Everything I wish I’d known before starting to organize on campus
I arrived as a freshman at Dartmouth College extremely excited, and super nervous. I wasn't sure if I'd make friends, but I was super keen on starting a new adventure thousands of miles from home!
My excitement was tempered when I quickly got wise about some of the underlying issues on campus.
For instance, I was shocked during my first term when a student published a detailed guide on how to assault female students.
With this I learned that the social issues I had seen in my urban hometown were all present, just repackaged in an institutional way.
Luckily I met some upperclassmen who were already meeting and gathering to make change. I was just 17, but I jumped into meetings ready to take action!
Over the next four years I took part in many actions on campus. Some I led, some I supported, and others I felt so burned out that I couldn't even imagine showing up.
My friends and I won a lot of changes. We spurred new initiatives within the College, shed light on systemic issues like faculty of color tenureship, supported freshmen with the radical Disorientation Guide, and much more.
And yet there's so much I wish I would've known!
I truly believe if I had known then what I'm about to tell you now, we would've been able to make a bigger difference on campus.
The first thing I wish I'd have known is that protesting is not the only option for change.
Don't get me wrong- protests can be extremely powerful.
I remember swarming the library, part of a passionate crowd of students protesting yet another murder of a Black man at the hands of police.
The energy of communal grief, anger, and resilience was palpable as we entered the stacks. And so was the confusion, uncertainty, and frustration of students who were using the library to study, not make a statement.
The chanting grew until something incredible occurred. A young Black man, a freshman, began to sing a gospel hymn. The crowd dropped into silence. The beauty and pain in his song was incredible to behold. It was magical, energizing, inspiring. As his song quieted, no one spoke a word.
Moments later, on the heels of this silence, a student I was friends with began to voice the frustration she felt as a Black woman on campus. She was upset, fed up, over it! She wanted the College to do better, NOW, and for fellow students to stop calmly studying and start acting in a time of racial crisis. She went on, her forceful energy and volume striking some as relatable, others as aggressive.
Which moment do you think was the talk of the campus days later? The freshman's song, or my friend "attacking" the students who were studying?
You guessed it- the vent.
This isn't to say that her actions were wrong or bad. Rather it points to an underlying challenge of protesting- controlling the narrative.
Without control over who shows up, it's hard to predict what messages will be shared, for better or worse. You could end up with a beautiful song, a controversial monologue, or both.
Without serious planning, speaking with a unified voice is incredibly hard in a protest. This can lead to blowback on campus and in the media, which creates more stress and burnout.
Not to mention, once it was over, we had made a statement… but hadn't given any action steps for viewers. What did we want the folks in the library to do? What did we want administrators to do? What could they do?
I wish I'd known about ways to structure an action so that we could go beyond the tactics of protesting and into the strategy of changemaking.
This is one thing that really distinguishes activism (what I was doing then) from community organizing (which is what I do now!)
Community organizing always took longer, but in that same time I could develop a consistent leadership team and a core of people who had each other's backs and worked strategically.
With community organizing, I could be more intentional about forming a team, offering leadership roles, and recruiting allies too.
Organizing really means building a team, creating a strategy, and sticking to it until you reach your goals.
And that ties into the second thing I wish I'd known, which is the importance of setting just a few clear goals.
When I arrived, racism on campus was a huge conversation. A worthy one, but also a giant issue with so many tentacles.
Like, racism could be…
Online slurs about students of color
A frat or sorority admitting only White students
BIPOC professors disproportionately being denied tenure at the university
…and so much more.
Of course we wanted to solve every. Single. Version. of racism that showed up on campus, all at once. But a broad scope made it hard to focus and solve just one issue.
For example, at one point our collective launched a really powerful campaign that focused on a lot of interlocking issues.
We had listed out over seventy examples of what campus issues looked like for Black students, Native students, LBGTQ+ students, and Latinx students.
We held a sit-in in the college President's office to have him respond to each issue and our proposed solutions. We were going to solve everything in one fell swoop…
NOT!!
I remember feeling shocked when the president ultimately did NOT look at each of our seventy points. Why? It was way too many.
Looking back, I wish I could've suggested to our group that we pick no more than three topics for him to respond to.
Even with our many goals, we did win an external campus climate survey to affirm our concerns, as well as the formation of a Moving Dartmouth Forward committee, which followed up on the issues raised at the sit-in.
And in future actions, we developed short, clear asks when approaching administrators.
Since then, I've continued to make it easy on myself by narrowing down my goals!
The third thing I wish I'd known was the importance of involving others.
So often it was like, Oh, I'm so mad about this! And my three friends are also mad about this! And we're gonna go change it NOW!
But then what happens when me and my three friends, who are all busy overachievers, hit finals period? And we all get so busy that we can't meet? You guessed it, the campaign's over before it even starts.
It helped to pay more attention to reaching out to other people who cared about the cause, across different walks of life. This means asking, who else can help me achieve this goal?
I think about this in terms of perspective. I like to ask, "Who can round out my blind spots on the issue?"
