Project Lead(s): Viviana Marsano, Assistant Dean and Director, Civic and Community Engagement and Katya Armistead, Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Life & Belonging

The Civic Engagement Scholars Program at UC Santa Barbara fosters ideals of active citizenship among undergraduate and graduate students, engaging the next generation of leaders on issues that are of import to our campus and to the surrounding communities of Isla Vista, Goleta, and Santa Barbara. In this three-quarter-long course, students will study the theoretical framework and historical background of civic engagement in the American university. While doing so, students will engage in leadership development, learn skills for deliberative discourse, and design workshops incorporating these issues and skills. The fall quarter will be focused on learning history and skills and in the winter and spring quarters, students will deliver their designed workshops to the campus and Isla Vista community.

This program represents a joint effort by four entities at UC Santa Barbara: the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion, and Public Life; the Dean of Students Office; Civic and Community Engagement, and the Office of Student Engagement and Leadership (SEAL).

Project Lead(s): Michael Hayden, Undergraduate Student

Davis Journal of Legal Studies (DJLS) is an interdisciplinary, undergraduate legal journal founded in 2020 at the University of California, Davis. DJLS was created due to the need for publication opportunities in law and legal studies at an undergraduate level. It is an academic journal that gives students an opportunity to pursue legal studies, publication, research, editing, and writing.

Project Lead(s): Philip Goodrich, Manager of Campus Life Initiatives

The Democracy Workshop series is inspired by the idea that “higher education in a robust, diverse, and democratic country needs to cultivate in each of its graduates an open and curious mind, critical acumen, public voice, ethical and moral judgment, and the commitment to act collectively in public to achieve shared purposes” (A Crucible Moment, 2012, p. 10). With the support of a VOICE Award, UCLA Campus Life launched the inaugural series during the 2023-24 academic year focusing on topics such as critical media literacy, strategies for talking across political differences, and election administration, among others. As we look ahead to the 2024-25 academic year, we plan to continue and expand our Democracy Workshop offerings to ensure we are doing all that we can to prepare our campus community for the November 2024 General Election. Ultimately, by continuing the Democracy Workshop series, we hope to educate for democracy – “not for the democracy we have but the democracy we need” (Thomas, 2015, p. 5).

Project Lead(s): Amara McEvoy and Ke'von Terry, Undergraduate Students

Founded in Spring 2022, Diaspora Magazine serves to provide an open and safe space for Black students to express creativity through journalism and art. Through the production of print & digital content, we aim to amplify Black voices on campus and share those perspectives with the broader campus community.

Project Lead(s): Ashley Scering, Roger Becker & Alexis Karakas, Residential Living Coordinator, Undergraduate Housing Residence Life, Colin Bailey, Conduct Coordinator, Undergraduate Housing and Residential Life and Yoo Mi Choi, Associate Director of Residential Learning

This project aims to empower students to understand the historical significance of their actions, specifically their right to free speech, and the importance of persistent engagement in driving social change. By hosting an "Eras Tour" that showcases student-led free speech movements through the decades at UC Irvine, we hope to illuminate the power of advocacy and civic participation. This gallery will be open to all students and community members and located in a large central location on campus and feature art installations, historical photographs, and educational panels, providing a rich, immersive learning experience.

Specifically, the project will highlight the unique history of student activism at UC Irvine (UCI). It will showcase pivotal moments in UCI's history where students have driven significant change, such as the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s, the establishment of the Black Student Union in the early 1970s, the Shantytown Protests for LGBT housing rights in the 1980s, the formation of the Department of Asian American Studies in the 1990s, and the recent involvement in the Black Lives Matter movement. By connecting these historical movements to contemporary issues, we aim to demonstrate the ongoing impact of student activism and inspire current students to continue this legacy of advocacy.

Project Lead(s): Valerie Gomez, Graduate Student in the Department of Education Studies

Our Voice, Our Vote: Building an Informed Latina Electorate is a one-day in-person plática (talk) and networking event designed to mobilize Latina voters in Southern California. The event will gather Latina undergraduate and graduate students to raise awareness about the significance of political engagement and provide them with the tools and knowledge necessary to participate in the democratic process. The plática will also address and discuss critical issues important to the Latina community.

Project Lead(s): Jade Nettrour, Graduate Student in the School of Global Policy and Strategy

SASICon is a full-day conference event hosted by SASI, a student-led social justice organization under the Vice Provost of Teaching and Learning. The conference is designed to teach attendees about the important roles and opportunities that students have to participate in social movements. The event will feature six workshops that follow the life cycle of a social movement, three UCI staff/faculty presentations, a student-made art gallery, and more!

Project Lead(s): Katrina Koski, Director of Inclusion & Belonging, Haas School of Business, Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Justice & Belonging

Housed at Berkeley Haas, this advanced co-curricular training program on dialogue across differences will foster critically engaged undergraduate and graduate student communities that seek to effectively lead diverse teams and make decisions that affect people at scale. Through progressive skill-building workshops led by external subject matter experts, students will learn techniques to facilitate constructive discourse rooted in diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging as leaders at UC Berkeley and in society.

Through practitioner workshops and discussions, applied practice, and peer coaching, the mixed cohort of approximately 60 undergraduate and graduate student leaders will:

— deepen their knowledge of how to improve dialogue within and between groups;
— boost their confidence in having sensitive conversations on complex challenges, championing new ideas, and humanizing the "other"; and,
— develop advanced skills in conflict management and transferable facilitation techniques.

