Spring Break
Students organize for social change
Internship course offers chance to collaborate for social change
Gail Cole
Issue date: 10/10/08 Section: News
Ineffective government. Rising tuition costs. A recessive economy.
With the many issues found in the news each day, students may be overwhelmed at the idea of changing the world. Enter ASOSU's internship courses.
ASOSU's Organizing for Social Change internship courses help students use in and out of classroom experience to learn how to use activism to make changes around campus and around the world.
The program is broken into three separate courses, all showing students how to use direct action, community and grassroots organizing to accomplish socially-minded goals.
All three types of organizing are given equal importance in the course.
"From my point of view, it's not possible to do direct organizing without community organizing and grass roots organizing," said Christian Matheis, Student Advocate for ASOSU and course instructor. "All three are very relationship-centric."
Specifically, the courses teach how to win improvements, become more aware of individual and collective power and change power relations that affect all OSU students.
Matheis, who received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from OSU, began teaching the courses last winter term and designed the new course structure around the feedback from his students.
"During my first two terms coming back as the student advocate, I've spent time teaching the curriculum as it was," he said. "As it turned out, they needed the classroom time."
The first part of the courses, ALS 410: Organizing for Social Change I, combines outside and classroom work, including a personal essay and response papers. The second course, Organizing for Social Change II, is based on outside internship experience, while the third, as-of-now untitled, course operates completely in the classroom.
This term, both the internship students and ASOSU are spending a great deal of time on voter registration before the Oct. 14 deadline, as well as voter education before the Nov. 4 election. As ASOSU is nonpartisan, they work to present both sides of ballot measures and candidate platforms.
With the many issues found in the news each day, students may be overwhelmed at the idea of changing the world. Enter ASOSU's internship courses.
ASOSU's Organizing for Social Change internship courses help students use in and out of classroom experience to learn how to use activism to make changes around campus and around the world.
The program is broken into three separate courses, all showing students how to use direct action, community and grassroots organizing to accomplish socially-minded goals.
All three types of organizing are given equal importance in the course.
"From my point of view, it's not possible to do direct organizing without community organizing and grass roots organizing," said Christian Matheis, Student Advocate for ASOSU and course instructor. "All three are very relationship-centric."
Specifically, the courses teach how to win improvements, become more aware of individual and collective power and change power relations that affect all OSU students.
Matheis, who received both his bachelor's and master's degrees from OSU, began teaching the courses last winter term and designed the new course structure around the feedback from his students.
"During my first two terms coming back as the student advocate, I've spent time teaching the curriculum as it was," he said. "As it turned out, they needed the classroom time."
The first part of the courses, ALS 410: Organizing for Social Change I, combines outside and classroom work, including a personal essay and response papers. The second course, Organizing for Social Change II, is based on outside internship experience, while the third, as-of-now untitled, course operates completely in the classroom.
This term, both the internship students and ASOSU are spending a great deal of time on voter registration before the Oct. 14 deadline, as well as voter education before the Nov. 4 election. As ASOSU is nonpartisan, they work to present both sides of ballot measures and candidate platforms.
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