What it's like to be a Campus Coordinator, and why you should be one too

During the fall of 2011, I started attending Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington and became a member of the Western Libertarians. When the president graduated winter quarter of 2012, I stepped up to that position, and have been in place ever since. In the spring of 2013, I was elected to become the chapter president of WWU Students for Sensible Drug Policy. With those two groups, and then some, under my belt, I had to learn how to facilitate events and meetings, bring in prospects through tabling, and acquire general knowledge about certain topics in a short period of time (eh, college), amongst other things. When the Campus Coordinator position was brought to my attention, I didn't care to become involved.

With a lot of campus activism experience, I didn't think that becoming a Campus Coordinator would be highly beneficial for me. However, I decided to apply and commit to doing my best in the program, feeling that it would still be fun and beneficial in at least a few ways. While doing online training, a lot of material concerning activism was stuff I had come to learn from leading several groups. There were a few tips that I knew would be of use to me. Instead of reading up on all of this in a span of less than one week, I had to learn from months or even years of on-the-field experience. Looking at this information, I wished that someone had been there to guide me when I was learning the ropes.

Not only are Campus Coordinators taught how to be effective liberty advocates at their schools, but we learned about the history and certain tenants of libertarianism. As a student of anthropology and theater, I do not have much time to learning about different political ideologies and philosophies, but Students For Liberty is able to collect the most relevant pieces and help us expand our beliefs from there.

A big difference between being a leader for liberty on WWU's campus and being a Campus Coordinator is that I had to apply my experience on my own campus to others. No longer was I posting flyers at my school, but at others too. My work previously revolved around keeping my groups afloat, but now it's become part of a bigger cause.

Another huge aspect of becoming a Campus Coordinator is getting involved at the conferences. Conferences are a big part of Students For Liberty, and are probably the most rewarding part of being a part of the SFamiLy. Getting to know fellow CCs and SFL staff members increases the number of people you can meet at different events. Networking is a worthwhile means of finding people who may be able to help you find a job or cooperate to hold an event. I have attended both the Northwest Regional Conference and International Students For Liberty Conference as a normal libertarian student, then as a Campus Coordinator. While all of these experiences have become some of the best of my twenty-three-year-old life, I felt that being a CC definitely made the events so much richer. It's pretty worthwhile to have SFL pay for your travel and board for these conferences (as long as you're doing the required amount of work). Paying less out-of-pocket definitely makes such events even more fun.

What's another perk of becoming a Campus Coordinator? All. Of. The. Free Things. Students For Liberty has a lot of resources, including physical ones, such as books. As a CC, you can order quite a lot, which you then give out when tabling, etc. Not only do you get these things from SFL, but they will tell you about what resources other organizations are offering. Not only that, you will probably be emailed by more organizations who will want to send you more things. As a result, your bedroom, closet, and living room is swimming in hundreds of copies of libertarian literature.

Being showered in these gifts has me all like:




Maybe except for the part of being a manipulative con artist.

Even as a campus activist with about three years of experience, one thing that pulls at the back of my mind is finding capable leaders for my clubs. Despite the never-ending search for people to replace me and my fellow officers, not many are willing to step up to such demanding positions. With Students For Liberty, I have more confidence in finding these leaders because I now have access to the resources that can help me with this endeavor. Concerning the Campus Coordinator Program, it effectively trains a number of student libertarian activists each year, and I know it's more efficient than what any one individual can accomplish without the help from others.

If you are going to be a libertarian college student next year and want to join me in Denver this summer (or go to the other CC Retreats in DC or Texas), consider becoming a Campus Coordinator as well. It can be hard work, but you get out as much as you put into it. One of my goals for this year was to expand SFL's reach on the West Coast. It was a little overwhelming to be the only CC in the state of Washington, but I know that I am just one step in achieving the overarching goal of the organization, and if I (and others) can get more Washingtonians to apply, I can really see us persevering within the next year. You can email me at khaffner@studentsforliberty.org if you have any questions. I look forward to seeing the who makes the CC class of 2015-2016, and I hope that you will be joining us, or will recommend this to someone you know.

Apply before this Friday, May 1st!

