Student Civic Engagement Retreat, November 4-6, 2005

The HSU Service Learning Center is convening this year's Student Civic Engagement Retreat at Whiskeytown Environmental Camp, near Redding, California. Six to ten campus teams from northern California and Oregon campuses will come together to discuss issues of citizenship, service, activism, politics, and the role of students and universities in that discussion. This year's retreat will balance competency-building skills such as voter registration and mobilization, structural analysis, different models of dialogue, event planning, campus asset mapping, and consensus decision-making, along with larger questions related to the value of service and activism.

My experiences at the Whiskey town Leadership Conference 2005, by Michael Sattem.

My Freshmen year at Eastern Oregon University I was invited to attend a leadership conference at Whiskey town Lake outside of Redding California. This conference brought together student leaders from EOU, OSU, PSU, SOU, Walla Walla College, Chico State, College of the Redwoods, Humboldt State, as well as others.

At this conference each university brought with it a set of different programs that had been implemented in order to help the students and the community. These ideas were shared, and several challenges were placed forth that inhibited the implementation of these programs at our respective campuses. By working together and sharing idea’s and experiences, plans to implement these programs at our respective campuses were put together.  Several of these programs are being implemented as I am writing this.

This conference was a wonderful opportunity to not only meet new people from different walks of life, but also to explore the possibilities that each university possessed to bring forth positive change both on campus and in the community. I highly recommend the attendance of this conference not only to future student leaders, but also to the Cornerstone Program volunteers, as well as ASEOU officials. 

I thank the Cornerstone Program as well as the FOCUS Club for their continuing support of the attendees of this conference.

Michael Sattem, EOU Freshman