Beyond Tolerance: Moving Towards Advocacy

So today is April 16th, a beautiful Monday. A truly spring day (Milwaukee is a fickle non-commital 12 year old girl trying to decide what outfit to wear for her first day of middle school in terms of its climate). Bastard. Anyway, that's besides the point.

A couple of days ago I had a life-changing event take place. For the past year and a half, I have been planning a Diversity conference. It was under the aegis of the Wisconsin Private Colleges Initiative for Diversity (WPCID). I first attended one of these coferences in November of 2005 at Carthage College in Kenosha, WI. It was a really great event, although my memories of it are now conflated with the pain and frustration of putting my own WPCID conference on. At any rate, when I went with my Lutheran Campus Ministry, talk of having the conference move to another school circulated. Many private colleges attended the conference, including my own, Marquette University. The purpose of the conference was to address issues relating to diversity that were characteristic of the private school experience. You see, private schools have a different set of issues to deal with that are not typically found on a public school's campus, which tend to be more "diverse" if you will then their private counterparts.

So yes, diversity diversity diversity. This has been a buzz word on my campus for many moons. So I thought that i would leave my own impact and facilitate my own discussion of the topic through this conference. So I approached Carthage and agreed to put the conference on at my school (What the hell was I thinking?). Little did I know that this conference would be the bane and the joy of my existence for the next two-years. And so it was settled. Diversity Conference at Marquette for the Spring of 2007. Hawt.

I began to think of the topics that I would like to address when planning the event. I began to research other conferences of this ilk. I was one student, with a vision, well, more like an malinformed inclination to plan a frickin' conference! For those of you who may not have experience in event planning, conferences take a LOT of work. It was like planning a wedding on crack. The stress and the expectation to do well/ impress the relatives.

The planning really started to take flight in the summer of 2006. I reserved the space in the Alumni Memorial Union (which is our student union). Began to approach different members of administration regarding the event and began to coalate a group of students who would soon become my planning team for the conference. Still no idea what the topic would be, but whatever, laying the groundwork was very important at that point.

I approached the Vice-Provost for Diversity, yes, Marquette has a Vice-Provost for Diversity. Let me tell you about this provost, nice guy, but ultimately no power. No budget. But good ideas. At times, I felt that it was a political move for my university to hire someone with basically no influence to be the masthead for diversity. The year before my senior year, which was the school year before the summer of 2006 was the year that I got a position through Marquette University Student Government. The Diversity Commissioner. Holla. *fanfare* This position had a budget to plan diversity programs. BINGO!!!

I had more money than the provost. I now had the resources to plan the conference. I gathered $12,000 to plan a diversity conference. I was so excited and blessed. I contacted friends that would be a part of the planning process. On our first meeting I realized that all the peope that I invited for the event were girls. Whoa. I didn't even realize when I was approaching people that it would be a veritable estrogen party. I stuck with this team. No men allowed except me. All my commission members were very capable, intelligent, thoughtful, thorough, amazing, kind individuals that were dedicated to my cause: Michelle, Dominique, Angela, Jazmin, Alison, Kristin, Sara.

Let me tell you that the planning for this event was outrageous. And in Dicken's style it truly was the best and the worst of times. I enlisted the aid of Pam Peters, the Assistant Dean for Intercultural Programs along with my girl power team. She was a great resource for the event. She gave a lot of insight and programmatically was a lifesaver. However, I will say that I did plan the conference basically by myself. I do not say that to be arrogant, to be the center of attention or to complain about those that helped me with the event. It was more something that I put on myself.

I learned so much about myself in the process of planning for this conference. First, I learned that I have a lot of trouble reliquishing control. I'm not a good delegator. I put a lot of undue stress and pressure on myself. Second, I learned that I have esophageal spasms and ulcers forming in my esophagus. A condition that runs in my family and is exacerbated by stress. Third, I learned that relying on others is not a form of weakness but strength. It takes a certain sensitivity and intelligence to know when to accept help. Unfortunate that I did not realize this until the final weeks of the planning process. Fourth, I learned not to malign myself because of other people's expectations or my perception of what people's expecations are of me. I need to be happy with myself, period.

That about sums it up for now. I'm still processing and even problemitizing certain elements of the conference and myself. I did find that as the event expanded I did as well. A conference that seemed painfully inocuous to others or even to those reading this blog was transformational to me.

So Beyond Tolerance: Moving Towards Advocacy was a success. To explain the event more: it was your basic (and not so basic) one-day conference. Registration, Opening, three breakout sessions, a keynote, lunch the works. Our keynote was a man named Carlos Andres Gomez. He was a speaker that was brought to campus in the past and was very popular and highly recommended. I decided to bring him back. I'm glad that I did. He was a social worker turned teacher and slam poet. He was so down to earth and related to the audience on a level that I had not witnessed in a keynote. And if you are not familiar with slam poetry then you are missing out.

You should check Carlos out at http://www.carloslive.com

We had 62 participants, 13 workshops, a fabulous lunch and an amazing keynote. People are still coming up to me raving about the conference asking when will I be doing other. My answer to them is "Never. Until I get bored."