Feeling too small to have an impact - qualms as a student drug policy activist

Around noon today, I decided to end the campaigns of two initiatives that a couple of us, on behalf of WWU Students for Sensible Drug Policy, were working on to get onto the AS Elections ballot this year. The first one was for the Associated Students to urge the AS Board of Directors to incorporate policies into their legislative agendas that support the federal legalization of cannabis - both marijuana and industrial hemp.

The other initiative was to get the AS to push Residence Life to implement a Good Samaritan Policy within the halls, and have ResLife work with University Police to produce a compact substance policy guide for the entire campus.

Because the AS Elections Code hadn't been published in time for when the language of any initiatives had to be turned in to the AS Board of Directors, I had to go to a board meeting to request an extension for the deadline, which was granted. However, in order to have an initiative even be considered for the ballot, it has to be passed by the AS Board of Directors. The next board meeting, I gave information about both initiatives for the board members to consider. The next board meeting, a couple of others from the campaigns told the board members any more information that was needed (since I was in Salt Lake City at that time), and the board determined that the initiatives would be allowed on the ballot. All of that happened in the span of three weeks - one board meeting per week. The next step was to collect the AS Elections information packets and petitions for each respective initiative. At Western Washington University, each initiative petition needs to have at least 696 valid signatures in order to get onto the ballot. That is, 5% of the vote.

Two years ago, I ran for Vice President for Student Life, and last year, I ran for Vice President for Activities and sponsored the opposition campaign for the referendum that asked if students wanted to make the school a smoke-free campus. (I lost both races, and the majority of those who voted did so in favor of making a smoke-free campus, but it was close, so the school decided to compromise instead.) As a candidate, you have to collect only 150 signatures. Both years, I was able to pretty easily get all of the signatures I needed. (It was a hassle, but doable.) I thought that with a couple of other people helping me and a longer timeline, that we would be able to collect all of them. Nevertheless, because of the delay in getting the initiatives approved and the occurrence of spring break, we didn't get the initiative packets until a week ago, which meant that we were supposed to collect all of those signatures within one week. (So much for the longer timeline.)

Keep in mind that the three or four of us working on the campaigns have busy lives of our own - classes, work, etc. Probably the biggest hurdle though was that we weren't allowed to utilize any physical campaigning materials. Physical campaigning isn't allowed for any candidate or initiative campaign until a certain date. In order to to find people to sign the petitions, you...find people. What I usually did for my personal campaigns was go to Academic West, Miller Hall, and the Viking Union to find people sitting and eating, studying, or conversing, and give a short speech, answer any questions they had, and gave them the petitions to sign if they so chose to. Because initiatives require so many more signatures, I quickly learned that my default method would not give us enough signatures in time. I emailed a couple of school clubs and professors to see if they would allow me to talk to their members/students. But again with our schedules, we didn't have time to go to many classes or clubs.

On Thursday, I started to feel hopeless. I noticed that I was incredibly sluggish, and whichever organ in my lower abdomen that aches and makes my body tremble was doing just that (I think it means I need more sleep), so instead of dedicating more time to collecting signatures, I went home to eat and take a much needed nap. At the SSDP meeting later that day (and right after my nap), we expressed our concerns, but I still made the push to try to get all of the signatures we needed by the deadline. Before and after the meeting, I did not physically feel well. My chest was hurting and I couldn't comfortably walk at the brisk pace I normally do. I had no idea if the chest pain was due to my asthma, stress, or both.

During my weekend trip to Seattle to put up flyers on campuses for Students For Liberty (join the Campus Coordinator Program), spend Easter with my older sister (which I wasn't expecting to do), and other shenanigans (use your imagination *wink*), I thought hard about how to go about collecting the rest of the signatures needed for the initiative petitions...or if it was even worth doing it anymore. Talking to the other campaign members on Thursday, it was very clear that we were all both physically and emotionally exhausted from work and classes, and to have to collect nearly 700 signatures on top of that was not comforting. I have had a few people tell me that I have this "flame" within in me that never dies out and keeps me going. This flame told me on Thursday that we still might have what it takes to get all of the signatures. While I do believe in hard work and looking on the bright side, I see myself as a realistic optimist. My optimism is grounded in reality, or so I like to think. 

