Campus Clubs Are on the Rise

Like ACLU chapters, campus clubs are crucial civil liberties monitors and advocates in campus communities. Fall 2007 was a busy time for both established and emerging ACLU-NC campus clubs at universities and law schools around the Bay Area. New clubs have just formed at UC Davis, Golden Gate University, and UC Hastings Law Schools. 

For students around Northern California, ACLU campus clubs serve as an introduction to advocacy and to the process of becoming active members of civil society.  Here are examples of what students are up right now at campuses around the region:

• The UC Berkeley club, with about 25 active members, recently completed another successful semester of its student-taught class “Civil Liberties Today,” part of the Democratic Education at Cal (DeCal) program, which allows students to initiate academic courses of their own design in consultation with faculty members.  The class of 35 students met for weekly discussions with civil liberties experts from various organizations, including Equality California, Planned Parenthood, and the Asian Law Caucus. 
  

• The Santa Clara University Law club recently co-sponsored with the Bisexual, Gay, and Lesbian Advocates (BGLAd) a successful educational event on the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy against gay and lesbian soldiers. Among the club activities planned for 2008 are a teach-in on drug policy reform, a visit with Congressperson Michael Honda, and a forum on issues of privacy and technology entitled “In Google We Trust.” 
  

• The UC Davis club’s Board of Directors is designing an action plan, which includes an extensive voter protection and poll watching project.  It will also join the ACLU-NC in a project to register eligible individual voters who are incarcerated in county jails. 
  

• In San Francisco, more than 40 students recently attended the standing-room-only first meeting of the Golden Gate University law school club. Representing a large portion of the total law school student body, participants were interested in joining ACLU-NC’s priority campaigns on police accountability and promoting equity and opportunity in public education. Members used the winter break to form a board of directors and begin laying out specific goals for the coming semester.
  

• UC Hastings students recently met with Organizing Department staff members to discuss launching a club in the new semester by holding a general meeting of interested students in early 2008.  More than 20 students already have expressed interest in joining the club and working on civil liberties issues in the Bay Area.

“We started our club because we felt that, while we were gaining important knowledge as future lawyers, current issues and events are too important for us to sit back and be passive observers,” – Aaron Thompson, founder of a new club at UC Davis’ King Hall 

For more information about ACLU activism on campus, visit the Campus Organizing section of our website.

The text on this page was written by Ashley Morris, ACLU-NC Organizing Fellow.