A new club at St. Michael’s College wants to hear what the St. Michael’s community has to say. SMC Voice, a club originating in a history class, invites members of the St. Michael’s community to share their perspectives and opinions.
Academic inspiration
The Student Association voted 42-3 to grant the SMC Voice club status on Tuesday, Feb. 26.
The idea for the club originated during the Fall 2007 semester in Professor Jen Purcell’s “War and Gender in Britain” class. Seniors Amy Sweetser, Jess Slingerland, Betsy Sias, and Aimee Boyle were in the class and have been in SMC Voice from the beginning, Slingerland says.
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Professor Jen Purcell in the Women's Center at an SMC Voice meeting. |
Students in Purcell’s class read compilations of diary entries obtained from Mass Observation, Sweetser says. The British organization was established in 1937 as a social research tool, according to the Mass Observation Web site. Mass Observation sends open-ended surveys to a panel of volunteer writers. The responses are a way of documenting everyday life in Britain.
Purcell always wanted to try a form of Mass Observation at St. Michael’s, she says. Students in the class were on board as soon as she mentioned it, Sweetser says.
“It came out of the class,” Purcell says. “It was really this organic thing that just happened.”
SMC Voice uses techniques similar to those of Mass Observation to get students, faculty, staff, and alumni to write about themselves, Purcell says.
The club will have online surveys consisting of several open-ended prompts. Participants can respond to as many or as few questions as they want, Sweetser says. The prompts are designed to get writers to explore their opinions and worldviews, Purcell says.
Some members of the club want to have a diary aspect as well, which will allow writers to write about their day-to-day lives, Purcell says.
Writing tomorrow’s history today
SMC Voice is “committed to asking the St. Michael's community about various aspects of their lives in order to foster channels of communication and understanding today, and to create a historical record of our lives for the future,” according to the club’s mission statement.
Last semester, students in SMC Voice distributed surveys in Alliot, and Purcell passed them out in her “History of Modern Europe” class, Sweetser says.
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Club members Catie Robertson (left) and Aimee Boyle laugh together as they enjoy snacks and drinks at an SMC voice meeting. |
SMC Voice asked the St. Michael’s community questions about music, physician-assisted suicide, as well as study-abroad experiences, Sweetser says. Of 200 surveys distributed, 100 were returned to Sweetser’s mailbox with responses, she says.
SMC Voice asks questions about current events and issues so people can look back at their publication and know what was important to the St. Michael’s community at a particular period of time, Purcell says.
SMC Voice wanted to become a club to gain recognition on campus, Sweetser says. Club status means funding, as well, Sweetser says.
The maximum budget given to a new club is $500. Presenters at the SA meeting, Sweetser, Sias, and Robertson, told voting senators that SMC Voice didn’t need the full budget, Sias says. The SA voted to allocate $400 to SMC Voice for their first semester, Sias says.
The group plans to spend $200 to subscribe to Survey Monkey, an online service participants can use respond to questions.The rest of the budget will go toward publishing SMC Voice and fund-raising activities, Sweetser says.
A group needs 15 members to gain club status, according to the SA constitution. However, the SA granted SMC Voice club status despite having only 10 core members, Sias says. The presenters convinced the voting senators that membership in the club is not based on attendance at weekly meetings. Anyone who takes a survey, even once, is a member, Sias says.
“There are so many levels of participation,” Sias says.
The club hopes to publish the results of the first survey soon after spring break, Purcell says. Core members of SMC Voice will summarize responses and include excerpts of participants’ writing, member Catie Robertson says . There may be an online publication as well, Sweetser says .
SMC Voice will be collaborating with Liz Scott, the archivist at St. Michael’s Durick Library, Purcell says.
The archives will serve as a repository for surveys and responses, as well as any photographs SMC Voice collects from participants, Scott says. The archives currently hold official documents, newspapers, and yearbooks, she says.
“[SMC Voice] will bring a different side to the archives. I’m pretty excited about it,” Scott says.
A foundation for the future
The four original members of SMC Voice from Purcell’s “War and Gender in Britain” class are all seniors, Slingerland says.
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Amy Sweetser (far left),Betsy Sais and Jessica Slingerland discuss ideas for SMC Voice with Professer Jen Purcell (far right). |
Robertson became interested in SMC Voice when Purcell talked about it in her Fall 2007 “History of Modern Europe” class, she says. Like her, all of the other underclassmen heard about the club in one of Purcell’s classes, Robertson says.
Sweetser’s not worried about the club’s future after graduation, she says.
“The seniors are the minority now,” Sweetser says. “I think [the club] will do really well.”
Members of SMC Voice aim to keep participants active and interested by asking them what questions they would like to ask of the St. Michael’s community, Purcell says.
“We want it to have some life,” Purcell says. “We want it to be almost a conversation,” Purcell says.