#Students_Against_COVID is a grassroots movement with members from diverse backgrounds pursuing common goals. These goals consist of, but are not limited to, championing science, supporting essential workers, facilitating innovation and collaboration, fostering inclusivity, and promoting social accountability. A short term immediate goal is to help flatten the curve of coronavirus 19 spread. It’s long term goal is also to enable others’ worldwide to be in better positions to be leaders of positive change in their community. We value students and allies’ voices, and we want to enable a culture that empowers their ability to make an impact across the globe long after this pandemic. It aims to achieve these goals in part by encouraging professionalism, integrity, tolerance, responsibility, honesty, respect, inclusion, diversity, teamwork, common courtesy, and civility amongst all members and allies. SAC believes in promoting transparency and to better ensure reliability of sources and credibility. It has created and strives to create further protocols in place to solicit authenticity of information if necessary.
Students Against COVID Logo was created by Ashley John, an undergraduate student from Wayne State University, USA. The group’s motto was developed by Christos Tsagkaris, a medical student in Greece. The logo is based off of Greek mythology: when you want to make waves, you need to be willing to rock the boat. This motto served as the premise for the logo creation, which shows the boats along with the students and allies around the globe.
Tsagkaris further envisioned the movement had the potential to resemble an ancient Agora. Agora, a dynamic civic space in ancient Greek city-states, was the center of the athletic, artistic, spiritual, and political life in the city. It was in the Agora that you could chat with philosophers and intellectual thinkers such as Socrates and Sophocles, or encounter leaders and policymakers such as Pericles. In the democratic Agora of Athens philosophy, arts and humanities flourished hand in hand with concrete decision making and transparency.
Two thousand years later, #Students_Against_COVID serves as a virtual Agora where students and allies across the globe cross paths, bring up ideas, exchange constructive feedback, and build synergies. Under the European notion of “Act – React – Impact” the movement seeks for students and allies across academic and professional disciplines in Europe as well as other parts of the globe to unite those dedicated to championing science during this crisis.