“It takes a village to raise a child”
Systems thinking mean a lot to me. As an activist it is how I frame my work in challenging social injustices. As a student leader it is how I’ve come to see different resources offices work together to best serve the students at George Mason University. Over the course of my two and a half years at Mason, I’ve come to build close relationships with different people at Mason, all who work in different offices. What I’ve come to realize from working and being around these amazing friends is that the University is passionate about making a positive impact in the lives of students through empowerment, support, and education. Ranging from LEAD to LGBTQ* Resources, different offices seek to be there as a support to students and hope for their success. As a student leader, I’ve come to appreciate the work different offices do, and as an individual, these offices have provided me the opportunity to grow.
Instances in which I’ve been supported through different resource offices before starting my position as a Leadership Consultant (LC) include going through the Student Transition Empowerment Program (STEP) through the Office of Diversity Inclusion and Multicultural Education (ODIME), serving on the Executive Board of Pride Alliance, which is supported by the LGBTQ* Resource Center, and being in the Leadership and Community Engagement Living Learning Community sponsored by The Office Of Housing and Residence Life (OHRL) and The Center for Leadership and Community Engagement (CLCE). These opportunities for involvement acted as a system for self-development, understanding, and appreciation. Prior to these opportunities, I found myself questioning myself and my abilities. Now, as a sophomore having wrapped up a year of being involved and understanding myself to a higher extent, I’ve come to realize that these offices didn’t all act alone. The overall mission of University Life is to take a systematic approach of supporting students succeed on only academically, but also to foster and empower themselves through different areas of involvement and opportunities to shine as leaders.
How has this impacted ME as an LC? I’ve come to harness that passion of empowering other students through different styles of leadership. Some of my leadership styles take a more active role through social activism, advocacy, and critique. I’ve been given so many opportunities to spotlight that, ranging from speaking to undocumented youth in DC about resources and giving them a space to speak, speaking at the Leadership Mason Conference on challenging “safe-spaces” and working to make different spaces as inclusive as possible, and speaking about a many types of injustices that exist in this world in a variety of programs. Other forms of leadership I practice have been passive by nature. Having dialogues, mediations, and facilitating seminars of topics of leadership, values, diversity, and cultural competency. I’ve been given the chance to share spaces with amazing activists like Laverne Cox, Prerna Lal, and Sebastian Velasquez to explore identities we all share and may not share. These learning moments have also been complemented by my continual learning through reading, not only books about social justice, but also reading stories and memoirs of people with historically marginalized identities. Both my active and passive styles of leadership, along with my various connections with various University Life offices has helped me understand how I can use the systems of learning and support I have access to in helping empower other students. When different students came up to me wanting to learn about feminism, I talk about the different events the Women and Gender Studies Center has to offer. When someone is interested in leadership, I talk to them about the LEAD Office and the different programs we have available to students. When someone is passionate about the different diversity, I explain ways to get involved in different programs with ODIME or seeing if they would be interested in being trained as a facilitator.
There are a variety of different offices that offer a plethora of information and support for students, but they don’t do it all individually. Like the University Life conglomerate, I have adapted my style of leadership to understand how the system I am a part of works, and how I can use that to my advantage in helping support and empower other students.