The Electronic Frontier Foundation runs a program called the Tor University Challenge, encouraging universities to host Tor relays on their campus networks. Alongside it, public libraries have experimented with running relays of their own. Both efforts point to the same idea: the Tor network gets stronger and faster when the computers routing its traffic are spread across many different institutions, not concentrated in a few hands.
What a Tor relay actually does
A Tor relay is a computer that forms part of the Tor anonymization process. When someone uses Tor Browser, their traffic hops through several relays before reaching its destination, so no single relay knows both who is asking and what they are asking for.
A bridge is a special kind of relay that isn't publicly listed, which helps people reach Tor from countries that try to block it by blacklisting known relay addresses. Relays are run by volunteers, individuals, and organizations all over the world. According to EFF, the more relays exist, the faster and more secure the network becomes for everyone using it.
The Kilton Library story
One of the earliest and most visible examples of a library running Tor infrastructure happened at Kilton Public Library in Lebanon, New Hampshire. In 2015, Tor Project documented this as part of a pilot exploring Tor exit relays hosted in libraries, noting that libraries serve a broad and sometimes vulnerable public, including racial and ethnic minorities and students.
The library's relay drew law enforcement attention. Reporting around the case describes pressure applied to shut the relay down, after which the library's board initially paused it, then voted to restore it on September 15, 2015. In December 2015, U.S. Representative Zoe Lofgren publicly asked the Department of Homeland Security to clarify its procedures, saying she remained troubled by the possibility that DHS employees were pressuring institutions to degrade privacy-protecting services. Kilton's IT manager, Chuck McAndrew, later spoke publicly about the episode, underscoring that the relay was restored.
Why universities are a natural fit
EFF's materials on Tor relay universities point out that campuses tend to have strong network connectivity and in-house technical staff, which makes them well suited to hosting relays reliably.
There is also a technical reason university involvement can work smoothly where it might otherwise cause friction. Some library systems and campus services restrict access based on a visitor's IP address, treating the whole university network as "trusted." Universities that instead use real authentication, such as certificates or individual logins to a central server, as Harvard does according to Tor Project's community guidance, don't need to lock down their entire address space just to protect subscription resources. That separation makes it easier to run a relay without disrupting the services students and faculty rely on.
The EFF Tor University Challenge
EFF describes the Tor network as something that lets human rights defenders, at-risk communities, and people living under censorship or surveillance browse with meaningfully more privacy and anonymity. The Tor University Challenge asks campuses to contribute relay capacity to that network.
EFF's guidance for university administrators frames running a relay as more than infrastructure: it also creates a chance to explain, inside and outside the institution, why privacy infrastructure matters in the first place. A university weighing whether to host a relay is, in effect, being asked to decide what role it wants to play in a public privacy tool, not just whether it has the bandwidth to spare.
Why relay diversity matters for everyone
A network with relays concentrated among a small number of operators, countries, or types of institution is more fragile and more easily pressured. When libraries, universities, nonprofits, and individual volunteers all contribute relays, no single entity and no single government jurisdiction has outsized influence over the paths Tor traffic can take.
This is the practical argument behind programs like the Tor University Challenge and library relay pilots: diversity of relay operators is itself a privacy protection, separate from any single person's browsing habits. It is an infrastructure-level safeguard, not a feature you turn on in a settings menu.
What this does not mean for your own privacy
None of this changes a basic fact: Tor routes your traffic, but it does not make any action automatically anonymous. Logging into a personal account, downloading identifying files, or reusing the same username across sessions can undo the protection Tor's routing provides, regardless of how many relays exist or who hosts them.
If you're exploring Tor for the first time, the safest path is to download Tor Browser directly from the Tor Project, keep it updated, and avoid mixing identified and anonymous activity in the same session. A healthy, diverse relay network helps the tool work well. It is not a substitute for careful habits.
A quieter kind of civic infrastructure
Most people who use Tor will never think about who is running the relay their traffic happens to pass through. That is by design. But the Kilton Library case shows those decisions can become visible and contested, and the EFF Tor University Challenge shows institutions are still actively being asked to weigh in.
Every library or campus that adds a relay makes the network a little less dependent on any one operator, which is a small, concrete way institutions support privacy as public infrastructure rather than a niche technical interest.