Reasons to Join RAPP #3: We're on a Mission!

Part 3 in an on-going series.

RAPP's mission is a powerful one:  Fighting oppression through individual awareness and collective action.

This mission drives everything we do, from our organizational structures and practices through our more visible work in the community.

Joining RAPP engages you in this fight against oppression.

Here are just a few notes on how we engage this mission:

• Fighting oppression:  We approach oppression as a complex system that we are all a part of - we can all work to either maintain the oppressive status quo or work to interrupt it to make a more socially just world.
• Fighting oppression:  We are a "race and" organization.  This means that while we heavily emphasize working on fighting racism we intentionally have chosen to fight oppression in its many forms.  To do this, we explore issues of race as well as other issues of social identity and social positioning.  In our 9-month program we heavily explore race, gender, and sexuality as well as touch on other topics.  In our alumni group and outreach work we explore a wide variety of social justice issues, intercultural communication skills, and inclusive leadership development.
• Individual awareness: RAPP and RAPPORT work is best-practice based social justice education.  As described in Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, 2^nd Ed. (Routledge, 2007):

"Social justice education is both an interdisciplinary conceptual framework for analyzing multiple forms of oppression and a set of interactive, experiential pedagogical principles to help learners understand the meaning of social difference and oppression both in the social system and in their personal lives.  The goal of social justice education is to enable people to develop the critical analytical tools necessary to understand oppression and their own socialization within oppressive systems, and to develop a sense of agency and capacity to interrupt and change oppressive patterns and behaviors in themselves and in the institutions and communities of which they are a part."

• Individual awareness:  All leaders and staff of RAPP engage in continual self-work, including self-directed readings, group training, and structured reflections work. Through this, we strive to live Malcolm X's words:  "We can't teach what we don't know; We can't lead where we won't go." 
• Collective action:  A lot of the collective action RAPP engages in is through social justice education.  We connected with over 1300 people last school year through our outreach work, including UC students & staff, students at other colleges & universities in the area, and community agencies.
• Collective action:  In the more traditional collective action vein, our Public Ally puts together six events each year that unite RAPPers in a common activity.  Three of these are community service events, three are campus or city activities in which we participate.

Learn how to get involved in fighting oppression through individual awareness and collective action with RAPP!

Reasons to Join RAPP #2: Your Major Doesn't Matter

This is part two in an on-going series on reasons to join RAPP.

One key myth that we spend time debunking in RAPP is:

"RAPP is only for liberal arts majors"

In 2008 I started keeping track of in which colleges and majors RAPPers study.

I've learned that while a chunk (1/3-1/2) of RAPPers have consistently come from the College of Arts & Sciences, our next most represented colleges are consistently the College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services, the College of Engineering & Applied Sciences, the Carl H. Lindner College of Business.  

Despite their smaller student populations, we always have a healthy amount of students from DAAP, Allied Health Sciences, and College Conservatory of Music.  

On an exciting note, we continue to increase participation of students from UC's regional campuses: UC Clermont and UC Blue Ash.  In RAPP XXVI we had four students who commuted in from regional campuses and we hope to continue to involve students from there.

One of the many exciting parts of the RAPP 25 Year Reunion was connecting with RAPPers from the first group through the current group and seeing how broad the group's professional spread was.  

In the spirit of continuing to learn more about how RAPP has been beneficial to RAPPers in many fields, we've recently set up a RAPP LinkedIn group.  Be sure to join if you're on there!

Reasons to Join RAPP #1: Cost Benefit Analysis

This is the first post in a series that will connect with videos made for finding RAPP XXVII, the 2011-12 class of the Racial Awareness Program.

Cost Benefit Analysis:

Participating in RAPP requires participating in four three-hour meetings and one overnight retreat a quarter for one academic year and completing short tasks between meetings.

If we err on the overestimate that a participant would spend 30 minutes on the between-sessions activities and add in all 24 hours that folks are away on retreat (only 9 of these spent in session), that means that RAPP requires a commitment of 118 hours.  Over the 34 weeks in which RAPP is in session, this averages out to just under three and a half hours per week.

So, what do you get for those 3.5 hours a week investment?

• Enhanced leadership skills - particularly skills that fall under inclusive leadership
• Enhanced communication skills - particularly skills that fall under intercultural communication
• Enhanced self-awareness - particularly around social identities
• Valuable intercultural experience - future employers and educational opportunities prefer candidates who demonstrate global awareness and experience
• Stronger critical thinking skills - exploring concepts as complex as oppression build your brain muscles
• A Bearcat family, a home away from home - friendships built in RAPP tend to be unique in that you've explored engaging but taboo topics, that you've worked positively through disagreements, and that you've developed a fuller understanding of each other between and among differences

Is all of this worth 3.5 hours a week to you?