College students as catalysts for social change: a case study

Inclusiveness

SLP is an all-inclusive nonprofit dedicated to better serving all people, regardless of their situation or background. SLP does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, national origin, ancestry, creed, pregnancy, marital or parental status, sexual orientation or physical, mental, emotional or learning disability. (SLP, Non-Discrimination Policy, 2008)

They also provide scholarships to address issues of access for low-income students. Because they are clear about their core values they use that to guide them. An example of this is a Catholic College that wanted to sponsor a MAD tour and wanted to have bible study as part of the trip. The founders were very clear about the fact that is not part of their model and that if the group was to have a MAD tour it must follow the established format. To do otherwise would risk excluding non-Catholic students who might want to participate.

The move away from a Christian focus is very pronounced from the first vision statement written by the group. When pursuing the reasons for this Mackenzie summarized the changes and also how SLP has mirrored their lives as they matured.

In our first semester all of this kind of happened. Again, what we go through in our personal lives SLP went through, and we…attend a liberal school and we were like, ‘…just because I'm Catholic doesn’t mean everyone else is Catholic.’ We took it all out of our literature…But basically what happened was, Jesus didn’t discriminate so why would we, for one. For two, who the heck are we to know anything about religion? I mean, my current base right now with religion is like, I believe in faith, I believe in spirituality but there are very few finite things in the world. I'm not going to pretend to know about those that are not. So that’s kind of how that all panned out…and so we became all inclusive, friend-based.

This inclusiveness has been positive for the group with students from various faith backgrounds becoming involved. In terms of role modeling this inclusiveness, a Muslim student shared this experience during Ramadan: “Pete said ‘Hey, why don’t I fast each Monday with you and we will get together and have some dinner and we will educate each other about each other’s religions?’…that meant a lot to me you know.” Those I interviewed from core leaders to board members share different faith backgrounds in an inclusive manner. During the winter retreat I observed a group of eight students that were all asked to write “I believe” statements as part of an exercise, tying into the “believe” word of the year. All eight had “God” statements as part of their beliefs, so there appears to be a strong faith component with the campus participants.

With the continued growth of the group it may prove harder to monitor individual volunteer behavior. An example is that I interviewed a young lady who had been involved as a bus participant. She had shared with me that she had been involved in a religious cult several years ago and one of the bus core leaders in a one-on-one conversation with her had shared very strong religious convictions about the need to be “saved.” This made her very uncomfortable and later impacted her ability to trust this leader during the remainder of the trip. With the exponential growth of SLP, the founders will have less control over individual volunteers and will need to continue to be explicit about the expectation of inclusivity.

SLP is also very intentional about including people of all ages, thus the involvement of family members and other adults. The trips have had students as young as 12 years of age and the oldest person in their mid-60’s. However, since the founders started SLP as young people of 17 to 19 years of age, they are particularly committed to the dreams of younger students. They practice the belief of revealed leadership in that anyone that wants to be involved can; this ties into the Open Space concept of the right people coming.