ASUW Transition Website

Womxn’s Action Commission Director

Transition Documents Intro & Letter to Successor

Hanna!

Oh my goodness, I cannot believe it’s officially time to transition this role over to you! I know we’ve already met and have begun the transition process, but now it’s real. Woohoo!

With that being said, you’ll find the transition documents you’ll need for next year on this page. As we talked about in our meeting, I’ll be linking the transition documents via google docs (aka, this google doc) to make sure they are more easily accessible throughout the year.

Throughout the year, this google doc will serve to be a reminder that there are years of history in the making for The Womxn’s Action Commission, and that you will make your own history this year. Nothing in these transition documents have to be done next year. As the Director of The Womxn’s Action Commission, you have a wonderful degree of autonomy to decide what the commission should look like next year. While WAC has “legacy” events, feel free to change things up. You underwent a competitive hiring – so please have faith in yourself and your role as the Director for next year… you were chosen for a reason!! As Julia, my predecessor, wrote to me in my transition documents – I have all the faith in the world that you will do a wonderful job as the next WAC Director.

As always, please remember that I am a resource for you. Please feel free to reach out anytime, about anything. After all, I’ll be just down the hall in an office next year. 🙂 

I look forward to our next meeting, and until then – have fun scrolling through the transition documents!

In Solidarity,

Kaitlyn (she/her)

klaibe@uw.edu

 

Current Mission & Future Values

“The Womxn’s Action Commission is dedicated to providing intersectional and inclusive programming for womxn/ womxn-identifying constituents on campus, including educational programming via events, campaigns, and outreach.”

 

The Womxn’s Action Commission is the commission that serves one of the largest student populations at The University of Washington. Despite our possible constituency pool, we have yet to maximize the true potential of The WAC. Taking into consideration that this year was online, and thus saw lower numbers overall, WAC is routinely not reaching every student that we could be. While this seems depressing at first read, it’s actually a spot for an amazing amount of growth. In the future, I’m hoping that WAC is able to reach a larger constituency – including students from every background and every identity. Like we talked about in our first meeting, we can’t just say we are intersectional, we truly must be intersectional in practice. 

Other than expanding our outreach, I hope WAC continues to be an environment that is accessible. This year, we created some amazing shifts in how we planned and went about events which allowed us to be considering accessibility from the get-go. While it will be different when we are in-person, there are a couple accessibility staples that I hope WAC continues to incorporate (ASL interpreters, CART Captioning, Online/Recorded events, Inclusive Design, Screen-reader accessible PDFs & Presentations, & Image descriptions/Alt-Text). I hope that the WAC will continue to work closely with the Student Disability Commission to ensure that the spaces we create are spaces that everyone is able to attend and actively participate in. Next year’s Director of The SDC is Devon Sheehan; they are absolutely amazing and already have a very strong relationship with The WAC. 

Moving forward, I also hope to see WAC being a more intentional and thoughtful commission. With the shift of the name from “women” to “womxn”, WAC has undergone a name change that I’m not entirely sure is the most inclusive. The more research and conversations members of the WAC have, the more we recognize the harm that can come from spelling of “womxn”. We started a series called, “How to Be Better” in order to involve the community in having these conversations (about how they might like to see womxn/women spelled, their thoughts, etc), as well as creating a huge resource document about the different spellings and their history (which you will find in the WAC google drive). We’ve also begun to have conversations about changing the WAC’s name completely to The Gender Equity Commission (GEC). I hope that you’ll continue to have these conversations in an effort to support all of our constituents. 

All of that being said, ultimately the choices that you make this year about The WAC are entirely up to you, your team, and your wonderful SAO adviser. Regardless of what path you choose for the WAC, I’m excited to see the highs (and the lows – it’s ok, it happens) and watch you blossom into your role as the new Director. 

 

Quarter by Quarter Breakdown

Fall Quarter

Events & Projects

  • Getting oriented with your Assistant Director: Start getting familiar with your Assistant Director and begin to foster a positive working relationship. Your AD will be your ride-or-die and honestly the best support system EVER. In the beginning of the year, make an effort to get to know each other and communicate your expectations/boundaries from the get-go.
  • Getting to know your SAO Adviser: The SAO (Student Activities Office) adviser to the WAC is Jennifer Pope. SAO Advisers are basically your oversight as an entity director. You can choose to meet with the SAO Adviser by yourself or with your AD. This year, Tiffany and I chose to do joint SAO meetings & I would recommend it if your and Zoe’s schedule lines up – it’s nice to have a space where all of you are in the loop & hearing the same things so there isn’t any miscommunication. 
  • Check Your Boobies (Late October): We partnered with the Rivkin Education Center to come in and hold an educational Zoom about breast cancer detection and prevention. We did a “spooky” campaign because it was in October called “Check your BOObies”. The campaign is on the WAC Instagram (@ASUWWAC). To plan this event, I contacted Molly Oshin from Rivkin, whose email can be found in my (now your) WAC gmail account. 
  • SHC (Student Health Consortium) x BLISS x WAC Collaboration (Early Fall Quarter): We reached out to BLISS, a UW RSO focused on mental health, via Instagram in the beginning of Fall Quarter and began to plan an event with the SHC Director, Samia. The event was a small community meeting centered around holistic wellness and health for college students, especially surrounding body positivity/combatting ‘diet culture’ and what that looks like in a college environment. 
  • RDR (Rainy Dawg Radio) X WAC Open-Mic Night through IG Live: This was actually probably one of my favorite events in fall quarter. We paired with Rainy Dawg Radio to host an open-mic night on Instagram Live. We sent out a google form and had artists sign up for five-minute slots on the night of. We then emailed everyone their time-slots and hosted the IG live on WAC’s IG account. All in all it was pretty successful and had a huge turnout. 

