Students Choose Their Issue - GO!

Introduction

Chapter 1 — Social Action: An Overview

Social Action and Its Role on Colleges

Benefits of Social Action

Chapter 2 — Developing a Social Action Class

Course vs Co-Curricular & Prerequisites 

Creating a Social Action Syllabus

Teaching Style & Classroom Norms

The Students

Building Allies

Role of Place & Each Semester v Every Year

Maintaining Momentum

Chapter 3 — Teaching Social Action (TSA) Model

On Your Mark

Students Choose Their Issue

Group Dynamics, part 1

Change Theory

Building Power

Campus Tour

Research

Group Dynamics, part 2

Strategy & Tactics

Campaign Kickoff

Campaign Plan & Timeline

Implementation & Execution

Campaign Evaluation

Binder & Presentation

Chapter 4 — Where Do We Go From Here?

Overcoming Challenges

Next Semester

Mainstreaming Social Action

Internships & Pipeline to Jobs

Status of Current Campaigns

Introduction

As mentioned earlier, it is important that the students choose their issue in the first third of the class. Scott starts the Issue Development process on Class #2. You can choose a later date, but Issue Development should be done in the first 5-6 days of the course. If you don’t do it by then, you won’t have enough time for your students to complete all of the Campaign Activities to get to a Campaign Action.

Issue Development process has six parts. Each of them is a Campaign Activity:

1. Students choose an issue to focus on (i.e., they choose a solution to a social problem), ad this process is called Issue Identification.
2. Student group’s select 1-3 demands.
3. Students select a target (i.e., the decision-maker).
4. Students name their group, which the students love to do.
5. Students conduct interviews of stakeholders.
6. Students apply for official Student Club Recognition/

As students are choosing their campaigns, it is important to remind them that what campaign they choose is totally their choice. The campaign they choose to work on may come from a liberal, conservative, social democrat, or libertarian perspective…or it may have no ideology at all. Scott tell’s the students that he is not promoting a political ideology; whatever campaign they choose is totally up to them. There is no political indoctrination, as students develop and choose what campaigns to work on, and they an change campaigns at any point in the semester. The role of the professor is to teach them about democracy, power, and how to bring about change. Furthermore, the faculty role is to offer guidance about strategy and tactics, and to help students consider the variety of options available, with the students deciding on how to best move forward.

Here is a video of Scott describing his Issue Identification process:

1. Students Choose an Issue to Focus On

An issue is a solution to the social problem, which is composed of 1-3 demands (i.e., a concrete, measurable policy change) that requires a yes or no answer, which the group feels strongly about. As you start your Issue Identification process, a question to ask you students is “What are the biggest problems in your life from last week.

Check out Dr. Jozie Nummi from the Purdue University NW discuss this line of questioning:

Scott starts his Issue Identification by having people from community campaigns make a 3-4 minute pitch. Below is Chris from Sacred Heart Community Services pitching his organization's campaign.

Scott then has students from the previous semester’s campaigns that are still active make a 3-4 minute pitch. After the community and student campaigns pitch their policy change, the students have the opportunity to meet with the community and student organizers to learn more about the campaigns, and ask specific questions. It is like “speed dating”, but instead of trying to find a date, the students are trying to find a campaign. It looks like this.

Here is Scott discussing how he gets the students into groups around an issue that the students are passionate about. There are many ways to get students into groups around an issue that the students are passionate about, and you will need to figure out how you want to do this. To help you in your thinking, take a look at this video where Scott discusses his Issue Identification process. You can use his process, make edits to it, or come up with your own.

As stated above, there are many ways to do Issue Identification. For example, Dr. Arun Agrawal's course, Transformations: Commoning and Social Action at the University of Michigan, did his Issue Identification by having students write out over 200 ideas about things they were interested in, narrowed it down to 15 and then narrowed it down to 5 areas of interest, and then down to 2 areas of interest (see below photo). From this point, Arun had these two groups meet, and they developed together an issue, which then developed their demands and a target.

Here is Arun at the Notre Dame ‘25 Institute describing his Issue Identification process in more detail. The key point is that there are many ways to break students into groups, and Scott’s and Arun’s are just two ways. If you develop your own way, please share it with the TSA Community of Practice!

Scott uses the below Mural Board to organize his Issue Identification process. Note that Scott also includes his inactive student campaigns (i.e, previous campaigns but no students currently involved), as well as a space for the students to come up with their ideas. Both of these are done after the “speed dating for a campaign”. Below is how Scott’s Mural Board looks like for the begging of Class #2. If you like this Mural Board setup, you can duplicate it here.

In Scott’s classes, about one-half of the campaigns that the students chose were student-led campaigns. When students worked with the community, Scott asked the organization to allow the students to lead a campaign action (i.e., a public display of the students' power, which puts pressure on the decision-maker through a march, rally/press conference, lobbying day, street theater, occupying of space, target meeting, etc.). Generally, community organizations have been very excited to partner with the social action students. If the students decide to work on a campus campaign, they became the lead organizers.

