Oakland University held a “Letters to Lansing” event hosted by the Political Engagement and Civil Discourse group, on Monday, April 8.
The event started out with a discussion by local politicians, even some that represented OU. The discussion was about how engagement through letters is worthy of attention.
With some help from the writers at the OU Writing Center, they helped students write letters to send to other politicians about their political questions. According to the OU Events Calendar website, “Our goal is to provide a unique opportunity for college students to interact with elected officials and delve into meaningful conversations about political engagement and communication.”
This event was co-sponsored by The Writing Center, Center for Civic Engagement, College Democrats, College Republicans and OU Student Congress.
The event’s purpose was to bring students to engage in this event by being more informed about the politics in the surrounding area, as well as to make note that their voice is important and send letters to politicians to be more engaged.
Red Douglas, student liaison with the OU Board of Trustees, helped bring the idea to life. He had gone into the idea of how this event came about and how it made its way from a conference he attended at a different college to making it an event for Oakland.
“This idea came about after a conference I attended five years ago at Mott Community College, and we discussed in a group at that conference some ways we can bring some of our writing center skills, with the consultants that are trained at the writing center how we can bring those to intersect civil engagement discourse,” Douglas said.
Douglass explains the different co-sponsors from throughout the years.
“So we partnered up at that time a handful of years ago with the Campus Democrats, Campus Republicans and Center for Civic Engagement which was brand new at that time too,” Douglass said. “We thought that would be a good co-sponsored event that we could bring in people from both sides of the political aisle.”
After the event’s success, OU wanted to have a similar event for Oakland students.
“This year the Campus Democrat president and Campus Republican president reached out to me at the writing center and said, ‘Is this something you think we could host?’ and I said, ‘Sure let’s do it,’” Douglas said.
Douglas had found many co-sponsors for the event so there would be more of a variety of both political parties instead of just focusing on democrats or just republicans.
“They are peripherally related to people on the planning committee,” Douglas said. “So for example, council member Ferguson from the city of Auburn Hills is a family friend of ours. A couple of the gentlemen who engage in the campus organization stems in republicans respectively, they had some connections through their work in those realms they were able to invite.”
For those who are interested in politics and want to join an on-campus organization, they can sign up with Student Congress through GrizzOrgs.