This morning, I realized how unsuccessful this whole thing had been, and any attempts this late in the game to collect the rest of the signatures would be fruitless. By this point, my stress levels were astronomical. The desperation and helplessness I felt was terrible. If any of you have had depression or depressive symptoms, you are probably familiar with that feeling of not even wanting to try, and even if you do, it would't even help. It was similar to that.

If you can't tell, these initiatives are important to me. I try to do everything in my power to ensure that marijuana, both medical and recreational, and industrial hemp will become legalized on the state and federal levels in the United States. With the substance policy initiative, I can't help but be haunted by the thought of how many students on campus get in trouble within the next school year because of unclear substance policies, or even worse, getting into trouble for calling for help. Or having an unnecessary death because people were too afraid to call for help. The cannabis legalization initiative is one we have been trying to get onto the AS Elections ballot for three years now. The first year, the sponsor was working on it all by himself. Last year, we had a delay in the approval of the initiative. I thought the third year, for sure, had to be our lucky year.

Between now and next AS Elections, we will be working on trying to see what we can do with these two initiatives without going through the election process. For example, talking with ResLife and the University Police to see what they think about working together to come up with a single, compact substance policy guide. If it works, great. If not, we could use any knowledge gained from those interactions and go through the AS Elections process again. However, what's nice about having campaigns like these is that they are more likely to gain more publicity than anything else would. What else we will work on is coming up with ideas on how to work smarter, and not necessarily harder - obtaining more campaign members, reaching out to more professors, clubs, etc. I also plan to talk with the AS myself to share my concerns with their standards on how initiatives can get onto the ballot. I know some other people who have worked on initiative campaigns, and it's relatively known that the AS Elections cater more towards candidates than initiatives.

When I finally messaged the campaign members about how I felt about suspending both campaigns, I felt really empty inside. This was originally going to be a Facebook update, but I decided to put this on here because it ties into political activism. Not to mention, look at how long this post is! All of the work we put into this would come to nothing. When I ran in the AS Elections, I at least was allowed on the ballot and had a fun experience. With this, I ran myself into the ground, had to give up on an avenue to address some very important issues I care about, and don't even have an awareness campaign we could utilize (at least through the AS Elections). I wanted to cry, but I just didn't feel sad enough to actually do so. Tonight would have been one of those nights where I go to a bar to do homework and drink some beer, but I need to catch up on sleep.

It annoys me when some people don't even want to attempt _________ because they're "just one person," or "the system is too big and corrupt." I constantly put myself out there because I sincerely believe that an individual is an essential component to a group or a cause. When I went sign waving in downtown Bellingham because I was angry that nobody seemed to be paying attention what was going down with Syria because they were too distracted by Miley Cyrus, I didn't actually think I would influence individuals with actual powers on US-International relations. I did have people come up to me and ask what was going on. I made people pay attention. I don't know if I actually made a long-lasting impact on anybody, but if I can positively influence one person with my actions, I can say that what I do is worth it. With failing at getting these initiatives onto the ballot, I feel small. While I would have loved to put in more effort to gather signatures, my health and grades can handle only so much extra stress.

I don't like to fail. Because of suspending these campaigns, I feel like a disappointment to myself and others. These were supposed to be more than "feel good" campaigns. I wanted them to bring about tangible results, or at the very least, produce a snowball effect. In order to rid myself of these bad feelings, I am going to analyze on how we can still get these campaigns going (whether it be working outside of the AS Elections or in next year's), forget the disappointments, and move on. I like to learn from the past, not have it control me. It's so hard to put this past me, but I am looking at the bigger picture. A little setback will not tarnish what I ultimately believe in. This has definitely been a low point in my political activism, more specifically, my drug policy activism. I cannot help but feel that smarter and safer drug policies are not being implemented fast enough. This ordeal does not help with that. If this was a low point, I am going to eventually find another high point. Since drug policy is a topic I will probably be drawn to for the rest of my life, I will exposed to both low and high points. Let's look forward to the high.