diversity weekend committee does, is doing diversity weekend. So how do you go about doing it?… Or planning or…
J: well.. every committee has its own structure but what tends to happen is, committees.. I mean subcommittees. Subcommittees. (uhuh) subcommittees meet outside of, together two or three people, sometimes more, sometimes lesss, there’s actually three or four people, sometimes more sometimes less, together – and they arrange all the details they have to do for the specific event that they have committed themselves to. Then on Sundays we get together and coordinators discuss, you know, broad structural things about the event, such as.. funding an organization, and vision, mission statement, but it’s all in contribution with what other people on the committee are saying. And we give different reports about how we’re doing. An important part of Diversity Weekend, too, is that we are also learning about one another, and getting to know about the types of interest that we have for each other, and that we personally have on our own, and there’s always space for socializing at the beginning and the end.
Y: you said that.. during the meetings? Is that right? (uhuh) during the meetings, people will go over structural things, like the budget, and vision.. are there other kinds of structural.. how do you call these things, the budget, vision..
J: I call them.. I call them.. organizational necessity? [laugh]
Y: is that how everyone else in the diversity weekend committee call it? (I don’t think so) how do the rest of the people call it?
J: they may call it.. no, I don’t think we have established a name for it..we actually just call it… structure, budget, funding, vision.. [laugh impregnated in tone] (uhuh) but I don’t know if there’s actually been.. a… umbrella term to cover all these things.
Y: But when you think of it, you call it organizational necessities. (uhuh) so what other kinds of organizational necessities are there, there’s budget, vision, funding.. are there other kinds?
J: I think a lot has to do with diplomatic relationships with other committees, (uhuh) …. Of course every one of the members has responsibility of keeping their members informed of what’s going on. And so that’s responsibility that’s dispersed, and not concentrated, the way some of these activities are. Although, actually, there’s been a lot of participation from non-coordinators. For example this friend of mine Yongho Kim, he umm, he’s organized much of the funding, even though he’s not the coordinator (uhuh) but has he’s visionary [laugh] (uhuh)
Y: umm.. you said that some activities are coor.. dispersed, and some activities are concentrated, can you give me some examples of activities that are concentrated?
J: uh.. yes.. yes. I think some of the activities that are.. or some responsibilities.. that would be my word. Responsibilities that have become more concentrated, happen to be relationships that occur between other organizations like Macalester Student Govenrment, and the Program Board, where they have assumed responsibility for being a liaison and representing diversity committee in those types of spaces. And that’s more concentrated [heavy breathing – stress?] and so I know that you know when there’s discussion going working on the theme, and the mission statement and the questions, we discussed them in a group but the people who actually went to write on the actual theme, were actually a group of two. Sometimes three. (uhuh) and they came together and then the entire committee would check it. And make sure that there was consensus on the vision.