It could be a professor who cares a lot about the issue and is willing to tell what went down with previous efforts that took place wayyyy before I arrived. Professors are awesome for institutional memory. And if they have tenure, they can speak with more freedom. Having a professor on my team also lends a lot of credibility to the campaign.
Maybe I need someone on my team who is ahead of me in a different way. It could be an upperclassman who has more social standing and a better knowledge of the "who's who" of the issue. They could have a deeper sense of campus events. Or it could be the opposite- maybe it's a first-year who brings that fresh perspective from the outside world!
Campus staff are also great for this. Personally I leaned a lot on staff who ran campus programs that dealt with morals, ethics, critical thinking, and campus diversity.
They tended to be deep thinkers who supported other students who cared about global issues. Because of this, they were great for making connections. And they really had our backs.
I remember after our seventy-point sit-in, it was staff at the Office of Pluralism and Leadership who literally celebrated us with cake while campus rumbled with what had just happened. It was a moment of lightness amid the heaviness of our goals. So I highly recommend staff as people to have on your team.
Another way to think about involvement is in terms of skill-set.
This is asking, who can do what I do, but better? Or who can take this thing off my plate? And even, who could really become powerful if invited to practice this thing?
For example, when I started leading action meetings, I knew we had to meet consistently. (More on that later.) I wanted every meeting to have notes, an agenda, and decision points.
Additionally, I knew that the agenda needed to be sent out in advance so that people would know that 1. It's still happening, and 2. Important stuff is actually being handled, so they should show up if they want a say.
The good part was that I accomplished this. The bad part was that it was too much when I tried to do it… alone.
Drafting the agenda, including previous notes, choosing decision steps, sending out an email with all this, facilitating the actual meeting, and trying to take notes during that meeting- was just too much.
I had to admit that I couldn't do it all and still be an effective leader.
So I asked a friend if she'd be willing to take notes, and she agreed. I was so relieved at the next meeting, when I could focus on actually facilitating, not typing furiously while trying to think!
It was also great because offering the note-taking role to my friend also gave her the chance to become stronger at that.
From there I started delegating even more roles, like facilitator, timekeeper, notes emailer, and even someone to bring snacks. (That also helped me save on my meal card balance!)
This all connects to the fourth thing I wish I knew before starting my first campus organizing campaign.
Number four, consistency is key.
For example, I remember when our collective wanted to disrupt an event for prospective students. The emails flew. Ultimately a "prospie meet and greet" came up as an idea of interest, and then we started trying to coordinate resources.
All good, except that this was over email and the night before the prospies were set to arrive.
There was no way we were going to be able to pull a cohesive event together that connected to a larger strategy or goal of improving equity on campus.
We ultimately called the event idea off. That was when I realized that if we were going to accomplish anything, we needed to meet regularly so that we could plan before important dates arrived.
Once we began meeting regularly, we were much more effective.
We created a group calendar, set goals, really did anything we wanted without the stress of cobbling something together last-minute and hoping people showed.
The group ended up renewing the Disorientation Guide, a zine to share with incoming freshmen.
So while "consistency is key" sounds cliche, it's honestly true. If you're not meeting regularly, you're not building power to achieve a goal.
And it's not just consistency with meeting times. Having a constant structure to the meetings helps people know what to expect and how to engage with the decision-making process.
With a strong practice of regular connection, we had more diverse participation. This was because people knew what to expect and how to make their voices heard- not via email last minute, but in person every week in the library café.
Now when we finally did meet, one more important thing had to take place.
And this brings me to the last thing I wish I had known before campus organizing.
And that is, the importance of relationship building.
I remember when organizing around faculty of color not getting tenure, we had a really important collaboration between Black and Asian students. A Black professor and an Asian professor, both well-loved, had both just been denied tenure.
One of the things we argued over was, which professor do we want to be the "face" of the issue? There was also conflict because some students felt like one professor's tenure denial had sparked more action than the other due to their race.
The conflicts opened up a lot of difficult conversations. Ultimately we staged a mock funeral for all of the professors of color who had been denied tenure, throwing their literature into a casket in front of an administrative office to symbolize the loss of knowledge when these professors were pushed elsewhere.
Fortunately, our action uplifted professors of many races.
But I wish I had been more savvy about connecting with more of the Asian students so that I could understand their concerns and strengthen the feeling of togetherness.
In organizing we call this understanding "self-interest." But I didn't know that, and there was a lot of upset and people storming out of the room before we arrived at a solution.
If I had spent more time just getting meals with some of my Asian peers, or asking questions over coffee, there might have been more understanding on both sides.
The dialogue might have been more constructive and we could've figured out an easier way forward… hopefully one with less tears.
At the end of the day, community organizing is about finding out what we care about, and acting to improve our community. Organizing on campus was really tough, and I wish I could advise my former self about what to do.
Fortunately many times we still came out on top!
I hope in sharing this reflection, you can learn from my experience and be smarter, more effective, and dare I say it? - happier! when starting your first campus organizing campaign.
