Kaitlyn Vitez provides guidance on building student leadership on textbook affordability issues. She discusses why students make effective advocates due to their relationships, access, and stories. Some challenges include academic demands and short time on campus. Tactics include sharing information with student government, media outreach, and grassroots petitioning. The document outlines how to power map targets and potential allies at different tiers of influence, and provides examples of surveys, petitions, and pledges to engage students. Proper planning and managing a student campaign team are also covered.
4. Why student organizing ?
Students have been at the forefront of social change for
decades.
They want to develop their own skills AND to serve their
community.
Organizing builds power.
5. Why are students great advocates ?
Relationships
Access
Stories
Flexibility
Friends
Ambitious
6. Challenges of working with students
Academic demands
Semester schedule
Other policy demands
Lack of student power
Short time on campus
7. Frames for OER advocacy
Environmentalist
Consumer protection
Educational justice
Open education
Affordability
Innovation
9. How to: choose and influence your target
Who controls the money or flow of information?
Who makes academic decisions?
Who is the “gatekeeper?”
Who do you have access to? Who do your allies have access to?
10. Tier 3
Low access and influence
Tier 2
Some access or influence
Tier 1
Highest access and influence
How to: powermap
14. Potential student partners?
Student government: individuals, committees, trustees
Student clubs: political, enviro, justice, academic, cultural
Classes: service learning, capstones
Referrals: student life, library, faculty
Other: student newspaper, grad students
15. Potential tactics
Share information: cosponsor a poster or send an email
Meeting with your target: make a direct ask!
Legislation: pass resolutions in support of your policy handle
17. Potential tactics
Media: pitch stories, collect and publicize data via surveys
Grassroots: collect student stories and petitions
Grasstops: do direct outreach to faculty via canvassing
23. How to: manage students
Janelle (campaign coordinator)
Tuki (soc media) Nicole (faculty) April (outreach)
Arturo (database) volunteers
24. You’ve won! Now what?
Do more research on what gaps exist in your program.
Celebrate your successes.
Use your champs to win over more faculty.
25. Kaitlyn Vitez, Higher Ed Campaign Director
kvitez@pirg.org // @HigherEdPIRG
Questions ?
26. Kaitlyn Vitez, Higher Ed Campaign Director
kvitez@pirg.org // @HigherEdPIRG
opentextbookalliance.org/materials
Editor's Notes
Powerbuilding goes beyond who’s in office right now, it’s about wiring a district so that no
matter who is in office, or who the campaign target is, we can activiate and flex our field muscle to win
campaigns for years to come.
day to day and keep your staff motivated to do it well:
1. Connect all of the field work back to the campaign story. Every piece of literature dropped needs
to be connected to how it helps to solve the problem. Brief your staff on the goal, strategy, and
tactics of the campaign. Help them to see how each piece of the field work we do is part of a
strategic plan.
2. Show how everything adds up. The work that one person does on one day will not swing the
campaign. But the work all of us do every day matters immensely. Refer back to the vision for
the whole summer while also showing why every day counts; share the story of how your work
fits in with the work we’re doing across the country, and the national totals your office is a part
of.
3. Set specific, numerical goals and hold people accountable to them. There is no faster way for
canvassers to stop doing field work than for their Field Managers and directors to stop setting
goals and holding them accountable to them. The tools we have now will allow you to see your
progress toward your campaign product goals and powerbuilding goals in real time, so be sure
to use that with your staff.
4. Make sure the Campaign & Powerbuilding goals live and breathe in your office – they should be
visible on the office walls, someone in the office is point on keeping up with our priority districts
& what’s happening there, talking about them in announcements, talking about the campaign &
field work when training new staff.
Set specific numerical goals, rates, and benchmarks
Create a schedule for regular meetings, trainings, and events, Set up a chain of command
Connect every activity back to your campaign story
Offer a variety of roles to fill
Set specific numerical goals, rates, and benchmarks
Create a schedule for regular meetings, trainings, and events, Set up a chain of command
Connect every activity back to your campaign story