[media-credit name=”Photo courtesy of the You Don’t Say QU Facebook Page” align=”aligncenter” width=”600″][/media-credit]

A Facebook page created by senior psychology major Erik Panzer is reminding the Quinnipiac community to think before they speak.

“You Don’t Say QU” was created by Panzer in the spring of 2015. The organization promotes the idea to think before you say something offensive.

“It came across my Facebook feed, the original one done by Duke University,” Panzer said. “I thought ‘Oh that’s pretty cool’, so I contacted the people at Duke to make sure they were comfortable if I was able to start something at Quinnipiac and they were all for it.”

The purpose of the page is to spread awareness of what an offensive phrase is and why it is important to avoid them.

Duke University’s student organizations, Think Before You Talk and Blue Devils United, helped create the first “You Don’t Say” University Facebook page.
Since then the Duke page has featured posts from other universities, including Quinnipiac and they have been in contact with Panzer about the Quinnipiac page.

“I targeted the athletes first because those were the people I had access to at the time and that’s where Duke’s most powerful ones were, the athletes,” Panzer said.

Accessibility and support are behind why the page mainly features students from Greek life and Student government.

“I don’t want it to be groups of people because I’ve had people complain about it,” Panzer said. “They don’t feel like they should be doing it because they’re not in a group like that but these groups are just what I’ve had the most access to.”

Panzer has not turned anyone down who wants to be on the site. It is not a difficult process to run the page but they have faced problems with wording in the past.

“We edit a lot and it’s the edits that may change someone’s original word or original statement. There have been times where different associations will complain about how it’s been said,” Panzer said. “So we edit a lot and we might change the word or phrase a little bit. It’s more to support than it is to offend.”

With the Duke page facing neglect after its creator graduated, Panzer would love to see the Quinnipiac organization grow once he leaves in the spring.

“I had interest from someone and I offered to hand it off to them if they wanted to continue it on but I haven’t heard back from them,” Panzer said. “I’d love someone who has as much passion as I do to come and take it over.”

The process of creating a post is simple.

“They’ll send it to me, I’ll look at it and edit it, I’ll send it to the Duke guy to look it over and then we’ll get it going,” Panzer said. “A bit of organizing and photographing but it’s manageable. It’s a good message and has a lot of impact. Just one of them reached over 20,000 people on Facebook.”

Students can get involved by contacting the email on the Facebook page.