Here is what the Mural Board looked like in the Soci. 164: Social Action course, as students start Day 4. Notice there is more clarity to the student groups. In Scott’s course, there must be three students in a group to "activate it" for the class. Below you can see that three groups have achieved this (i.e., 3 green circles, which represents the students first choice).

SML had a minimum of three students per group; other professors have a minimum of four or five students. In addition, Scott recommends that you have no more than five groups total, as it is difficult to keep track of more than this. Every once in a while, students choose to work on just one group.

2. Student Group’s Select 1-3 Demands

After the students get in groups with a general ideas for their campaign, the students work on developing their draft demands and targets. If they are joining a community group that has its own demands and target, this step is skipped.

Your role is to help them develop "good demands", which means they are short, specific, and quantifiable. It is really important at this point to help clarify what a demand is, and move them from "slogans to demands". Scott used the below box on the Mural Board to follow the thinking of the students.

However, Scott has created the below Worksheet for you, which contains these Mural Board questions, as well as a few more. Feel free to use it and make any edits you think are necessary.

A key part of this process is for you to help the students create “good” demands. A good demand is specific, stated in a single sentence, with there being a right and wrong side. If there is a cost, the amount in dollars should be included at the end of the demand. A campaign has anywhere between one and three demands. A general rule in social action is to have no more than three demands, otherwise the campaign loses focus. Importantly, an issue delivers concrete, positive change in people’s lives. In addition, a student should feel strongly about an issue, as this will encourage you to put time and energy to do something about it, and make you willing to fight for it.

The demand should be not too small (e.g., website change only) and not too big (total nuclear disarmament). If the demand is too small, there is no need for a public campaign rather just go ask the target. If the demand is too big, it will take longer than three years. Clearly, changing a policy is not voluntarism and is not running a program or doing a bake sale!

Listen to Scott discussing how to help students take slogans and turn them into specific demands:

It is recommended that the 1-3 demands follow the below format: Name of student group demands that …(a specific, concrete, measurable request requiring a yes or no answer stated in a single sentence, which will cost ?? amount of dollars. Here is Scott discussing why it is important to to make a demand quantifiable.

3. Student Group’s Select Target (i.e., Decision-Maker)

Importantly, an issue requires a clear target, which is the lowest ranking person who can meet your demand. State their name and their title. If the target is the city council, or a state agency, these bodies are still composed of people, and all of the individual members should be named, along with their titles. For example, if the city council has seven members, you will need to identify who are the four members that are the most likely to be persuaded, and target these folks.

Students sometimes choose a target, and then realize that this is not the lowest ranking person who can meet their demand. The person either doesn’t have the authority to agree to the demand because it is not her or his purview, or the demand has been made too high up the chain of authority, and there is another person at a lower level that can make the decision. If it is a committee, have the students identify which board member is most likely to support their demands, and have them start talking to that board member. Of course, if the target who has the ability to make the decision denies your request, you can always go to the next level up (e.g., from the provost to the president, or from the president of the university to the chancellor of the system), but it is important to go through the correct chain of command and start with the person that has the authority to meet your demand.

To find the right person or committee, it is sometimes necessary to look at an org chart. Below is the org chart that Scott used to help his students identify the correct targets of a student campaign on campus:

After they brainstorm, Scott recommends that the students share their demands and targets with you, and then you provide them feedback. Here is some of the feedback that Scott has provided students in the past year to improve their demands and target.

4. Student Name Their Groups

Students LOVE this Campaign Activity. The naming of their student groups allows the students to be creative, and it starts the process of making decisions together, which is a key component of Group Dynamics. Their name also makes them more connected to the group, and they become very proud of being a part of this group. Of course, the student’s Name will appear on their fliers, social media, press releases, so it is an important Campaign Activity. Click here to see some of the examples of the names that the student groups have chosen around the USA, Canada, Germany, and the UK.

Scott discusses the naming of the group here, as well as refining the demands, which can sometimes move into the next chapter, Change Theory:

5. Student Conduct Stakeholder Interviews

Students should conducting stakeholder interviews. You will need to help them identify campus and/or community members that have a stake in the issue (i.e., they have some connection to the issue, and they care about it, or working to solve it). Recall in 2G — Building Campus & Community Allies, you have been gathering the contact information of possible allies; these folks might also be stakeholders.

Scott would ask the students to conduct the interview in twos. This way, if they have six in the group, they could hear from three different community members who have a stake in the issue that they are interested in. Stakeholder interviews are important as they will give the students a good idea if their initial demands are good.

Here are Scott’s thoughts about conducting stakeholder interviews:

Conducting stakeholder interviews are a Campaign Activity that occurs outside of class, so you will want to keep track of these student hours. Scott recommends that you use a Social Action Log, which allows you to track the time they are working on their campaigns, which in Scott’s class was 1.5 hours a week or 25 hours semester.