At its core, the program seeks to enhance students’ curious and compassionate leadership to create and maintain spaces for individual and collective resilience.

Project Lead(s): Alex Forman and Sam Grotenstein, Undergraduate Students

Pink slime sites are sites that mimic traditional local newspapers, but are often controlled by a central org that manages hundreds of similar publications across a region. These sites publish genuine local news, alongside political hit pieces framed as news, affecting American politics at a local level. Recently, the amount of pink slime sites in the US exceeded the amount of real news sites, but the impact this has on individual voters is still unknown. Our project seeks to discover this impact through mass surveying across the state, traveling to dozens of small towns and talking to residents.

Project Lead(s): Giovana Itzel, Graduate Student in the Department of Political Science, Laura Enriquez, Associate Professor of Chicano/Latino Studies and Breana Guadalupe Figueroa Perez, Undergraduate Student

The "(Re)Writing Migration Stories Project" at UC Irvine seeks to create a democratic educational space for exploring U.S. immigration policy and its impact on undocumented and mixed-status communities. Our previous work culminated in an art exhibit at UC Irvine, which will now be expanded to additional UC campuses. Each exhibit will feature public discussions, art-making workshops, and a pedagogical toolkit to promote nuanced discourse on immigration. Together we draw on our own lived experiences to produce a nuanced depiction of the impact of restrictive immigration policies on Latinx communities. Our physical and virtual exhibit and accompanying curriculum will engage others in thoughtful reflection with the intention of restoring trust in the ability to have caring and nuanced conversations about immigration within today’s society.

Project Lead(s): Ava Escobedo, Undergraduate Student

UC Berkeley's ASUC will be hosting a free music festival called “Votechella” to help Berkeley get students registered to vote (and/or politically informed) before the online voter registration deadline. We registered 2,000+ students in 2018, 1,530+ in 2020, and 3,000+ in 2022, and hope to surpass these numbers with our Fall 2024 registration efforts.

Project Lead(s): Mary Romo, Programming Manager

The purpose of this year’s project is to continue our Union Town Hall programs, which began last year in regard to reproductive health. Our goal is to create a space that allows for conversations about sensitive subjects that lead to genuine engagement, encourages free speech, critical thinking, and open mindedness while reimagining the ASUCLA community as the heart of the campus, and a place that offers knowledge and comfort in the exchange of ideas.
This three-part event series called United in Democracy, will happen starting in October 2024 preceding the presidential election. Each event will address a social and political issue and encourage discourse through the lens of activity, information, and voting. It will help examine the perceptions held by our community, along with what it means to practice the right to free speech effectively while having the ability to challenge and question commonly held ideas.
Each event in the series United in Democracy will take place a week apart starting with Voting: Making Your Voice Heard, followed by Investigating the Media, and then last, Civic Engagement and the Aftermath of Voting.

Project Lead(s): Ashlee Priestley, Academic Achievement Counselor - Office of Black Student Development

The Office of Black Student Development's Vision Fellowship is a cohort based year long program in which students can apply with a passion project of their choosing and receive various resources in order to successfully bring their project to fruition such as a stipend, a mentor, physical workspace, and support with distribution. Although the year's incoming cohort goes through a more rigorous year-long journey, students are able to continue their projects beyond their cohort year and build on their existing project themes to expand the depth and reach of their work.

Project Lead(s): Fernando David Márquez Duarte, Graduate Student in the Department of Political Science, Zaira Vidal Cortes, Graduate Student, and Dulce Alarcón Payán, Graduate Student in the Department of Bioengineering

The 3rd edition of the Decolonial Praxis Conference is not only an academic space, but an open and safe space for activists, community organizers and scholars to discuss decolonial theories, pedagogies, research methods and praxis, especially BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color), from the local community and from other regions and countries, to strengthen an international decolonial network, and increase the impact of the projects and research of participants, and join efforts to build projects together. This 3rd edition of the Conference will have panels where scholars, activists, and community organizers come together and dialogue about their projects and experience, allowing discussions to transcend academia, and be transdisciplinary. Moreover, panels will have English-Spanish interpretation, allowing participants from México and latinx populations in the US to be included in the discussion, people that are normally left out due to western-centrism and coloniality of knowledge. We always practice language justice. Finally, we plan to work on a publication with the discussions and papers of the Conference.

Project Lead(s): Emma Teng, Nikki Iyer and Yvalisse Ganzon, Undergraduate Students

The Berkeley Forum is a nonpartisan organization run by passionate undergraduates at UC Berkeley. Our mission is to inspire students through moderated events featuring notable individuals. In addition to hosting free, accessible, and non-partisan events, the Forum sponsors the student-taught class (DeCal) “History of Free Speech at Berkeley” and is developing a podcast series that interviews veterans of the Free Speech Movement. This October marks the 60th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, a pivotal moment in campus history that showcased the power of student activism. To celebrate this milestone and inspire a new generation of students, the Forum will host an anniversary panel featuring Free Speech Movement veterans Bettina Aptheker, Lynne Hollander Savio, and Jack Radey. The event will include a panel discussion, an audience Q&A, and a reception, providing attendees with an opportunity to engage directly with these remarkable speakers.