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| Run Progressive Trustees Description: Ever had to deal with the trustees? While genuinely interested in Wesleyan's well-being, our trustees are overwhelmingly managers and businessmen. As a result, students have been fighting them about socially responsible investing and purchasing for decades. When apartheid disrupted the campus in the 1980's, students formed WESPAN, the Wesleyan Progressive Alumni Network to change the composition of the trustees, with some success. Unfortunately, WESPAN has become defunct in the last few years. The lists of progressive alumni are still in the WSA office, and students from the WESUNITY history tutorial are getting more names and information about activist alumni. Ambitious Project: It is a little known fact that graduating seniors can run for the board. They can get onto the ballot in one of two ways: either by being selected by the nominating committee of the alumni association or by running as a petition candidate. In the latter case, they must gather signatures from 1% of the alumni body (roughly 250) on forms provided by the University . Of those 250 names, no more than 30% can be from any one single class. The signed form would be due in our office by December 1st of their senior year. It would be possible to begin to run an active sophomore for trusteeship, getting signatures from his class, juniors, seniors, and then the incoming classes as she rises in age to hit this total. For details on logistics, contact Michael Casey, Wesleyan's Director of National Programs and Operations. Will this happen? Wesleyan activists have to be convinced that fighting to get progressives on the board, a fairly long-term project, is worth spending time on. Cari MacDermott of the WSA Office, Scott Mayerowitz '00 and Brian Edwards-Tiekert '00 have expressed interest in reviving WESPAN, and running progressives for the board. Email wesunity@wesleyan.edu to talk more about this campaign. |
Admissions Activism Description: The Princeton Review says Wesleyan is the #1 activist school around, but what impression do prospective students get when they come to campus? Campus activist, student of color, and community service groups would benefit by setting up some permanent institutions to let pre-frosh know that Wes is an activist school. As a first step, activists should create a flyer/pamphlet about student groups that could sit in the admissions office along with the info sheets on sports and majors. This flyer could info on current activist groups and their campaigns, a brief history of Wesleyan activism, a list of meeting times and places so that overnight students can sit in on a group of their choice, and a list of Wesleyan activist groups URLs, and a list of student contacts (current students who are willing to talk to incoming frosh about Wesleyan activism). Will it happen? A Wesunity coordinator, Abe Walker is interested in pursuing this project with other student groups. |
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| Secure space in upcoming University Center Description: Wesleyan's planning to replace the current Campus Center, a converted physics building ill-suited for its current role, with a huge University Center where Fayerweather is now. Will student groups get their dream of a place to meet and work? Wesunity, the WSA, and student groups will have to fight to make this building a center for student groups at Wesleyan. We need to centralize the resources available to us, incorporating the WSA office, the meeting rooms of the campus center, the office of the Director of Student Activities and Leadership Development (a new position), and the facilities of the computer labs. Such a space would make booking rooms trivially easy, make student groups more effective, and encourage meeting and collaboration between student groups. For details about the possibilities, read the bottom of about.html. Will it happen? We need to make sure the WSA's FiFac keeps student groups updated about the status of planning for the University Center. The WSA should send out monthly newsletters. If they fail to do this, complain to wsa@wesleyan.edu that you want to know what your elected body is doing. When planning resumes, we need to mobilize student groups to fight for the space we deserve. Student groups have been dreaming about a true student center for decades. If we miss this opportunity we will curse ourselves for decades to come. |
Online Database Description: Take the next step in improving inter-group communication. Turn the student group contacts page into an online database. Add information like meeting times and places, mission statements,budget allocations, email addresses, web page addresses and make it conveniently updatable (password protected) online. Work with Cari MacDermott of the WSA Office to make sure that the database meets the needs of the office. Will it happen? The major obstacle is technical. The database needs to be created and we need permission from ITS to run it on their servers. It would be possible to hire a student ITS employee like Dylan Reilley (creator of online voting) to do this. The new WESUNITY technology staffers could help with this as well. |
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