Archives: Clubs Days

Imagine Day and Volunteer Opportunities

Imagine Day is the largest on campus orientation day in Canada, welcoming over 8000 new students to the UBC Campus. It is held annually on the Tuesday following Labour Day Weekend; this year it was on September 2nd.  The purpose of Imagine Day is to orient students and get them acquainted on campus through tours lead by current UBC students. What follows is a pep rally that hypes students for the upcoming year to start a new chapter in their life for university. The final portion of Imagine Day is the ‘Main Event,’ which is held on Main Mall Street. where all of the UBC clubs are set up on tables for students to explore their options to get involved on campus.

For Imagine Day, I was not a participant, but a Squad Leader. A Squad Leader manages the Orientation Leaders who have a group of new to UBC students to lead around campus throughout the day. As a Squad Leader, my role was taken up the January before Imagine Day to recruit and train Orientation Leaders for September. On Imagine Day itself, I was a trouble-shooter who ensured transitions of the Imagine Day itinerary ran smoothly, a helper for the logistical aspects of Imagine Day, and I ensured that my group of Orientation Leaders had everything they needed for the day.

Imagine Day, for many students, is a new beginning and a mark of a new chapter of their life. However, for this paper, I will focus on my experience as being a Squad Leader. My experience as a Squad Leader was not great in terms of communication with the Orientation Staff. My group of Orientation Leaders was great and we got along well, but it was my experience in my role that I did not like. I don’t feel as if I learned anything new as my time as Squad Leader. Therefore, it made me wonder why I wanted to join in the first place. It was because I wanted more leadership experience. As mentioned in one of my previous blogs, I plan for the future and jump at opportunities that can help better my chances in getting a job. I thought that applying for the Squad Leader position would help me gain some more leadership opportunities on campus and help me expand my networks. However, I didn’t feel like I learned anything significant. It made me reassess my motives. Did I just apply for the sake of the job title? Am I only doing this because I feel like I’m doing something productive for myself?

To further answer my questions, I draw upon the Forbes article that speaks about paid and unpaid internships and their benefits. It discusses the individual’s choice in getting and benefitting from an internship, whether or not it is paid or unpaid.   The conclusion of the article is that “ultimately, the decision of accepting an internship is an individual’s choice made on its expected benefit” and that there should be no government interference on whether or not internships should be paid. Similarly, the Squad Leader position was like an internship in the sense that I thought I would gain from the experience.

 

To answer my questions above, it would be yes, I am because I’m trying to build my reputation of being an involved UBC student.  I want to show that I am a hard-working individual that is involved in various ways within the UBC community. But it is through the structures placed upon me, such as the current state of the job market, which motivates me to be involved and to take on numerous opportunities on campus. My role as Squad Leader was probably very helpful in the logistical side of Imagine Day, but the job description made it seem like I would be doing and gaining much more. In the end of the day, the reputation of the Squad Leader role as prestigious is what made me apply, rather than the actual duties (which is a little embarrassing).

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This, I know, I am Not… But what am I? – Goffman’s explanation of how individuals define themselves

As a sociology major, I find myself constantly asking questions about myself, and the things I do. What do I identify with as an individual, and how do I fit in with others? Why do I fit in with certain individuals better than others? How do we figure out who we are amongst all of the other individuals around us? Are we all different? What qualities do we share? What social situations do I feel comfortable in, and which are out of my comfort zone?

Recently I came across a quote, which has inspired even more questions to flow through my mind. The quote can be found in “Asylums,” by Erving Goffman, and it highlights yet another way of thinking about individuals in society. His definition of individuals is as follows…

“A stance-taking entity, a something that takes a position somewhere between identification with an organization and opposition to it, and is ready at the slightest pressure to regain its balance by shifting its involvement in either direction. It is thus against something that the self can emerge…” (502)

One idea that I find myself constantly returning to is an exercise that my SOCI100 Prof used, which was meant to promote us to think sociologically about our environment. He asked us to think about a line up for something, like a Starbucks, and the different social cues that surround it. This prompted me to realize that I have always been fascinated with observing people following (or breaking) social cues and interacting with their environment. I have often found myself ‘people watching’ at Starbucks, and elsewhere. This exercise really got me thinking about all the sociological thoughts that I have, but had never identified them as such prior to taking my first sociology course.

