Dear Oles,
As we begin the new academic year under a different light, it is important to remember to engage in a constant effort of bringing more awareness to our surrounding community. We share the common responsibility of creating a safe space for growth within our student body. This task has been a central mission for the Political Awareness Committee, also known as PAC. The past year has been filled with drastic changes with political and socioeconomic challenges all over the world. Many of those events have impacted our community members and should push us to question the role we take on in the world we live in today. With the increasing diversity of the student body on our campus, we must think of different strategies to ensure that we are challenging our knowledge and how we come to obtain it, in hopes to develop a critical lens over the Eurocentric canon that is forced upon us as one of the neo-colonial legacies.
Since its formation, PAC has been on a long road of transformation from a committee founded on western-centrist views and dedicated to highlighting events only occurring in the United States, to one open to a wider context. The Political Awareness Committee today is dedicated to covering topics and issues on a global scale, aiming to raise awareness on parts of the world that have been actively neglected for so long. However, how can you and PAC work better together in bringing our community together and understanding global issues beyond each of us?
This year PAC has decided to take on a different approach not only regarding the issues that have to be heard and seen, but also the way we present them. Considering the pandemic restrictions, the level of participation in events last year decreased. In an effort to increase your presence as well as ours in our campus as we open the floor to conversations, PAC will be introducing “Question of the week,” a communication link between us that will enable a healthy flow of information and perspectives on a topic that concerns us all.
Once a week, PAC will be posing you a question in the form of tabling.
Students will be welcome to stop by the table, where you will have the opportunity to reflect and give us your opinion on a topic. Your feedback can allow us to build a constructive sense of understanding of the differences and similarities in our community but it will also allow us to use this platform in order to describe the varied opinions of Oles and the general sentiments around the question.
The Political Awareness Committee works to push our community to develop a critical consciousness to the place we occupy, and our positioning in the world. PAC works to coordinate events that radically change our ways of being in this world, through an intersectional approach that enables students within the committee to grow and learn. Simultaneously, we push the wider student and faculty body to be exposed to events that will cause an impactful examination of our world and a call for action.
