Leader ‘Views: Justin Kralemann, Baylor University
What challenges did you face as you were starting your ONE group? Did any of them catch you off-guard because they were easier or more difficult than you had originally thought?
Of course administration is going to be the first red tape you’ll come across. If you want to start an organization at your school, the administration has to approve of it first and make sure it doesn’t conflict with the university’s values. That was the first hurdle, getting over administrative issues and trying to figure out what exactly ONE was, and making sure it didn’t compromise any of Baylor’s values. That, and finding people who were interested.
Baylor is a large, faith-based school. Are there any other specific characteristics which differentiate it from other colleges?
Most liberal arts colleges are going to be very liberal, which is typically what you find with ONE, even though it’s nonpartisan. Within the core group of people who work there, it’s generally really liberal, whereas Baylor is located in the heart of Texas and much more conservative.
What did you do at your first meeting?
I opened it up through computer screens on campus. I made a flyer and said that we’re going to have an interest meeting on this date, so if you’re interested in learning about ONE, you should attend! About 30 people came, it was a pretty good turn-out. There’s actually a professor on campus who’s worked with people way above anyone in the OCC, or even in the DC office. He’s worked with the people who originally started ONE, and he went to the G8 Summit with the ONE Campaign, so he’s been an integral part of the process. He was kind of a star on campus even before I got there. During my freshman year, before the OCC, they already had a chat board for ONE, talking about the organization. At that point, students were somewhat aware of ONE and what it was.
Can you run through your schedule for that first meeting?
I got the call wanting to know if I wanted to be a campus leader, so I started by creating an interest meeting. We met that first semester to plan out how we wanted to establish the group. It takes quite a while to get chartered as an organization at Baylor. If you aren’t chartered as an organization, you don’t really have the right to meet on campus or reserve rooms. Chartering is key to being a successful organization at Baylor. Our first semester – which took place in 2007 – was really used to get together and make a constitution, map out what the ONE group was going to look like as an organization, how it was going to benefit Baylor, and basically appeal to the administration to accept us as a valid organization. We applied and waited another 4 to 5 weeks during the spring semester.
Finally, right before school ended that year, we were officially chartered. I would say that our first full year was this past year. We had been present on campus the year before, but we actually had the ability to do stuff this year, which shot us up from 30-something in the challenge to number 3.
How did you use your school’s demographic to your advantage? Were there any actions that were especially appropriate to your school?
From our perspective, at a Christian school, that’s something which automatically ties into ONE. That’s the way we look at it, as kind of a faith and ONE thing. A typical Christian would see what ONE is doing and say, “that’s our duty as Christians.” It’s all stuff that the Bible commands us to do, help the widows and orphans and so on. Once we got on board, it was pretty easy to show people on campus what ONE is trying to do and elicit support from them. At a Christian university, that part’s not hard. The moral of Christianity is always to do, so to work with a helping organization like ONE is an easy way to apply one’s faith.
You talked about the bureaucracy at your school and the red tape you went through to establish a ONE group on campus. What might you recommend to a new leader to help them get through that a little quicker?
That’s just the amount of time that it takes any organization looking to get chartered at Baylor. It could go faster in certain cases, but most of the time, that’s just how long it takes. It wasn’t that they were deciding whether or not to accept ONE, but there are a number of departments each application has to go through before it’s cleared for approval. In our case, we couldn’t really make it go any faster, but it might help to note in your application that a similar university has already established a ONE chapter on their campus, just because it eliminates some of the worries that the administration might have. For example, Baylor is seen as a fairly conservative school, so now that we’ve set up a ONE group, administrators at Southern Methodist might be more likely to accept a proposal for a ONE group if they know about that. Comparison is always a good idea, like listing similar schools based on demographic, politics, size, location, etc.
Once you became chartered, did you have school funds with which to work?
No, actually. You can apply for special funds through student government, though. Every student at Baylor pays an annual $100 SGA fee which goes toward a giant live student fund for the school – it’s probably about $5 million, and it’s available to all organizations at Baylor, but we never applied for any of that funding this past year. My philosophy, as far as ONE goes, is grassroots. I don’t see the necessity for putting a ton of funding into the organization. It’s very unique, enough that there’s no need to put a lot of money into the events we do. A lot of it as simple as putting out a sign up sheet saying “sign the declaration,” stuff like that. In my mind, it’s not necessary to spend $20,000 on a huge concert at the university, when funds can be put to different uses that really benefit the entire school.
This past year, specifically, the only time we used money, was when ONE gave it to us for the final challenge. Other than that, we’ve worked with other organizations at Baylor and just tagged on to their events. For example, World Hunger Relief – they spend $1,000 to $2,000 on community events and they let us table at those events for free, so that’s how we utilize our time.
When other organizations are willing to partner with us, we don’t have to worry about spending any money at all. We pretty much mimic what the ONE Campaign does nationally, except of course on a much smaller scale. We’re working on creating a coalition of organizations in our community that are all working toward the same goal.
How did you balance the OCC with other commitments? What things kept you going when you were really busy or frustrated?
It is a time commitment. You have to learn to balance your life a little bit.
The first year, we met every week. Over the summer last year I was like “this is just too much.” We decided to go ahead and make it every other week this year. It made the meetings more meaningful because it wasn’t a 20-minute meeting, it was a full-hour meeting. We picked topics and had good discussions each week. The meetings were more meaningful when we spaced it out more.
What type of discussions did you have? How’d you facilitate good discussion?
As president, I ran the meeting agenda-wise, but we brought in people like our sponsor to speak. She is the director of the Anthropology Department at Baylor and she spends six months out of the year in Guatemala working with a group of people and helping them with water supply needs. Professors are the best choice because as professors they demand respect. Students don’t ignore them.
Occasionally, we will just talk about “what do you think about malaria or education?” “What do you think about the Kenyan crisis?” Bring up controversial questions and debate over the positives and negatives of things.
We’ve shown movies as well. “Come tonight, I’ll bring the popcorn and soda. We’ll just hang out.” That’s important, too, in my mind. That’s what created such a tight-knit group of people. We all know each other.
Other suggestions:
• Find out the number of ONE members in your state from ONE staff. Use that when talking to administrators, politicians, etc.
• Make a staff contact list available to leaders.
• Create a ONE pager for leaders on setting up their account and finding resources.
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