What is Hacklab?

Hacklab is a budding grassroots initiative to bring together the innovators, creators, and dreamers of UConn. We pride ourselves on our attitude towards life. We say “can” while others chant “cannot”. We leave our cynicism at the door and welcome the possibilities.

We build each other up through honesty and gratuitous betterment of each other. Life is not a zero-sum game. We aim to connect one another with the resources needed to succeed, inspire, and forge lifelong connections.

We operate a small makerspace and run meetings twice a week so people can collaborate and work on projects together. We also offer a lending library of tools and parts for people to borrow so they don’t have to spend their own money.

The community is primarily active on Discord and is open to anybody who wants to join. You do not have to be a UConn student to join.

How did Hacklab come to be?

My first exposure to hacker culture was during my last two years in high school. I became actively involved in my school’s FIRST Tech Challenge (FTC) team which is a program to introduce high schoolers to robotics through an engineering competition. I didn’t realize it at the time but this program changed my life.

This enthusiasm people had for building things and having fun with STEM was infectious. FTC brought meaning and purpose into all of our lives. It brought together so many different kinds of people, personalities, and interests to work towards a common goal. I always learned something new from the people around me, probably while heaving from laughter. Nobody told us what to do, but I think we all did it for its own sake. We wanted to win for sure but I think deep down we all did it because we liked each other’s company while doing something we all really cared about.

It never occurred to me how rare this kind of community is. I took it for granted that there were so many people passionate about science and technology. Heck, not even just science and technology. There were so many people who cared about something. I came into college expecting to quickly find a community of people who were seeking that kind of experience. But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. I looked everywhere under the sun. I tried clubs, research projects, classes across several departments, centers on campus, and makerspaces. Event after event, one red flag would rise after another. Nowhere I looked had the same energy or drive. I joined and helped build the newly formed NASA BIG Idea Challenge team hoping to find that elusive community. I left that challenge more disillusioned at my college than ever. At a certain point, every free moment of my time, a singular question would arise: “Why? Why is there nobody here who cares?”.

Statistically speaking, if 1% of college students were remotely interested in this kind of community, that’s over 200 people compared to the 15 at my high school (approximately 4% of my high school population). The math didn’t add up in my head and still doesn’t to this day.

Clearly, things weren’t going to improve if I didn’t do something about it. I actively pushed the administration to convert a fully-equipped machine shop that was inaccessible to students into a makerspace for all. Now, this space is expected to open for student use within the next semester.

However, the administration has still not provided adequate support and frustrated efforts to make this a reality. I have also testified in front of the Connecticut General Assembly Appropriations Committee to provide testimony on how budget cuts will affect initiatives like mine:

The stories from the other students are unbelievably inspiring and I highly recommend you hear them yourself!

I look back fondly on my time in high school robotics. I hope that someday I’ll get to re-experience that kind of community again. Maybe with my own club now.

Hacklab was inspired by Hackclub which is an international club of high school students who like to build stuff. Knowing what I know now, I would have loved to be more active back in high school. C’est la vie.