Often, impacting campus policy is one of the ultimate goals of your campaign. Putting on rallies is fun and rewarding, but the political work with the administration is equally important. When advocating for change, it’s important to pass resolutions through the student and faculty senates and develop relationships with departments that will be affected by the policy change (Finance, Facilities, etc.). This work demonstrates that you’ve done your homework, laid a foundation for policy change, and truly found support for your cause.
Contacting and talking to your administration:
During your campaign, it is important to maintain contact and hold negotiations with your primary decision makers. The section on Putting It All Together and Making a Timeline details an approximate schedule for beginning to approach them.
In terms of how to approach your administration—primarily the President, Chancellor, or Vice-President/Chancellor—the key is to work through their secretaries. These men and women (some of whom are your fellow students) are the interlocutors between the decision-makers and your group. They can be thought of as secondary targets. They have the power to permit you access to the administration by scheduling meetings and forums with the typically busy administration; or, conversely, they can leave you wallowing and contact-less for months at a time. The simplest way to get a meeting is to ask the secretary to schedule a specific meeting with your decision maker. Also, many Presidents often hold open office hours or town halls that can be utilized as well.
Be prepared, be polite, and be insistent. Do not doubt your cause, your knowledge, or your dedication. Always ask why: Why do they feel concerned about implementing this policy? Why is that question pertinent to your discussion? Offering to do extra research and write informative memos for the administration to answer their specific questions can be constructive and expedient, but be wary of the fact that this task is often little more than a stalling technique—employed as a way to sidetrack, delay, or undercut your efforts. The modus operandi of many administrations is waiting—purposefully stalling or delaying to make a decision in the hope that leaders in the your group with graduate, summer break will come, or that students will eventually lose motivation or interest in the campaign. Be highly cognizant of this tactic, and do not hesitate to insist that they make a decision by establishing concrete timelines or deadlines for meetings and decisions.
A way to preempt these types of stalling tactics—narrowly disguised as informational inquiries—is to send a background/briefing proposal to the administration before the first meeting. Deliver the report when you set up the first meeting, and then refer to it in your introductory remarks during the first meeting. If they’ve read the report, the meeting with provide you with an opportunity to take their pulse and see if they are generally receptive to the idea of policy change. If they haven’t read the memo, that indicates that you may have much more political and advocacy work to do. As always, contact us at AIDemocracy if you need help.
Subsequent meetings should all be centered around concrete steps, such as: When are they going to make a decisions? What else needs to be done in order to help them adopt the policy? Timelines and deadlines are particularly effective for this purpose.
