Hall Council

Hal writes:

Tonight I had my first hall council of the year. Each residence hall at UWP has a hall council. The big difference for me is that since this is a new hall, I have the opportunity to start from scratch. No constitution, no expectations, no returning students, and no traditions. I have thought a lot about it this summer and focused on wanting this to be a student lead initiative.

At colleges today we find two groups of students. The 10% who are involved in everything and do everything, and the other 90% who are apathetic and don't want to get involved. Perhaps not all are apathy related, but with cable TV, internet, and cell phones, there is little desire for students to move past high school friends and meet new people at college.

Not surprisingly, I had just as many residents as RAs at my meeting. Having less than 20 people is not a good turnout for a building of 380. But if you look at the Bible to see how good things happened, it usually starts with a small, purposeful group and blossoms into something great. So I am glad that I had the students I did show up as opposed to having twice as many that would show no interest.

After giving a talk about how I want this group to be whatever the students want it to be, I had the students self-select one of three groups: Activities (Homecoming and creating an all-hall program for spring), Facilities (a group dedicated to finding out what students want to do with SW Hall and a way to convey information to them), and Governance (the initial stages of creating a constitution and leadership structure). After the groups met for 15 minutes, they reported back to the group. Then we had a large group discussion. Next week we are meeting at a later time (when people are more likely to be in the building) and I made everyone promise to bring two friends with them.

Needless to say, it is an exhausting process to create something new, but I enjoy the boundless process of creative ideas forming and the ownership it gives the students to create.