefer to be in our comfort zone rather than being with different people from us. Moreover, we made research about other universities. We wanted to learn that other universities also face the same problem or not. We found out that other universities also face the same problem.
KUmünite is building a community which is safe from prejudice and open to diversity. In Koç University, some students are having trouble communicating with others for various reasons like being judged or missing belonging and that makes them feel lonely. Our project basically focused on increasing the level of conversation between different groups of people in the school and connecting them to each other. Also, with this platform we are aiming to make the ones who are more comfortable in their own groups, being curious about other groups and create a huge group which everyone from school can join and feel safe. While focusing on that topic being respectful and communicating with understanding are our milestones.
The biggest issue that we faced while working on the project was people’s reactions. In the school there is a vast diversity. There are lots of different opinions and characters thus it was not easy to understand the common needs and solutions. There was always the risk that a part of the students would like our project and some would not. We contemplate a lot on how can we include the whole school into our project and reach our goal. We aimed to broke the prejudices against the differences in the school however our observations showed that people are not open to new relations. Students at the school prefer to spend their times with their inner groups which are homogeneous. We could make a platform which would integrate the school together however the key point is make people want to join to the platform. There is always a risk that our platform would not acknowledge the needs of our goal if people would be reckless to join into our project. Sometimes we also had difficult times while focusing on the project and simultaneously to our courses. We all had different schedules and finding the common available times were not that much easy. Also our topic was not very certain and includes a lot of grey parts thus sometimes we spent a lot time on deciding our philosophy.
The first requirement for the project to be successful is sustainability. For sustainability, our project must be adopted and accepted by the Koç University community. As the team members managing the project, it is necessary to determine well what we need by following the agenda. In the background, the contents of the project should always be kept alive, so it is important to cooperate with the relevant units of our school. If necessary, when the project develops, the amount required to expand our team should be provided by the Dean of Students. The number of followers is very important for social media, at this point, the follower numbers can be increased by cooperating both the close environment and with other units of the school. The content should be original, different from the others, as in the first place, and our own drawings. Little gifts and congratulations always make people happy, and the winners can be rewarded in the activities that are carried out.
Team Members: İlke Uysal, Kayra Menekşe, Güliz Bingöllü, Hacer Beyza Pehlivan, Selin Yavuz, Elif Gökçen Bozkurt
