State and educational officials attended a meeting on Thursday on how to keep college students safe amid incidents of hate on campuses.

The goal was to lower tensions and prevent hate speech and hate crimes from occurring.

Proposed solutions include reaching out to student leaders and groups, along with working with federal agencies.

Gov. Ned Lamont says while college is a place for discovery and disagreement, hate of any kind should be tolerated.

You have a right to disagree on policies. That's not hate speech. Hate speech is where you vilify people for who they are and their background. Their religious background, their identity. And that's unacceptable. And that's the type of hateful language that sometimes turns into violence," said Lamont.

Officials say it's important when symbols of hate or hate speech happen on campuses, colleges need to strongly and immediately condemn those actions.

They encourage students to also call out hate incidents.