In the Room When It Happens: Data Driven Analysis to Build Inclusive Coalitions

• In Event: Leaning into Politics: Educating for Democracy in a Tough Political Climate

Abstract

In 2018, the IDHE assessed Weber State University’s campus climate for political learning. As part of that project, we put together a coalition to help conduct the focus groups required. Once the project ended, we evolved that coalition to the WSU Political Engagement Coalition, which has served to build democracy on our campus over the last four years. The first time our coalition met we reviewed our most recent NSLVE data in addition to the results of a political diagnostic that revealed the ideologies of people in the coalition. To the former, we found that we had mobilized our white students who were in fields that were interested in politics. To the latter, we found that every single person in the coalition was a liberal. We were the people who would design programming for the campus to politically engage the student population and when I looked around the room everyone looked like me. We took very deliberate steps to, as I told my colleagues, “find a conservative” to politically diversify our group. We also took very deliberate steps to include staff who would be more trusted messengers to our STEM student population and our BIPOC student population. Too often work on campuses is built by personality: people include people they know and like, which makes sense for a group project, but is detrimental to the work of building the democracy we need. Higher education is made up of very diverse people, all of whom can play a role in advancing political learning and civic engagement on campuses. I plan to explain in replicable detail the work we did on our campus to build a more inclusive coalition, how we continuously use data to inform who is in the room when we make our plans, and to present the power mapping exercise I created with Maddie Wolf and Samantha Giffen as part of the Students Learn Students Vote Ask Every Student co-designer cohort. People will have the necessary skills to build a politically inclusive coalition or hone an existing coalition as a result of this chapter.

Author

• Leah A. Murray, Weber State University