From webwalk@u.washington.edu Sun Apr 11 19:11:32 1999 Received: from jason02.u.washington.edu (root@jason02.u.washington.edu [140.142.76.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id TAA34258 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 19:11:30 -0700 Received: from dante30.u.washington.edu (webwalk@dante30.u.washington.edu [140.142.15.104]) by jason02.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id TAA15452 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 19:11:29 -0700 Received: from localhost (webwalk@localhost) by dante30.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id TAA87914 for ; Sun, 11 Apr 1999 19:11:29 -0700 Date: Sun, 11 Apr 1999 19:11:29 -0700 (PDT) From: "W. Walker" To: cvc-list@u.washington.edu Subject: Check this out Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Hi all, I know we haven't done much in a while but I still think we rock! Can we meet this Friday? Are we gonna buy back the HUB or what? Who can be in the Resource Center at 4pm, or 5pm, Friday? Is there a better time? Should we exist? YES! So, I am applying for one of those Mary Gates grants so I can work on CVC lots and lots. See my application below, due at 5pm Monday the 12th, which will be today for most of you. Any helpful feedback is appreciated, but that's not the main point. I just want y'all to know, I plan on making this thing happen come what may, and I'll be on campus for the next year. Anybody wanna come along for the ride? Webster ************************************************************************ Engaging the Institution: Promoting Student Leadership at the University of Washington through the Campus Voice Coalition. I am a senior in Community and Environmental Planning and Spanish with a minor in Latin American Studies. I transferred from North Seattle Community College, and will graduate with a double degree in the spring of 2000. I turned forty in February. My chief interest in life is democracy. In the 18 months that I have been at the University of Washington I have taken on several projects that reflect this interest. One project involves governance in my home major, Community and Environmental Planning (CEP). CEP develops student leaders by giving us real responsibility not only for our own education, but for aspects of program management and development as well. It was CEP that drew me to the UW. My main effort within CEP has been to promote increased student participation in governance. CEP makes decisions by consensus. Based on my experience with this process, I wrote a manual and gave a workshop on consensus and facilitation to the incoming class at junior orientation last fall quarter. I also developed and passed two proposals to restructure the governance system, which have resulted in greater attendance, participation and productivity on governance committees. In addition to my work within CEP, I have helped found several Registered Student Organizations (RSOs) at the UW. One, the Democracy and Globalization Working Group (DGWG), has been my main project for a little over a year. Another, the Campus Voice Coalition (CVC), is the project for which I am applying for the Mary Gates Endowment for Students leadership grant. My experience with DGWG has led me to understand the critical difference CVC could make in improving the institutional environment for student leadership development at the UW. DGWG was formed to do public education and organize events around issues of economic globalization. We emphasize ways in which trade and investment liberalization can increase abuses of labor, human rights and the environment. We feel that we are a living example of the kind of open participatory process that should surround these issues in the name of democracy, instead of having decisions about global economic organization made in closed-door meetings without public debate, as has so often been the case. We are currently organizing our second annual Teach-In on Globalization and Democracy. Last year's event was highly successful, with more than thirty presenters and a total audience of over 500. This year's Teach-In, set for April 29th and 30th, promises to be equally successful, with a keynote address by author David C. Korten and a free noontime concert on the HUB lawn. We are proud of ourselves! This is an entirely student organized event, and we are generating interest at a respected institution of higher learning. Our experience, however, has not been entirely positive. We have encountered numerous institutional roadblocks which effectively make it much harder for students to put on an event on campus than it is for other groups. There are many examples of this extra difficulty: RSOs go to extra meetings, fill out extra forms, need multiple authorizations, can't transfer funds directly to UW accounts, and so on. For this year's Teach-In, DGWG has had to get separate authorization from three different academic departments, involving getting the signature of the three department heads on three separate Use of University Facilities (UUF) forms. The extra time and effort spent running around, sitting at meetings, tracking down Deans and Directors and pleading for support, has increased our work load mightily and detracted from the available time and work needed to put together the event itself. This extra workload affects all RSOs, and discourages student leaders from developing themselves to the fullest during their time at the UW. Which is why, based on similar experiences and growing frustration among a number of RSOs, the Campus Voice Coalition was formed. Over the past five months, the members of CVC have shared experiences, researched policies and procedures at other universities, and developed a preliminary Reform Plan to Promote UW Community Involvement. CVC has entered into negotiations with the Student Activities Office (SAO) which is responsible for dealing with RSOs, and with Student Activities and Union Facilities (SAUF) which is responsible for HUB operations, as well as informal talks with the ASUW, the undergraduate student government. We hope to be able to implement several simple but powerful policy changes to free up wasted energies and make the UW more supportive of student initiative and leadership. Again, we are proud of ourselves. Students are taking responsibility for our situation and working to change it. But institutional roadblocks are not the only things that make student organizational activity difficult. CVC was founded by experienced students well familiar with the difficulties of organizing activities on campus. This experience required time to come to fruition, which means CVC was not founded by underclassmen. Several members have already graduated, and several more are soon to do so. Moreover, we are all volunteers struggling to balance our commitments to RSOs with work and academics, while the people we are negotiating with at SAO and SAUF are paid professionals in full time permanent positions. Our negotiations have bogged down. It is only fair to recognize that students come and go while the bureaucracy remains, and institutional interests are not always necessarily congruent with student needs. In order to fulfill the opportunity that now exists to improve institutional support and leadership opportunities in RSOs, CVC needs someone who can consistently devote significant time every week to research and negotiation, to developing and maintaining relationships not only with the administrators across the table but also with officers of the other RSOs we hope to represent. With your support I can commit ten hours a week to CVC, hours that I would otherwise have to spend working. The freedom and legitimacy conferred by the Mary Gates leadership grant will enable me to devote the time and focus necessary to carry this through. Having a dedicated point person will also permit students who have less time to plug in effectively to well-defined and useful roles in the organization. This will not only further the work of the CVC at improving the institutional environment for student organizations on campus. It will also force me to take on unfamiliar roles, develop new skills and strategies, and put myself in unfamiliar situations as a student leader. Traditionally I have played the role of an outsider critic, with well-developed analyses and ideas but a strong distaste for directly engaging the institutions that I criticize. At the same time that your support will free me to give my time to CVC, it will also put me in the position of having to take seriously the viewpoints and needs of the people who work for SAO and SAUF. I won't be able to move forward simply by knowing the truth and righteousness of my cause. I will only be able to make progress to the degree that I am able to build consensus and shared understanding among a group of people with what on the surface may appear to be quite different interests. Which brings me full circle back to CEP, a program that is dedicated to precisely this sort of consensus building across differences as a prerequisite for genuine democracy. I have asked Dennis Ryan, the Director of CEP, to be my mentor for several reasons. First, as the Director of a degree program, he has extensive experience with various institutional demands of the University. Also, his attitude in CEP embodies the full non-bureaucratic support for student initiated projects that we seek to encourage in the institutional environment of the University of Washington. He can also attest to my dedication and hard work. Perhaps most importantly, when the going gets tough, he of all people will be there to remind me of the core values that motivate my work, and the need to stick it out through a process that may not always offer immediate rewards. Besides Mr. Ryan, I will be working with and supported in this project by other RSO officers, student leaders with a broad range of backgrounds and interests upon which to draw. The need for coalition building, focus and clarification of student needs, and the need to stretch myself to understand and share my understanding with the administrators across the table, make this a challenging and exciting project. The focus on improving the institutional environment for all student leaders makes it an especially appropriate project for consideration by the review committee. Thank you for your consideration. .