This post is a quick run down of what was discussed at the meeting.
First the wonderful Rachel Kleinbaum went over a little bit of the history of ARC, and how it has been difficult to get the Brandeis Administration to give us a *lasting* space. We do have a space near the ICC, but that space will be physically demolished. That's why it's important for us to see what we can do without a space.
I then discussed some of the mission and goals of ARC.
• to coordinate between groups, and to reduce redundancy of action
• to decrease the time it takes activists to learn how to be activists on campus and increase the amount of time we can spend *doing* activism
• to act as a resource for all activists
• to know the "who's who" of the Brandeis activist world. For example, if you're doing an environmental project, ARC will let you know who has been involved in the environment
• to serve as a resource to let activists know what types of projects have been done and create new ideas of what can be done
• facilitate coordination between activists groups to work with administration
• space to network and create community
We talked a little bit about the mission statement (which is more or less what we have on our "About" page, but I think could use a bit of grammatical fine-tuning.)
Finally, we got to the structure of ARC.
More or less, ARC would consist of meeting of a liaison from activist groups every week in addition to four key coordinators. Those four coordinators would primarily be interested in fostering ARC--they are part of the activist community, but they must be committed to ARC itself. Liaison meetings are opportunities to talk about the events groups are planning, how we can coordinate, what problems groups are facing and how we can help them. It's a great opportunity to network. Each member organization should have one designated liaison that goes to these meetings, but if any activist wants to attend the liaison meetings, they are more than welcome!
Here are the 4 positions in ARC:
- Outreach coordinator - facilitator at ARC liaison meetings, responsible to make sure things are productive and keeps the meetings focused. Also responsible for reaching out to new organizations and maintaining relationships with current member groups.
- Secretary - take notes at liaison meetings. Responsible for ARC's institutional memory. Fills in for Outreach coordinator as facilitator of ARC liaison meetings in the event that the Outreach coordinator cannot attend.
- Communications Director - Website and Calendar- in charge of these two aspects, maintains and organizes the blog.
- Training Coordinator - bring trainers to campus, go to person for activist questions about how to do things on campus, administration policies and so on.
One major discussion we had involved who would be allowed to be members of ARC. Are we a partisan organization? Do we allow in Democrats, Republicans, Green-Rainbow party members, etc.? Do we allow in organizations that actively work to elect a candidate for a governmental position? For now, it's been decided that whoever is at the meeting is "in," but that we'll table the discussion of partisanship until a later point. The crucial thing is to get ARC up and running.
Overall, everybody seemed optimistic about the fate of ARC, and I'm about to head out to the first coordinators meeting. We have, I think, a good structure and some fantastic people working it. I can't wait to see what we do. As for now, coordinators will be having discussions during the summer about ARC.
Thanks to Julia Simon-Mishel of Student Peace Alliance for taking the minutes at the meeting last night--I relied heavily on her notes. If you have any comments, suggestions, tips, quibbles, complaints or whathaveyous of any sort about my take one what happened last night, please feel free to comment.
