historic strides at byu - chapter: dean of students

I only have about 6 minutes before I have to leave for class, so this will be brief and I'll come back to it later. Hopefully. I'm kinda wiped out right now, so we'll see.

This morning we (8 of us) met with the Dean of Students and his two associate deans. They are involved with anything dealing directly with students, including all groups and clubs as well as the Honor Code office. The meeting was set up by Jan Scharman in conjunction with our meetings with her, and the purpose was for us voice our concerns with a group that deals more directly with the student populace, to pass on any specific grievances with the Honor Code office (execution of the policies set forth in the document) and to discuss possible ways that we can improve BYU's approach to the entire BYU SSA community.

The meeting went very well. While we didn't accomplish everything that we had hoped, or even talk about all the topics that we'd considered, we were able to get through quite a bit. Most importantly, we became people that the administrators know and can turn to, and we can feel like we can take things to them. It was a good atmosphere, some good ideas were brought up, and some options for where to proceed were discussed. We're not sure where to take it, because the whole situation is so dynamic and the range of students that we want to work with is so vast that much more dialogue will need to occur before any concrete changes can be made. They are very open to working with us, though, to understanding our concerns, to starting up whatever groups or whatever are ultimately decided to be beneficial for the community, etc. We walked away feeling like the university is listening, and they walked away happy to see our side of things after dealing with the Soulforce side of things, as well as to get people in their office that want to proactively do something to help them understand. I found them more than reasonable, and while we may not have any hard evidence to show how the meeting went, I would deem it a success, and a step in the right direction. I'm looking forward to further dialogue as we continue addressing our issues with the people in power.

~drex