Organizational Communication - Personal

Being involved with extra-curricular activities and organizations in high school always kept me busy. Most of the organizations that I was in followed the standard leadership roles with a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and parliamentarian. However, there was one particular organization that was a little different. It was the Raising Student Voices and Participation (RSVP) panel. RSVP simply comprised of two faculty advisors, a student leadership team, and facilitators. RSVP is strongly student-based but is still overseen by some faculty for guidance.
The purpose of our organization is to help voice the opinions of our school’s general student body. This allows students who are not likely to be great involved with student affairs an opportunity to speak up about issues with our high school, our community, or our nation. As facilitators we split up into groups of six and go into different classrooms across campus. We would then break the class up and have small group discussions. These little meetings are also known as summits.
I was part of the leadership team made of six members. After each summit we held a meeting with facilitators and the leadership team. The first summit asks students to brainstorm the pros and cons regarding our school, our community, and our nation. Then at the meeting with the leadership team and facilitators we narrow down the results and find out the top three issues that came up. A second summit occurs in the classroom in which action plans are brainstormed and later proposed at the leadership team and facilitators’ meeting. Once the leadership team and facilitators touch base again and we hold a third summit that initiates the action plan and gets our peers involved in making a difference. These meetings demonstrated upward communication and horizontal communication.
With this type of organization, some things can go well and other times not. There were times when some students would not cooperate with their student facilitator or perhaps they would give ridiculous answers. Nevertheless, we use verbal communication in order find out what changes other students (our peers) truly want to happen. One of our successful projects was improving student dress tops because it was a school wide policy to wear a standardized top. Since many students did not like the design teachers sent many of them were sent to the office for going against the policy and teachers have said this delays their lesson plan. Through RSVP summits, we the facilitators and the leadership team made a student effort to change the designs and colors so that dealing with the students who don’t wear the dress top will no longer be an issue. The following school year, the new t-shirts (and their different variations) were sold out and more students consistently wore the uniforms. It was a challenge but it was a good starter project for RSVP especially with a public school of about 2,000 people. Organizational communication came into play and was effective in carrying out a satisfying, final product.