2008 Woodie Awards
The power of student organizing
Allie Diffendal
Issue date: 1/29/08 Section: Guide to Vanderbilt
While the university's annual student organization guide explains the ins and outs of registration, planning, publicity, finance, and forms, the knowledge for which activist-centered organization members truly search- a how-to guide in achieving their organization's goals - remains unavailable. Although information concerning promotional t-shirts and "responsible party planning" is welcome, merchandise and alcohol-free parties do not instigate change in university policy; for that, student organizations must successfully interact with university officials and navigate a path through the system. Thus, we must follow the bread crumbs for creating change left by Vanderbilt's student organizations that have had at least some success in accomplishing their goals in recent years.
Brent Fitzgerald, President of Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Recycling (SPEAR), credits SPEAR's recent success in obtaining LEED certification for the Peabody Commons, a compost site, and a paid full-time recycling director to detailed research of other universities' projects, written annotated proposals, networking with administrators and faculty members, and attendance at administrative meetings.
SPEAR has sought to obtain a mutually respectful relationship with university administrators by committing to work within the system. "Many staff and administrators had grown weary of effervescent student groups who wanted environmental justice but chose not to work within the given frame," states Fitzgerald. "We sought not to incite controversy but to provide a rational, systemically authenticated justification for what we were proposing."
Like Fitzgerald, President of Vanderbilt Lambda Association, Klint Peebles, emphasizes a close connection to administrative authorities - such as the Dean of Students Office, Vanderbilt Student Government, and LGBT-supportive faculty and staff- as "most instrumental" to Lambda's progress. Peebles suggests student organizations throw out their general bullet lists of needed changes for a specific plan of how to institute change: "Petitions, statements, and the like are often seen as ineffective verbiage that is useless to the administration in terms of what needs to be done to best catalyze an effort. Students should offer pragmatic, solid suggestions for what needs to be done."
Brent Fitzgerald, President of Students Promoting Environmental Awareness and Recycling (SPEAR), credits SPEAR's recent success in obtaining LEED certification for the Peabody Commons, a compost site, and a paid full-time recycling director to detailed research of other universities' projects, written annotated proposals, networking with administrators and faculty members, and attendance at administrative meetings.
SPEAR has sought to obtain a mutually respectful relationship with university administrators by committing to work within the system. "Many staff and administrators had grown weary of effervescent student groups who wanted environmental justice but chose not to work within the given frame," states Fitzgerald. "We sought not to incite controversy but to provide a rational, systemically authenticated justification for what we were proposing."
Like Fitzgerald, President of Vanderbilt Lambda Association, Klint Peebles, emphasizes a close connection to administrative authorities - such as the Dean of Students Office, Vanderbilt Student Government, and LGBT-supportive faculty and staff- as "most instrumental" to Lambda's progress. Peebles suggests student organizations throw out their general bullet lists of needed changes for a specific plan of how to institute change: "Petitions, statements, and the like are often seen as ineffective verbiage that is useless to the administration in terms of what needs to be done to best catalyze an effort. Students should offer pragmatic, solid suggestions for what needs to be done."
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