UCBSOJ’s Student Leadership Committee elevates student voices at North Gate

The Student Leadership Committee, or TLC, has been a fixture at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism for nearly a decade, and committee members and administrators say it’s become a crucial part of a school community that recognizes the importance of student voices.

This year’s committee of two dozen hosts equity and inclusion discussions and affinity group meetings, plans stress-busting events and sums up and shares a weekly digest of school events with busy classmates. Their less-visible efforts are important, too.

The committee was created in the late 2000s by Pam Gleason, then director of student affairs, said current Student Services Director Joanne Straley. The economic crisis had made job prospects especially bleak, she said, and it was a stressful time at the J-School. North Gate Hall had always been a place that buzzed with talk about the industry and the role education played in it, and student voices were a big part of the era’s swirling conversations about the state of journalism. But administrators saw a need to create more formal avenues for student participation, she said not just to talk about issues, but to be part of the education process. “People were speaking up, and they had no channel,” she said.

Those formal roles started small: At first, the committee was made up of a few students tapped by administrators to select a graduation speaker. But the size and role of the committee expanded quickly. First-years began electing members of their class to serve, and the chairs of the school’s diversity groups were given roles. A pattern of passing the torch evolved, Straley said: New arrivals on the committee spend the spring of their first year learning the ropes, and fall of their second year bringing the next group of student leaders up to speed.

Their work ranges from instituting small-but-beloved traditions, like pourover coffee in the school kitchen, to shaping future class offerings by serving on the curriculum committee. TLC-initiated events like town halls to talk about industry issues and current affairs and regular coffee sessions with the dean keep the channels of communication open.

“The TLC has been a great way to overcome whatever resistance students feel about letting me know how they think we can do our jobs better,” said UCBSOJ Dean Edward Wasserman. “I look forward to our talks and I invariably learn something from them. They’ve also been helpful in giving initial feedback on various ‘what-ifs’ we might be considering about policies, curricular changes, facilities and the like. I’m very grateful to the students who squeeze in the time to serve.”

Committee members said TLC gives J-School attendees a real voice, and sets them up to carry the values they bring to their student leadership work with them beyond graduation.

“It’s a good bridge for me as I cross over into full-time journalism and apply my theories and methods of journalistic equity and inclusion into the work I do,” said Akira Olivia Kumamoto (class of ’17). ‰”I think journalism is changing.  It’s becoming more diverse and slowly but surely more equitable in who is reported on and how they are reported on,” she said, and working to elevate student voices and serve as a bridge for communication during her time at school has strengthened her commitment to doing the same in the future.

Straley said she thinks the kind of student involvement fostered by TLC is responsible for one of the J-School’s remarkable traits: Graduates tend to remain deeply connected to what happens at the school, and work to stay involved.

“I think that’s rare,” she said. ‰”I don’t know a lot of alumni who walk away from programs feeling that kind of connection, and I think it does come from the student experience in North Gate Hall.”

By Graelyn Brashear (’17)