White man’s rules
One of my most formative learning spaces was the University YMCA on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. No gym or pool, it’s focused on student leadership for social, environmental, interfaith, and global justice; I initially got involved my first year at Illinois when I became a volunteer tutor for a nearby middle school.
I ended up getting paired with a kid with an “emotional/behavioral disorder” — had no idea what that meant, impact-on-the-kid-wise. He and I developed a quirky, stand-offish commitment to working together, and so we did for all four years I was there. (I wonder where he is now, hope he’s well, and am… suddenly curious about whether or not he voted for Drumpf.)
Along the way, I got more involved with the tutoring program, started spending more time at their office in the Y, and slowly came to realize that the tutoring program was one of a dozen or so programs that the Y supports with meeting/performance/office space, supplies, some limited funds, and staff.
Then I got invited to join the Student Board of the Y, a body that’s actually more like a caucus of the org’s Board of Governors. I think the budget was a few hundred thousand dollars at the time, and the small but so talented staff worked to mentor the student leaders of programs, put on a few lecture series, and raise funds from quite a healthy donor community for an org of that size.
I think the first thing I learned about leadership as a Y Student Board member was that it’s important to be able to say that you have the financial support of 100% of the Board. I really had no reference for a claim like that, but I was quickly convinced that this made sense and made my first donation of $25.
From age 19 to 21, I served on the Board and as a member of multiple committees — Personnel, Development, Budget, Building, and Friday Forum. I eventually became the Student Board President, and I accompanied the Executive Director on a visit with the president of the university to ask him to give to our capital campaign. I also went up to the University Club in Chicago to shmooze wealthy alum. — And the fancy stuff was cool, but probably the most valuable thing I learned was how to participate in a meeting facilitated according to Robert’s Rules of Order.
I’m serious. It was intimidating to sit at a table with 20–30 people, most of whom were real adults — professors, pastors, bankers, lawyers, small-business owners. Except that the real adults, both the Board members and the staff, were totally invested in supporting us college students in understanding and participating fully in the Board’s business. We learned the rules of presenting motions, for example: if one of us presented one in a meeting, we needed the proposal to be seconded right then in order to get the full Board’s discussion, but if we got our shit together as a Student Board ahead of time, we could present the motion as a committee, which nullifies the need for a second.
After graduation, I stayed in Urbana-Champaign, became close friends with a couple of Y staff, and had more than one night’s worth of fun getting drunk and conducting our hanging out through Robert’s Rules: “I move that we get another pitcher of Miller Lite.” “Perhaps the Chair might appoint an ad hoc committee to check your ass.”
Perhaps more significantly, the confidence I had to develop to speak up according to Robert’s liking translated into my confident participation in non-Robert’s meetings in my first real job. I swear, I was the most audacious (know-it-all-y) first-year teacher. Sometimes I would surprise myself even, and I’d be like, “Dang, the Y made me so talky!”
I think about the Y all the time because I use what I learned there all the time. I thought of the Y during the strike last month when my union used Robert’s Rules to facilitate our vote on the contract offer. We did it at the Paramount Theatre downtown, and it was tense and a little bit chaotic in there, and the leadership repeatedly came back to Robert’s Rules to try to maintain some semblance of an equitable process.
So yesterday, I talked about Robert’s Rules with my kids (10th grade English, public high school in Oakland). I got a few couches for making a a corner with softness in my classroom, and I’m tired of kids rushing up to me when I’m trying to start class to ask if they can sit on the couch/argue with me why they should be allowed. It doesn’t bother me, kids sitting there while we work, so I usually let them. But I noticed a trend of white boys asking more frequently and more loudly to take up that space — to the point where it was clear to me that any kid who didn’t feel like provoking the tantrum of a classmate with more social clout was never going to ask me to sit on the couch, regardless of how much they might want to.
I proposed that we implement a couch schedule. We discussed equity, my irritation levels, and the potential for stress over who gets to sit over there with whom and people being left out. We talked about the distribution of resources in a community and who gets to make those decisions. We talked about left-wing tendencies to want protections for those with less social, economic, or political power; and right-wing tendencies to want to limit regulations on individuals’ use of resources. We talked about not waiting to get the votes of people absent since in democratic processes, the people who can and do show up are the ones who get to decide. When I say “we,” I mean I raised these issues and got a few less than enthusiastic responses each period, and mostly kids were like, “Okay, but have you thought about maybe you’re overthinking this, Ms. Dahlke?” or “Democracy isn’t real.” (#sad #thekidsarealright)
But then they voted. They could vote “yes” to a couch schedule, “no,” or “abstain,” which I told them meant that they were claiming their right to vote but choosing not to on this issue. In every class, the “abstains” won resounding majorities, and in 4 out of 5, “no” won by a very small one. Once I announced the results — in every period — it was like frickin Brexit in there. Kids were like, “Wait, what!?” and, “Who voted _____!?” and, “How could you omg!?”
And I was like, “Well, there seem to be a lot of undecided ‘abstain’ voters out there, so talk to your classmates and try to convince them to vote your way. If you think you have the votes, you can nag me about holding another vote.” And in every class they did talk to their classmates about the vote, and in every class today, there were a handful still talking about couches, equity, and regulations.
So I win and Robert’s Rules of Order wins, and did I just alley-oop with white supremacy?
