Less than five years ago Jennifer Dillard was a sophomore in Vanderbilt's College of Arts and Science. Heavily involved in what is now LIVE and Vanderbilt's chapter of the Sierra Club, a national conservation and environmental organization, Dillard learned a great deal about activism and the obstacles associated with it.

Though she said the success of these organizations during her time at Vanderbilt were limited at best - Sierra Club losing their battle for purchasing more expensive Green energy from TVA in 2002, and experiencing the university's first open aversion to the living wage issue - she said the struggles changed her perception of the world around her.

"I learned more from working on the Living Wage than I learned in any of my classes," said Dillard.

Today, Dillard, now a law student at Georgetown's Law Center, is compiling a handbook to help guide Vanderbilt student activism; in doing so, she hopes to impart some of this wisdom both on the organizations she helped found and on new ones like the Vanderbilt Biodiesel Initiative.

"A university is a huge bureaucracy," she said. "Having a road map for that is helpful."

"It was hard to know whom to talk to in the administration or whether they were taking you seriously," Dillard said.

Though at this point the manual consists of a series of questions, Dillard said she hopes she can answer them from her own experience. The questions address a range of problems, including dismissive administrators and how to generate publicity.

"Students need to know these are the tactics that work and these are the people in the administration that can help," Dillard said.

Dillard admits that most of her knowledge stems from her own mistakes. Blaming Sierra Club's choice to circumvent the administration in creating a Clean Energy Proposal for the initiative's failure, she explained that working with the school, though difficult, is a crucial step in forwarding campus movements.

"We probably should have done a little more research and worked directly with administration before we presented our proposal," she said.

Dillard stressed that the university likes to have ownership of initiatives.

"It is hard for the person in charge of a university to look like they are taking someone else's proposals," said Dillard. "They want it to look like they had a lot to do with the proposal. They don't want to feel like they were backed into a corner."

Dillard said considering this may have changed the outcome of the Sierra's clubs initiative.

Examining the tactics

In the midst of LIVE's living wage campaign and in light of SPEAR's recent victory in establishing a sustainability coordinator position in December, the creation of a student activism handbook seems an appropriate measure, said SPEAR president, senior Jenny Magill. For Dillard, the contrast between these two student movements lends itself naturally to one question - what factors lead to successful student activism on campus?

"I have been doing this for 26 years," said Chancellor Gordon Gee. "Many students engage in what I call gorilla theatre. They don't do their homework. They protest."

"Then you have students that do their homework. Those who do their homework, create a base of student support, and start building coalitions - those have been the ones that make the most impact," said Gee.

Gee explained that an organization must work closely with administrators and be patient.

"I would model SPEAR as a group that has done the kind of work that breeds success," said Gee, adding that LIVE's tactics have been "less effective."

After last semester's storming of the Board of Trust meeting in December, some students and administrators have called LIVE's tactics into question.

"I think we have been misrepresented in a lot of ways," said LIVE member, junior Taylor Daynes. "A lot of people think of us in terms of the union and we are not involved with the union. We are just friends of the union."

Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Michael Schoenfeld said LIVE's protest was an "ultimately counterproductive and not particularly effective form of protest."

Though Gee said that "the university is comfortable in its position" concerning living wage, he encouraged the group to try creating more student-based coalitions and bring the battle back to campus rather than attempting to generate national publicity.

"We won't do anything with a gun to our head. They should stop joining in on union tactics and start developing common ground," he said, making reference to Danny Glover's recent appearance on campus and a letter Senator John Edwards sent to Gee in support of a living wage.

Others say the comparison between SPEAR and LIVE in regards to tactics, is, as SPEAR advisor Linda Rosencrantz said, "an unfair one."

Even Dillard, who agrees that working with the administration is the key to success, disapproves of the comparison.

"I think it is an ideological problem," said Dillard. "If the administration has made up its mind you have to try a new approach. We don't want to make them feel like they are forced to do something, but we can't go halfway. You have to make it a big issue."

"The problem we (LIVE) face," said Eric Schechter, mathematics professor and unofficial LIVE faculty sponsor, is, "in order to get this message across, we have to present it in an unconventional way."

Schechter said this, in turn, gives the group a radical image.

"Unfortunately, if you go through the regular channels, it doesn't get you noticed," Schechter said. "When the university is under no legal obligations to recognize the cause, publicity is the only tactic at our disposal."

"We tried to go to the proper venues," said LIVE's Daynes. "We went to the young board of Trustees and met with faculty, but we weren't being taken seriously."

Daynes said, though, historically, "No social movement ever really follows the rules."

Some do not see LIVE's tactics as radical.

"I think they're effective," said sophomore Aziz Malik. "If they'd only held up posters [and] handed out pamphlets, I don't think they would have reached this level of success."

In relation to other, larger movements, "it's not that extreme because tactics of larger movements have been violent," said Professor of Sociology Larry Isaac. However, he did explain, within the context of campus, "I can understand how some might see it as forceful."

"In the 1960s, though, it wouldn't have seemed shocking," said Issac.

Struggling for success

The struggle has not been easy, even for an organization like SPEAR, which Gee praised for its persistence and inclusiveness.

"I think there is a sense in the administration," Magill said, "that student groups get started, get really excited, last for about two years, get busy, graduate and disband."

Magill explained that one of the biggest obstacles is proving to the school that the organization is "not going anywhere."

Magill said she believed the administration was periodically trying to shut down some of their projects.

"You feel like you are getting the run-around," Rosencrantz said. "SPEAR had to do a lot of research and comparisons with other schools. A lot of times the group would go to a meeting only to find they supplied the wrong data."

"They tell you one day that you need more figures and the next day they say these statistics don't mean anything," said the vice president of SPEAR, sophomore Brent Fitzgerald.

Today Magill said she feels "recycling and environmental stewardship have become a part of the community because the university has taken ownership."

"I think SPEAR is doing the right thing," said Dillard. "When we have a giant coal plant on campus, it is hard for the administration to shut an environmental organization down. I think the living wage has done a lot too, though."

Dillard explained the living wage group always expected they would eventually need to take more drastic measures.

"If the school is opposed to it, if they don't agree with it ideologically, saying things like, ‘I'm against the living wage,' you have to approach it from a much more aggressive angle."

For Dillard, who watched and participated as both the environmental movement and the living wage movement gained momentum on campus, social activism is a complicated issue. In the handbook, she hopes to illuminate the different approaches students can take in the course of activism, but she reconciles that these courses may not apply equally to different movements.

As Isaac pointed out, "oftentimes the kinds of tactics people will use have to do with the obstacles they confront; if a movement isn't hitting obstacles they can follow [less shocking] tactics and get more support and get somewhere. It's usually when they hit obstacles that they start taking different tactics."

Elizabeth Middlebrooks contributed reporting for this article.

Related stories in this month's Focus section:

Vanderbilt's Biodiesel Initiative seeks following
Do you think Vanderbilt is a socially active campus?
Instigator of Vanderbilt desegregation teaches students
Vanderbilt alumnus draws from experience to author activism handbook