Texas State University has started a new initiative to bring about more open dialogue among its students. As part of the program, called "Explorations on Night and the Challenge of Hatred: A Common Experience," all first year students are required to read the book Night by Elie Weisel. In the book, Weisel, a Nobel peace laureate, shares his experiences living in a Nazi concentration camp and reflects on the nature of hatred. The students then studied the book in English and speech communications classes and discussed it in a required first-year seminar.

"I think you can't do conversations or activities around that book without becoming more personal," says Laurel Brooks, a student at Texas State University. "It kind of encourages and forces a more personal, intimate level, maybe, among classmates and professors, to where it's not just textbook knowledge. It's more of experience and personal opinion and values., which is, I think, important in a community like this, where we're all living and interacting with each other everyday."

Learn more about the history of the program and listen to more student reactions by viewing the clip.

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