[Tbtn] RE: Today's SAAM meeting

[Ross A Wantland]

Hey y'all,
  I think this is a really interesting piece. Whatever place is chosen, we are, functionally, "targeting" a part of the community, whether that be campus, or north champaign, or central champaign, etc. Now, how that's perceived may be different. Someone from within campus may see beginning at the Quad as a great idea, whereas some of the folks yesterday believed that beginning at the Quad would make it feel like a UI/student event to non-UIUC affiliated (or formerly affiliated) individuals. It seems like this question centers around what our priorities are. Do we want to increase numbers? What if that affects the diversity of our event? Do we unintentionally privilege students/campus over the larger community?
  It was also mentioned that if the march was elsewhere, it would be important to both be explicit about the focus/reason of the march, and to be explicit about how folks can get there (if it's at West Side park, for instance, provide a shuttle, walk together, or even promote the bus to take to get there)
  Lots of thinking required :) (Thanks for forwarding this to me)
Peace,
Ross

-----Original Message-----
From: ruxandra costescu [mailto:rcostesc at ews.uiuc.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 8:35 AM
To: take back the night list
Cc: Ross A Wantland
Subject: Re: Today's SAAM meeting



Hm... I'm thinking about it... I don't have a problem with changing the
location... But the turn out may be smaller b/c it's harder to get to
Westside Park than the Union. Also, I'm trying to figure out what the
route would cover. Going through downtown, by the bars etc. would be
awesome... However, I'm somewhat weary that we're automatically going to
appear to be "targeting" a certain part of the community, which we might
want to think about a little. One year, we started at Scott Park, and even
though it was a campus march, starting there was just a really bad idea,
it felt very strange, precisely b/c it seemed we were focusing on a
specific area of the community.

Other thoughts?

Ruxandra.

On Tue, 24 Feb 2004, Susan M. Kazmierczak wrote:

> Hello everyone,
>     At the meeting this afternoon, we talked as a group about having the
rally and march at Westside Park.  Everyone at the meeting thought this
would be the best way to get the community involved and it would also be a
change since the last 3 years it has taken place on campus. What do you
all think?
>
> Sue
> Graduate Assistant for the Office of LGBT Concerns
> Graduate Assistant for the Children and Family Research Center, Best Practice Research
>