Otoshi Poetry

* an emotionally driven post *

I feel like a war-veteran turned war-slave.

At one point in this discussion, I was an able member, someone who others looked to with a sense of appreciation and leadership. So why have those people turned on us and planned an event which makes our event harder to put on?

Did they think of the consequences it would have on our planning and our hardwork?

Did they ever stop to think that we spent hours each week organizing an event for the entire student staff? For the people they are all leaders of?

Sure, their event idea is important - it’s about hate-bias. It’s an important topic that student staff members really should have a discussion about. It’s actually a great idea and I’m all for it.

But I’m not at all for the way the professional staff presented it to us. Presenting it through a “guest speaker”, whom essentially forced us to accept it, then telling us that while our idea is important, we might not have time this quarter to fit it in the calendar.

It’s unfair and the professional staff really should have let us know. Communication is what they preach, but not what they believe. An email would have been nice. I really just wanted to know.

And from what I know, it sounds like the professional staff members came up with the idea yesterday, said ok! sounds good!, and scheduled it.

They didn’t think to ask what us, the student staff members thought about it. They’re spoon feeding us thinking we are kids, but we’re adults. We’re grown up, but still treated like we don’t know, like we don’t understand. We can use our own spoons, we can make our own choices. Why do we not have a voice? Why do I not have a voice? Why am I forced to choose hate-bias when I could be choosing round table? Why don’t I get a choice?

This is what bothers me about the way the professional staff can come across at times. They think they know without asking and the make us do things we actually don’t want to do. In the end, both sides lose out. The professional staff thinks they’re helping when they don’t quite understand their audience, and the audience, us, feel trapped doing tedious tasks that could be resolved if we were asked for our opinion.

The key is communication and trust. For two separate entities to work in unity, both sides must be aware of the other. The entity with more control (the professional staff in this case), must be willing to listen to the entity with less control (the student staff in this case). The entity with more control has more potential to help the entity with less control, so there needs to be a connection, trust, which lets the less control have a say in the matter.

We may have less control and less at our disposal, but we are the role models of the future. The happier we are, and the more trust we feel with the professional staff, the better our images as leaders will appear to the rest of the community.