6. Student Apply for Official Student Club Recognition

Students apply for official Student Club Recognition, which on some campuses is required to table and to have conversations with the administration. At San Jose State, no administrator would meet with the students unless they were a part of an Associated Student (AS) student organization. Also, the students need to be an official student org to table (even though they can get around this by working with another student org). Finally, the students could receive several thousand dollars from the Student Government for their activities.

Below is Scott discussing this process of applying for official student club recognition:

Walk the Walk Video

In the first third of the course, Scott also recommends that you show the first 15 minutes of Walk the Walk, which is a documentary highlighting three student campaigns at San Jose State. If you need the film to be closed caption, your university or you can purchase it for $99 here. You can also watch the first six minutes closed-caption here. On the following class, Scott shows the other one-half of the video (about 12 minutes). This video shows how social action students are making a difference, which combats the belief that “change is not possible”.

Readings and Writing Assignments

Early in the class, Scott also has his students read the 2024 Silicon Valley Pain Index, which helps students to think about what issues the community is facing. If time, Scott shows the Silicon Valley Pain Index documentary. Again, to fight the idea that “change is not possible”, Scott has his students read previous student reflections, such as the reflection of Josh Barousse, Class of ’08. Throughout the first 1/2 of the course, Scott has them read a variety of these student reflections, which you can find here.

Here is the writing assignment for Issue Deveopment:

• Portfolio 1 Questions — in Chapter 1 of CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action a
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Example: Student Response to Portfolio #1 Questions

Resource

Campaign Activities vs Actions Exercise

The below charts can be printed for an in-class exercise with students. Students can be asked to separate them into two piles, one for campaign activities and one for campaign actions. They can then be asked to put the campaign activities into a rough chronological order.

• Student Campaign Implementation Worksheet - This is a useful worksheet to give your students to help them develop and manage their campaigns.

Questions

• Which of the best practices discussed from the text (Ch 2B) and the above video clips might you adopt in your class? What other best practices do you know and might use to help your students choose an issue?
• In Soci. 164: the general policy is that a campaign must be non-violent and it cannot violate the UN Declaration of Human Rights. In your class, what will be your class policy for your class, or will you handle this case by case? Is there a social action campaign that you would not allow your students to choose in your class? (e.g., a constitutional amendment to overturn Brown v. Board of Education proposed by an alt-right group.) This type of campaign has never been proposed by any students, but it is a good thought experiment to carry out to figure out what lines, if any, should be drawn and where to draw them.

Case Study: Students for Filipino Farm Workers

In Spring 2023, a group of students in the Sociology 164: Social Action class chose to continue a previous San José State University student social action campaign. After class on Day 4, Kayla came up to me and said that she was really passionate about working on a previous student campaign entitled Asian American Arts and Action, which was from the Fall of 2021. This student campaign was working to get a monument to the Filipino Farmworkers erected next to the Cesar Chavez monument on campus, since it focused on only Mexican American farmworkers. (The monument is in the process of being renamed.) Chavez had started his organizing in San José after a group of SJSU Sociology students had introduced to him Fred Ross, an Alinsky-trained community organizer, in 1952. Chavez visited the SJSU campus regularly in his early organizing and the Chavez family had several young people attend SJSU.

Kayla had read about the Asian American Arts and Action campaign when Scott passed out the Campaign Binders on Day 2, and as a Filipina, she was drawn to this campaign. However, she was nervous about putting her idea forward to "re-activate" the campaign. In addition to her self-doubt, she also was resigned to the fact that we have just finished Day 4 of the class, and most of the campaigns had already been decided up. Scott told her that she should DEFINITELY make a pitch to the class at the beginning of Day 5.

Scott also told her that in these days of the class, the groups are quite fluid, and students are encouraged to change groups if they feel more passionate about an issue than another group is working on. She took, Scott’s advice, and pitched the idea to re-activate the campaign for a statue. After Kayla's pitch, eight students from other groups, as well as a few undecided folks, joined her, where they created "Students for Filipino Farmerworkers: Justice for Itliong and Manongs".  There were nine students leading this campaign were Antonio, Ajamu, Kayla, Jeralyn, Raymond, Fabiola, Lenny, Megan, and Viet.

Demands and Target

Scott posted "DEMAND" and "TARGET" on the Mural Board, and asked the Students for Filipino Farmworkers (and other groups) to share their responses.

Notice that the amount of money for the art installation. Scott recommended that they include a specific amount, as this makes the demand more clear and powerful, and gives the decision-maker something concrete to respond to. This is in alignment with what makes a good demand (see textbook). Without it, the target might say, "yes I support it, but there is no money." With the money included, it made it clear if the target does or does not support the demand.

The Students for Filipino Farmworkers also created a shared Google Doc to draft text and take notes from their stakeholder interviews:

Continue to Group Dynamics, part 1