Posted by vandyleads on Tuesday, September 26, 2017 in News.

As part of our program we ask our participants to listen to an episode of the “This I Believe” series on NPR and challenge them to create their own “This I Believe” reflection. Lo Meisel is one of the participants of ASCEND. They are involved in the Vanderbilt Lambda Association and the McGill Project. Check out Lo’s story in how they have dealt with change and what they have learned!

Lo Meisel: This I Believe

At the beginning of my sophomore year, our dorm advisor looked at me and said, “Lo, part of your responsibility is to recruit new people for this dorm. And if the building isn’t filled next year, we might have to end the Project.” I was serving as the Publicity Chair for my dorm, an intentional community called The McGill Project that focuses on free thought, creative expression, and inclusive community. The previous year had been a low point in the Project’s history, and the administration was considering shutting it down if we did not improve. We would have to make a lot of structural and social changes in our community if we wanted to see it continue.

We quickly sprang into action. We planned more events, hoping that it would draw in more people. We tried to craft an image of our dorm as a cool and fun place to live. We had discussion after discussion after discussion about what we needed to do in order to “make McGill great again.” During our official recruitment season, I made dozens of Facebook posts detailing the many #ReasonsToLiveInMcGill. Yet after weeks of recruiting, we only garnered about 50 applications – half of what we needed. So we doubled our efforts: even more events, even more Facebook posts, even more advertisements. Every member of the Council was on overload, burning ourselves out in an attempt to light a fire under McGill.

The entire community paid the price for it. Rumors quickly spread of an impending end to the Project. Everywhere in the building, there was an almost tangible air of dejection. Council members often fought with each other, loudly and publicly, about the next steps we should be taking. We wasted time, energy, and money on events that no one wanted to attend. Even people who had called McGill home for years began to dislike the sour atmosphere that had developed in it, and many considered moving out. Each day, we watched our beloved Project fall apart a little bit more.

One day, I was sitting in the lobby and talking with another resident, my friend Zita, about our crisis. I asked her if she had any ideas for solutions, and although she didn’t have any strategic or advertising advice, she did invite one of her friends to apply to the Project. At our next Council meeting, everyone was utterly shocked and beyond delighted to find out that we had just received ten new applications; apparently, Zita had spent the last few days convincing her entire friend group to apply for McGill. Over the next few weeks, the new applications kept rolling in as Zita’s friends talked with their other friends as well. Before the year was over, we had filled the entire building and even had a waitlist of about ten people. The Project was set to continue, and even had the potential to thrive.

In hindsight, we recognized many of our mistakes in trying to create change in our organization. In a perfect portrayal of the “paradox of hedonism”, we had been so preoccupied with being cool and fun that we had forgotten how to simply be cool and fun. We had plenty of conversations about changes that we could make in McGill, but we weren’t following through on them. We were working harder on the same ineffective strategies and wondering why they still weren’t sufficient. We were acting like doomsayers when we could have been brainstorming creative solutions. Most significantly, we were desperately trying to appear put together instead of admitting that we needed help and reaching out to the community. In the end, it wasn’t my endless Facebook posts or our extreme over-programming or Council’s countless discussions that revived McGill. Change came from a concerned community member with no official position or title, who simply talked with some people and turned the Project around.

Thankfully, we learned our lesson. The Council viewed this year as an opportunity to start fresh, with a new group of residents, and build up our community from the bottom. Instead of just talking about change, we strive to exemplify it and inspire others to do the same. We now realize that although some changes can come from designated leaders, the community as a whole is responsible for determining the atmosphere. Leaders do not simply tell people how to change, but work with them individually to accomplish a larger mission together. Now, we have created a new McGill community that fosters discussion, inclusion, and support, but we couldn’t have ever done it without modeling the change that we wanted to see.