Facebook Group + Next week

[Rayn]

Hey UPP'ers!

Nice to see you all yesterday! I'm really excited about exploring transportation with you all and it is great that we are narrowing down our focus (so that we can expand our social, economic, political, environmental focus on that particular issue). Breadth and depth.

For next week, I'll have a draft of our constitution ready for everyone to check out. If you want to help out, feel free to e-mail me, but if not, no worries ofc. I can also bring the member list again so people who couldn't make it yesterday can add to it, before I give it to TCU so we can be an official group. Either way, enough people signed it for TCU to recognize us! Congrats everyone!

Also, for next week, if you'd like, feel free to think more about transportation and particular case-studies you'd like to explore or talk about! To speed up this process, I went ahead and made a FB group as we all agreed upon doing. In this group we can share our ideas together, and the Google Group will be used for sending mass e-mails like this one. 

Here is the FB group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/347466522013758/. It is a private group, so members can approve members and the public can see what we're about but not what we're writing to each other. I added a few things myself already to this group in an effort to begin the conversation, not to end it. I don't want to monologue to everyone.

Going off of that, please remember, as much as it seems like Gabe, Robert, and I are organizing things, our intention is not to 'command' anyone. Unlike many other groups on campus, we really want everyone involved to take on as much as they want to, to take the lead in as much as they're interested in, and to really maximize whatever opportunities you want to get in this group. The point of the group is to collectively enhance our knowledge and pool our resources together, which doesn't work if everyone is not empowered to do so and if people think that they aren't in charge - we all are equally in charge. And also unlike many other groups on campus, we really want to do things beyond talking... which is hard, and which requires that we progress every week. But it is good that way because it shows that we're doing something together beyond meeting once a week to build our resumes, lol. That way we all stay excited and engaged and really think beyond boundaries about the potential transportation has if it is smartly developed... to heal ethnic conflicts, grow economies, increase freedom, combat climate change, energy production, housing, socioeconomic capital, and literally every other factor you can think of is somehow related.

There's a lot that we can accomplish when we have a focus on transportation (and even better, once we have our own case-study or two) -- bringing in speakers and advisers related to transportation, networking with leaders in the field, traveling to sites, lobbying leaders there and collaborating to get our solutions BUILT, conducting research, presenting at Tufts, and so on -- whatever you want to do and whatever potential you want to get from this, it is all yours to strive for!

See you all next Thursday at 8 in Hodgdon! I'll let you know if the place changes, but it probably won't change for another few weeks until TCU and the Judiciary Board approve our group.

Please let me know if you have any questions :)

Best,

Rayn