Overarching Organization and Logistics

Contact info: tfcsr-admin@stolaf.edu 

Description: This subcommittee ensures the four precepts of the Task Force are lived out by providing organizational guidance and logistical support for the Task Force as a whole. This includes the main task of setting the agenda and moderating meetings of the full Task Force.

Membership:

Co-chairs: Kelly Figueroa-Ray, Theresa Heath, Rehanna Kheshgi, Alyssa Melby, Anja Dulin

Members: Deanna Thompson, Nancy Thompson

Volunteer: Adrienne Merritt

Researcher: Mary Trull

Structure: We meet weekly via Zoom. We take turns setting agendas, facilitating meetings, and taking notes. The notetaker for one meeting will create an agenda for and facilitate the next meeting. The notetaker is in charge of submitting our weekly update reports to the Liaison Committee.

Goals: 

• Ensure the work of the Task Force is guided by its four founding precepts
• In collaboration with all subcommittees, facilitate the defining and redefining of the larger goals of the entire Task Force
• Oversee, maintain, offer/receive suggestions, and develop policies (for adoption by the whole Task Force) to improve structures of work and communication of the Task Force and its subcommittees.
• Identify issues that are relevant to the entire Task Force (often through our collaboration with other subcommittees and/or colleagues outside of the Task Force) and bring these up for discussion at the meetings of the whole Task Force. 
• Facilitate communication and collaboration among the subcommittees. 
• Field questions from the community about the Task Force
• Set meeting agendas for full Task Force meetings that reflects the work that the Task Force needs to accomplish as a whole. This takes into consideration all the work the subcommittees are doing and helps to forward everyone’s work, and can include votes on policies or actions, feedback discussions in breakout groups for particular subcommittees, time to brainstorm across subcommittees, etc.
• Communicate important information (draft meeting agendas, post-meeting notes, draft statements, draft communications to outside organizations, etc.) to the whole Task Force via our listserv.

Current Activities: The Overarching Organization and Logistics Subcommittee occupies two main roles in the Task Force–one involves visioning/re-visioning and the other implementation. 

• The visioning/re-visioning tasks involve ensuring that the whole Task Force is carrying out our work as set out by our four precepts. This work requires flexibility in that the Four Precepts are simply guidelines–not goals or benchmarks–that must be continually contextualized/re-contextualized for our changing (sometime daily) context at St. Olaf College. Our most consistent focus in this area is deciding what work needs to be carried out at our full Task Force meetings. We deliberate over how these meetings can help move the work of the entire Task Force forward, based on St. Olaf’s current context and the Task Force’s current concrete immediate action and the work in which each subcommittee is currently engaged. Episodic work in this area includes developing new proposals and processes as the need arises, like the BIPOC Students Subcommittee proposal, our recent work around a process for the Task Force to create and send out statements on important events and the process of how to report subcommittee work for increased transparency. This committee did not raise this issue–this was the work of the Liaison subcommittee–our task was thinking through a process that would make it happen, which leads into our second main area of work:
• Implementation of basic organization and logistics. We write A LOT collaboratively. In the midst of our deliberations, we draft the agendas for the full Task Force meetings collaboratively. We write correspondence, proposals, organizational processes collaboratively. When requested, we work to help subcommittees with ideas about next steps and more often their language in correspondence, proposals, and procedures.

Future Plans: 

• Keep the Task Force moving forward with our visioning/revisioning and implementation efforts!! But we do not do this in a vacuum… 
• Continue to work with all subcommittees to develop/implement our goals and concrete actions based on our continually changing context that work toward dismantling structures that uphold racism at St Olaf College.

Measures of success: The Task Force is living this out: The Task Force to Confront Structural Racism (TFCSR) is a group that, while open to all, is spearheaded by White faculty, staff and student leadership, who are using their power and privilege to push for anti-racist, concrete, and structural change through an intentionally transparent form of community organizing at St. Olaf College. The Overarching Organization and Logistics Subcommittee makes sure that: 

• The Task Force’s work meets its four precepts, link here.

• Our Concrete Actions lead to change that helps dismantle racist structures and replace them with anti-racist ones
• Our Concrete Actions are developed and informed by BIPOC faculty, staff, and student concerns at St. Olaf College
• White faculty, staff, and students are devoting unpaid labor to the work of promoting anti-racism at St. Olaf College
• Power issues/positioning between faculty, between faculty and staff, and between faculty/staff and students are transparent and members work to mitigate the effects of these issues so that every member is a full participant in the Task Force.
• Students are protected from repercussions from this work by staff and faculty members who take responsibility fully for the actions of the Task Force
• All actions of the Task Force are developed collectively through deliberations by the entire membership rather than by individual members resulting in the Task Force speaking with one voice and acting as one body
• The work of the Task Force is transparent and visible to the entire St. Olaf community. And the meetings, goals, and actions are transparent and visible to the public beyond St. Olaf College
• Basic administrative tasks are carried out so that the work of the Task Force is able to happen: ensuring the maintenance of membership and master calendar; providing guidelines for governance of the Task Force and its subcommittee; setting agendas and work for full Task Force meetings; sending out of emails on behalf of the entire Task Force; sending correspondence to the Task Force; communicating with and providing feedback from subcommittees on their work when requested
• Subcommittees’ needs that extend beyond their group are met, for example: votes, discussions, feedback, and input from other subcommittees.

Ways that you can get involved: If you’re interested in learning more about the Overarching Organization and Logistics Subcommittee, send an email to: tfcsr-admin@stolaf.edu. If you are not yet a member of the Task Force and would like to find out more information, please email tfcsr-membership@stolaf.edu.