A group of Northwestern students are preparing to listen hard and listen good to the NU community.
Inspired by Barack Obama’s organizing efforts in Chicago, Northwestern Listening Campaign is a new student group planning to engage students and faculty to develop issues around which they will organize the campus community in the fall. The campaign is a coalition of student groups, such as Northwestern Community Development Corps, Organized Action by Students Invested in Society, Students for Ecological and Environmental Development, College Democrats and Students for Obama.
Mike Waxman, a Weinberg sophomore, is one of the group’s organizers. He said the idea started at NCDC’s April 17-18 community campus organizer training, which taught student leaders how to effectively motivate community members and use public narrative as a way to incite change.
“What came out of these discussions was that a lot of students want to get engaged,” he said. “We’re not an apathetic campus, but we’re not aware of what people care about. There’s not one unifying factor that brings us all together.”
Group members said they hope to receive responses from more than 2,000 members of the NU community over the next month, Waxman said.
Adam Yalowitz, who proposed the idea, said the Listening Campaign launched its survey Monday and received about 50 responses in its first day. The survey is composed of 12 questions about personal values, assets, goals and their relation to the NU community.
“It’s a very inclusive process and it’s very bottom-up and not top-down,” the Weinberg sophomore said. “We have different teams that are working on group outreach, dorm-storming and meeting with faculty, staff and grad students.”
When the group first formed in mid-April, it was composed of six students who were interested in initiating a listening campaign. Since then the six have come up with two teams of five to recruit and talk to other people, said Samantha Reed, one of the six organizers.
“We were starting with a ground team of 60 people,” the SESP sophomore said. “The goal was for each team to talk to 170 people. We have one group that’s talking to faculty and staff, one group that’s talking to student groups, one that’s going into dorms and one that’s looking to contact off-campus people.”
College Democrats’ President Jordan Fein said the one-on-one meetings with students and close contact with student groups will be essential in the campaign’s success.
“I question how can we, as student leaders, motivate students to get involved and make some types of real change,” he said. “We have to make students think they can have a real impact.”
Though the listening campaign ends May 28, the group will continue to work into next year and may hold another listening campaign next spring, Yalowitz said.
He added that the students plan to work with the administration and Associated Student Government to focus on the main issues NU is concerned about.
“We’re really excited that we’re having the new president and we’re excited about his record of fostering community,” Yalowitz said. “We think there is a lot of potential.”
