Oakland University Student Congress kicked off its annual Anti-Hate Week campaign on Monday.

“Anti-hate week is a week-long event to try and raise awareness about different kinds of hatred that takes place and how students can become educated about them and what Oakland students can do to assist with the issues,” Student Body Vice President Amy Ring said.

The first three days will be forum and educational-based, focusing on raising awareness about these issues, and the final two days of the week will focus on student engagement with events such as a poetry slam, Unity Day and volunteer opportunities.

“Those are the four days that really give awareness to the different problems that we have in our society today and different things that people may not be aware of,” Tom Cruz, the multicultural affairs director, said.

For Wednesday’s events, OUSC teamed with the Gender and Sexuality Center, the Gay Straight Alliance and the MultiCultural Programming Board of the OUSC to raise awareness about violence against the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Intersected Questioning (LGBTIQ) community. They are co-sponsoring “The Consequences of Hate” in the Fireside Lounge as part of Anti-Hate Week and the Transgender Week of Remembrance.

“As a student, and a member of the LGBT community, I feel that it will bring more awareness to the transgender community,” freshman Mark Martinez said. “While we’ve all gone through issues with our sexuality, it’s not really well known for the transgender community.”

Thursday’s events will feature a poetry slam.

“All of the poetry is under the theme of discrimination whether from personal experience or something people have noticed about society,” Ring said.

During Unity Day on Friday, students can make scarves that will be donated to the Freedom House of Detroit. Saturday, students are invited to attend the Greening of Detroit.

At every event, OUSC will be accepting food and toiletry donations, which will be sent to the Freedom House of Detroit and the Baldwin Center of Pontiac.

Free T-shirts and food will be available at every event. More information about the several events can be found on the OUSC Facebook site.

“I think it’s a really nice thing because student congress is specifically helping to push this, which is really nice,” freshman Zachary Willockx said. “It helps address a lot of issues.”