Returning back to the Goffman quote, I had previously never contemplated the idea of defining myself against something I am not. After considering this idea, however, I realized that I am able to apply it to my Starbucks adventures. The Goffman quote prompted me to rethink some of the questions I have previously asked myself about line-ups. Why do I choose to be polite and follow the social cues that tell me I should wait my turn? I feel confident in saying that I am a fairly polite individual, but how did I come to identify myself as such?

This leads me to the main purpose of this post, which is to discuss how individuals in society approach situations, and how the decisions we make in these situations can define how we are seen in society, and how we identify ourselves. How each individual’s socialization guides them through their daily decisions.

More specifically I want to talk about UBC Clubs Days, and how individuals decide which clubs they are interested in, and which to avoid. Some of the behaviour students exhibited highlights the relevance of Goffman’s definition of individuals to the daily life of a UBC student.

This year I had the opportunity to “table” for two clubs on Clubs Days, one academically inclined, and one socially inclined. It was interesting to see how some individuals would scoff at the thought of joining an academic club, whilst others were uninterested with the idea of joining a club that wouldn’t benefit them on their resumes. I heard many statements beginning with “I am not”… “I’m not really interested in a social club,” “I’m not really looking for extra work outside class.” Which, in my head, translated into “I am not whatever your club is,” which leads us back go Goffman. These individuals defined themselves against what my clubs had to offer, but this is only one clue into the complexity that is each individual I interacted with during Clubs Days. All I know about those who passed off my clubs is one thing that they are NOT, but I have no idea what they ARE. Why are they not interested in my clubs? Is it because they truly do not want to have a social life? Or is it because they have been socialized to see social clubs a certain way?

…And do they budge in Starbucks line-ups?

I AM interested in my  academic club, but at the same time, I AM NOT interested in focusing solely on my studies when I am faced with so many amazing social opportunities. I line up at Starbucks for fear of being known as that one rude chick that budges because this, I know, I am not. But what AM I? I am polite because I don’t budge… I am a sociology major because I clicked the SSC button… but what else?

References:

Goffman, E. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the social situation of mental patients and other inmates. Garden City, N.Y: Anchor Books.

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A Critical Response to a UBC Event: Meeting at the Feminist Club

In this blog post, I will be doing a critical response of the second general meeting I attended at the Feminist Club (I missed the first general meeting but luckily I made it to the second!). This is the first year the Feminist Club will be operating as they are a newly formed club on the UBC campus. The club’s application was admitted late by UBC’s Alma Matter Society (AMS), so unfortunately they were not able to get a booth open to promote their club at some of the promotional events happening on campus at the beginning of the year that were open to clubs (i.e. Imagine Day, Clubs Day). Fortunately, I happened to come across it on my Facebook newsfeed and followed up with “liking” them on Facebook to get the details of how to get involved and lend my support to them.

The meeting took place in a study room at a library on campus. When I walked in, quite a few people turned to the door to say, “Hi!” Everyone sat in chairs around some tables in a circle formation, so I went to join them. Very soon after, the meeting started. The student leading the meeting led a round-table discussion to introduce everyone to one another. We went around the circle of students saying our name and an area of interest we have within the broad topic of feminism that we hoped to explore through the club. Some recurring themes were brought up:

(1)    Feminism had become a “dirty word” and, while we recognized this was a large issue, we wanted to tackle it through the club.

(2)    Ridged gendered boundaries for masculinity and femininity were harmful for all and we hoped to address them.

(3)    We wanted to make feminism accessible to the public in a language that they could understand and not be intimidated by in order to get more people to enter the conversation.

