Creating Your Vision

What is your vision for the campus and/or community?

We visualize a campus where students care about their fellow humans across the globe as well as in the seat next to them. We visualize a school where the person protesting for Darfur and the person protesting for living wage understand that the issues they care passionately about have something in common: they deal with demanding dignity for others. We visualize a generation of Baylor students who have been given the opportunity to understand, the opportunity to be empowered, and the opportunity to act.

We visualize an educational group that can take the lead in informing the Baylor community about the atrocities committed against people no matter where they are or who they are, as no human rights group can be legitimate if they turn their backs on the rights of those whom they live among.

Assessing Your Campus and Community

What campus/community problem does your blueprint address? What structures, practices and policies institutionalize the problem?

Our blueprint addresses the apathy at Baylor towards issues that affect the future of humanity. When students at Baylor learn about an issue that they feel passionately about, they work towards a solution. However, they first need to be informed; it is important for the students to have a wide understanding of the world around them and the various issues facing future generations.

Our campus has a tendency to shut itself away from issues that don't affect it as a private Christian institution. Many hurdles face students who are concerned about issues that don't address a pro-Protestant Baptist agenda. The general apathy can greatly be attributed to the student body; the administration is not set up to inform the general student body about issues, nor is it the administration's job. It is up to the students to get information, do the research, and have a thirst to learn about their world.

At Baylor students are ostracized, censored, and discouraged from being who they are. The propagating Christian heritage of Baylor is stifling. Problems range from unspoken tradition to restrictive legislature. Campus organizations exist to address particular issues but there is very little cooperation among separate groups.

What communities will you work with?

• Campus community

Setting Goals and Deliverables

• Goal 1: Create Project Dignity to address the issues surrounding human and animal rights for the Baylor community.
• Recruit advisors from the faculty to work with Project Dignity.
• Submit the club application to the Student Activities office.
• Host an interest meeting to develop a roster of at least 20 members with a minimum of five active committed members.
• Goal 2: Increase in Baylor's community the availability of resources about women's rights.
• Work with the Advocacy Center of Waco to bring content about rape and sexual assault assistance to campus as well as train campus leaders to be effective allies.
• Host a Take Back the Night event.
• Do monthly campus actions that educate the campus about Baylor's women's issues, i.e., continue underground sex-ed campaign.
• Train one residential advisor in each women's dormitory how to deal with survivors of assault.
• Goal 3: Provide a source of education for Baylor's students about women's rights in the global community.
• Host two film nights featuring documentaries about women's rights.
• Host one forum with three women from different countries discussing what it is like to be a woman in their native homes.
• Do monthly campus actions that educate the campus about women's issues, i.e., chalk on campus with facts concerning women's rights.

What is your primary approach? Network and Alliance Building

Why did you choose this approach?

We need to reach out to Waco-area groups that will help us get through to the administration and student body at Baylor.

Did you have secondary approaches? What are they?

Organizing, advocacy and activism.

What will your tactics and activities be?

Our tactics are to approach as many potential allies as possible. We are talking to many organizations in Waco as well as networking with those at Baylor, any that will be interested in what we are trying to do and that have some sort of authority.

Connecting Back to Vision

How does your strategy contribute to your vision for your campus and/or your community?

Our strategy will get more people from the community involved at Baylor and get Baylor students thinking in more local as well as global senses.

Resources and skills you will need

What skills do you need for this approach?

We hope to improve our organizing skills and our skills in pitching our ideas so we can gain support and funding from the community.