“The mission is to poke the bear and wake the school up to fix problems within the university,” Noah Burton, a St. Bonaventure sophomore, said about his new club.
Burton is organizing an event that points out issues within the school and plans to make changes through marching, protesting and radical cheerleading.
Burton, a political science major, held an event called SBU Solidarity yesterday.
The event acted as a platform to let students express grievances in reference to the university and how specific issues affect the student body as a whole.
According to a PowerPoint presentation Burton sent to approximately 170 students via email, the purpose of the meeting is, “student unity to enact change in SBU policies and practices that are unfair, unjust or discriminatory through non-violent means.”
According to the PowerPoint, Burton defined an ‘issue’ as a problem that targets SBU policy addressing the colleges’ actions and aids to maintain legitimacy amongst the student body by getting results.
Burton said he hopes this meeting sparked interest in students to take action rather than stay silent.
He discussed the interest clubs on campus such as the Black Student Union and the Latin American Student Organization.
Burton believes diversity and interest clubs on campus are more concerned with getting members to join rather than going out and trying to solve issues within the school.
Burton said the goal of the club is to attract students who would like to make a change and assign them to specific issues.
He hopes by getting clubs away from the usual routine of trying to boost membership, they will be able to be more effective and target important problems.
“The one goal of the club is to get students who want to make a change and pair them with actual causes,” Burton said. “Hopefully [this will get] these clubs away from having to get members to be effective and [challenge them] to do bigger and more substantial events.”
He said he wants the students to keep the school in check and doesn’t want things to be let go easily or forgotten about.
“The civil rights display [was] vandalized, and to make sure things like that do not happen again is very important,” Burton said. “I never heard the school say anything about how they are going to prevent something like this from occurring in the future.”
Burton was referring to the Martin Luther King display in Doyle Hall being vandalized on Jan. 22.
Burton said his mission is to raise questions so students can execute a solution.
Burton said this club was formed two weeks ago. However, in his PowerPoint, he has a structured way for how he wants the club to operate.
He said he looks to have a democratic setup in which decisions will be made by voting. The PowerPoint said the system of voting will ensure support for a cause from the majority and not the minority.
Burton said student leaders sometimes have a hard time seeing campus issues.
Emily Losito, a journalism and mass communication major, said she thinks the club has potential, but wants to see how it turns out.
“I think the club has great goals and intentions, but because it is so new I would just like to see actual changes happen and I would be all for joining a positive cause,” Losito, a freshman, said.
Burton hoped for students to get involved in his club in order to begin making changes at Bonaventure.