Of course, there were more issues brought up in the meeting, but those three themes were brought up frequently. There are about 15 people at the meeting (myself included) and, looking around the room, I could not help but notice that there were only 4 men at the meeting—the other attendees were women. It was also hard to ignore that we were all had privileged backgrounds. We were all students who had gone on to post-secondary education at one of the country’s top-ranking universities. We had all sought out the club in order to be there—after all, the club had not been able to promote itself in the same way other clubs at UBC had had the opportunity to at the popular Imagine Day and Clubs Day events. That we sought out the club as we did, spoke further to our privileged backgrounds: we had some knowledge of what feminism was because we had many resources available to us to learn and we were able to lend our free time to go to a club meeting.

Feminism is important as a systematic broad-based movement, but certainly individuals who “the patriarchy” effects the most drastically are those from less privileged backgrounds, those who did not have so many resources available to them, and those who might not be so economically well-endowed as to have free time off work to be actively seeking out a group to talk about feminism or to attend a club meeting. Of course, I definitely recognize that it is important to empower feminists to speak out and perhaps the club could function as a “support group” of sorts for existing self-identified feminists on UBC’s campus to gain confidence in speaking amongst themselves about issues important to the feminist cause. However, as for the three recurring themes we spoke about during the meeting, it would be more fruitful to open the club to a wider populace. The recurring three themes spoke to the necessity of a larger public dialogue and so it would make sense that this would need to include a wider dynamic of individuals from perhaps less privileged backgrounds.

Michael Kimmel (2008) writes about fraternities being developed to create a “white man’s space” with the introduction of women, immigrants, and freed blacks onto university campuses in North America. Kimmel explains that fraternities were created as a space that white males could “get away” to in order to separate themselves from the new additions to their campuses. Certainly Kimmel addresses a very loaded subject, but I believe a club like the Feminist Club has wrongly-garnered a “privileged woman’s space” status—which would explain the lack of male presence at the club meeting. Although the club attendees do not want to “get away” from others on campus like the fraternity example highlights, club non-attendees can very easily frame them as wanting to.

Jewkes and Murcott (1996) offer a perspective on community and belonging that can help us understand the differing perspectives that insiders and outsiders may have on the same club. They explain that “community members’ perceptions of sharing are central to the delineation of [community] boundaries” (Jewkes & Murcott, 1996, p. 555). Club attendees are able to create an atmosphere of community amongst themselves as they share their thoughts and experiences relating to feminism, but club non-attendees do not have this basis of sharing to draw on—thus club non-attendees are easily able to revert to making assumptions of the club attendees through their apparent positionality. Smith (2005) defines positionality in terms of ‘standpoint’. The standpoint of current club attendees is a privileged, university-educated one and so non-attendees can revert to making snap judgements about the club by making assumptions of the attendees’ positionality and recognize it as a space for the privileged and the university-educated.

Thus, the challenge then becomes one of trying to bridge the gap between club attendees and club non-attendees who may have different perceptions on what the club is because of their respective insider and outsider positions. That being said, I really enjoyed attending the meeting and meeting some of the other attendees. It was a very welcoming atmosphere! During the roundtable discussion, I brought up the issue of inaccessibility that the feminism conversation tends to have in the public sphere outside the privileged setting of the university. Others agreed with me and we had a brief conversation about how we could bridge that university-public gap in the conversation. We tossed around the idea of having some seminars open to the public in various locations around the city that are not on campus. The club leader wanted me to talk with her further about ideas we could implement together. I am very much up for this challenge and can’t wait to see where we will go from here!

 

References

Jewkes, R., & Murcott, A. (1996). Meanings of Community. Social Science and Medicine, 43(4), 555-563.

Kimmel, M. (2008). Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men. Toronto, Canada: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Smith, D. (2005). Institutional Ethnography: A sociology for people. Lanham, MD: Rowman AltaMira

 

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