Chapman’s collaboration with the Orange County Justice Initiative (OCJI) is working in full force with many plans for the 2024-2025 school year. 

The Orange County Justice Initiative has worked closely with Chapman and its students, for years giving them an opportunity to find ways to serve their community, while also receiving scholarships. 

OCJI, led by Justice Crudup, an alumnus of Chapman University, helps to establish an organization where youth can stand up for racial injustice and political issues. The group sets up everything from organized protests to voting opportunities. 

“We are on a path to become one of the first political think tanks that the youth empower,” Crudup shared. He further explained that this is done in order for youth to become more involved in local government and politics. 

“Justice-oriented organizations that have worked on issues ranging from helping people to register to vote, police misconduct issues, rallies for anti-hate issues, especially with hate crime issues,” shared Peter Simi, Ph.D., a sociology professor at Chapman. “It is very locally focused.” 

Simi, who had Crudup in his first class at Chapman, helps to link the organization with Chapman as a faculty advisor, as they progress with their Stop the Hate Seminar. Chapman students that will be awarded scholarships for their contributions to OCJI, help in the organization of the seminar. 

The Stop the Hate Seminar is an event that occurs every Spring Semester at Chapman and will continue into the 2025 calendar year. Details of the next semesters will be heard closer to the date of the event in February. 

“The program is going to be for different types of organizations that we are going to be selecting based on the anti-hate experience and education that they will be able to provide for the Chapman Community,” Crudup explained about the seminar. “We are really excited to collaborate and call in our community partners that we’ve been working within Orange County and Los Angeles for the past four years, that can provide data and analysis that can give qualitative and quantitative data to students and faculty.” 

The organization can also give many of its thanks to the assistance that Chapman and its leadership was able to provide.

“Dean (Jerry) Price was instrumental in having it essentially organized,” Simi shared. “The organization's relationship with Dean Price and Chapman University has made the Seminar a possibility.” 

The registration is still open to sign up for the scholarship opportunity until Oct. 18, and there are plenty of other opportunities to work with OCJI and its many ways that it gives back to the local community.