For UW-Madison junior Nour Saeed, the past three years have been unsettling to say the least. What started as a habit of watching the news turned into anger and confusion as events such as the Syrian Civil War and, most recently, the 2016 presidential election commanded headlines.
While many people took to social media to voice their opinions on these global topics, Nour—along with fellow UW-Madison juniors Hannah Malone, who co-founded the project, and Owen Desai, who serves as creative director—channeled her frustration into a project that would allow students around campus to make their unique stories heard.
Stories to Break Borders, a UW-Madison student-led initiative that launched Sunday, is a Facebook-based project through which student leaders on campus can “share their story with the world and tell people their own unique perspective on things,” according to Saeed.
“It was kind of a reactionary idea where I was very frustrated with what I was seeing on the news, and this idea of putting a face to otherness was kind of the fundamental idea behind it,” Saeed said.
According to Malone, Saeed approached her with the idea for SBB in the spring of 2016. The project began to take form during the presidential election cycle..
“After the election results, I remember calling Nour the next day crying and saying, ‘we have to do something,’” Malone said.
The project consists of themed “seasons” of weekly-released filmed interviews. A photo and short profile of each interviewee will be released every Wednesday. The corresponding episode will then air the following Sunday. SBB’s first season, titled “The Unprecedented Election,” depicts different students’ accounts of “how their background helped them shape and cope with the 2016 presidential election,” according to Malone.
“We basically thought that if we get personal stories and anecdotes from students on campus, it helps make real life, real world issues more personal,” Desai said.
Students hoping to get involved can share the episodes on Facebook. Students can also contact SBB on their Facebook page with potential stories or ideas.
According to Saeed, SBB’s non-affiliation with the university as a student-led initiative allows them to adhere to their commitment to authenticity.
“We don’t want to have to censor any content that we want to put out. We want it to be as genuine as possible,” Saeed said. “We don’t want kind of a university-geared message of ‘UW-Madison is just a great place and there aren’t any problems,’ because there are problems, and our goal isn’t to project one message. Our goal is to bring a platform on which people can project their own messages.”
Editor’s Note: The three interviewees of this story are affiliated with The Daily Cardinal.
