Monday, November 9, 1998
Workshops
focus on leadership techniques
CONFERENCE: Sessions teach how to effectively voice student
opinions
By Barbara Ortutay
Daily Bruin Staff
To discuss and learn strategies for campus and community
activism, 20 student leaders attended a three-day Grass Roots
Organizing Weekend (GROW) workshop that began Friday night.
The intensive training session centered around affirmative
action and student organizing. It was sponsored by the
Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) external vice
president’s office.
"In GROW we deal with power," said Felicia Perez, one of the
workshop leaders. "We show students what power they have and how to
use it to reach their goals."
Perez is a member of Californians for Justice, a non-profit
lobbying organization that deals with minority issues in
California.
According to some students who attended the workshop, its
success relied on not just the lecturing of workshop leaders, but
everyone’s participation.
"I feel like it’s a class, but it’s not because it Ãs so
interactive. You learn from all the people around you," said Sophia
Pak, a fourth-year philosophy student and member of USAC external
vice-president Liz Geyer’s staff.
Geyer said most students who attend GROW workshops are
experienced organizers and activists.
"It’s a networking of students who have been organizing and
addressing issues on campus," Geyer said. "They can bring the
knowledge back to their organizations."
The workshop began Friday night with a session explaining power
relations that affect students.
For example, all voting students can wield electoral power over
their governors, members of Congress and senators. They may also be
able to exercise consumer power over corporations and disruptive
power by striking or holding demonstrations.
Workshop leaders also pointed out power relations in colleges
and universities. While administrators may hold powerful positions
above students, students can affect enrollment numbers, fund
raising and may interfere with the careers of administrators.
The second day of the workshop dealt with how to channel this
perceived power to reach an organization’s goal.
"It’s important to show your power in the most effective way you
can," Perez said.
Students learned the specifics of grassroots organizing, ranging
from how to set goals for an organization to tactics that can be
used to get what they want.
Speakers emphasized the importance of focusing organizational
efforts on a specific target, not large group or a broadly defined
goal.
For example, instead of targeting the UC Board of Regents as a
whole, organizers need to target a specific regent to meet their
demands, said Perez.
In addition, speakers said the same tactics don’t work in every
situation. For example, while storming the chancellor’s office may
be effective at one university, it may not work at another.
Students may have recalled last year’s affirmative action
protests, when protesting students took over Murphy Hall and, a few
weeks later, Royce Hall. The protests sought to pressure the
chancellor to defy Proposition 209, which ended affirmative action
policies in California.
But, workshop leader Aisha Anderson said on her campus (the
University of Pittsburgh), the school’s code of conduct
specifically prohibits student takeover of buildings, and students
can be expelled for doing so.
"You need to take into consideration the legal and other
consequences," Perez said.
Some students in the workshop said they learned more than they
would in a classroom.
"What they teach us is not out of a book," said Dawn Philip, a
third-year women’s studies and political science student and USAC
external vice-president staff member.
"These techniques have been time-tested by activists," Philip
said.
GROW was developed in 1985 by the United States Students
Association (USSA), a national student lobbying group based in
Washington, D.C.
Back then, USSA leaders attended a five-day conference similar
to GROW, and wanted to pass on the knowledge to student organizers
by turning it into a weekend-long event so more students could
participate.
Now, GROW workshops are held at colleges and universities across
the nation.
The original five-day workshop was formulated by the Midwest
Academy, a national training center for grassroots activists and
organizers.
This weekend’s workshop attracted not only UCLA student leaders,
but activists from USC and UC Santa Barbara as well.
"All of us are students working on common issues, regardless of
school or organization," said USAC president Stacy Lee.
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