Winter Quarter

Events & Projects

  • Begin Prepping for ‘The Monologues’: The WAC team began prepping for ‘The Monologues’ in Winter Quarter. The show is typically a Spring event and takes a lot of time, so I advise beginning the planning process for this ASAP. Because the show was online this year, we decided to create a zine and work with artists individually to create the pages of their dreams. That meant that in Winter Quarter we created and sent out a google form advertising ‘The Monologues’ and beginning to recruit artists. In years past, there have been “open calls” whereby artists interview via group interview and whatnot for a spot in the (usually in-person) show, but we decided that went against WAC’s values of inclusivity. With that in mind, we kept the submission form open almost all of Winter Quarter, asking for artists to submit their work. You can find the submission form in the WAC google drive!
  • Womxn in Leadership Week-Long Event: Along with ‘The Monologues’, I think this was one of WAC’s biggest projects this year, and in total honestly, one of our greatest achievements as well. If you’re interested in hosting an event/campaign similar to this, I would advise planning EXTREMELY early in advance – I began planning this event pretty much within the first couple of weeks of Fall Quarter. Down below are the different events that ‘Womxn in Leadership’ week encompassed. Additionally, all of the promotional material for the events can be found on the WAC’s Instagram page – we worked super closely with OCOMM (The Office of Communications) 
      • January 10th/11th: Intention Setting Workshops led in collaboration with The Student Health Consortium. These workshops served to set our intentions for the week ahead. They were calming, open spaces over zoom where we talked about how to have conversations about frustrating topics, as well as reflecting on our own biases and implicit prejudices regarding what we perceive to be ‘leadership’.
      • January 12th: Embodying Holistic Wellness and Self-Care: Working Through Distress in Quarantine for Student Leaders with Asian Student Commission: We were joined by Rita Phetmixay (she/they/boo), a Lao Isaan American womxn/femme, for a virtual workshop intentionally developed for BIPOC womxn/queer/gender-nonconforming folx to engage in stress management strategies to embody holistic wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic as students, as well as leaders. 
      • January 13th: Womxn in Leadership Panel. THIS WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE EVENTS EVER OMG. The panel was constituted of Ashley Nicole Lewis, Shukri Olow, Genevieve Pritchard, Karen Clegg, and Dolores Sibonga (yes, THE Dolores Sibonga). Each of the panelists contributed their thoughts regarding the intersectionality of leadership and the ways in which we move forward to better dismantle the institutional barriers that womxn face in leadership positions. Each of the speakers were contacted about a month-two months out via email. All of their emails should be in the google drive. We were able to get such an amazing, diverse panel because this was a complete collaborative event – I asked for input and speaker recommendations from every single JCC entity and that’s how we got most of them. While WAC did most of the planning and putting together, each of the speakers (save for one) came from other entities’ thoughts, which I was incredibly excited and grateful for. I think this event truly highlighted what ASUW can be when it comes to collaboration and inclusion. 
      • January 14th: Womxn and Social Activism with the Office of Government Relations: The OGR (Office of Government Relations) and WAC hosted an amazing discussion on the ways in which womxn have been a part of social activism throughout history. By way of discussions and interactive activities, the event held space to discuss the issues that womxn face within social activism and how we can approach activism from an intersectional lens. 
      • January 14th: Womxn and Senate: Since you’re an active member of senate, you might remember this event! We paired with Senate leadership to create a space for womxn in senate to converse about the issues they face in senate and action items to tackle them. I’m told that this event was amazing in creating lasting connections for senate-members.
      • January 15th: Diary of a Young Womxn in Entrepreneurship with Czara, in collaboration with The Middle Eastern Student Commission: We were joined by Czara Awad in a wonderful workshop regarding her experiences with leadership in a historically male-dominated field. Czara made a handbook of resources for every attendee (which can be found in the google drive). The event was incredibly interactive and super fun. I believe that the MESC ended up contracting and offering Czara an honorarium, which you can do through SAO advisers. 
  • Legislative Initiatives with Planned Parenthood Community Meeting: Our amazing legislative intern, Lily Campbell, planned this community meeting because she had a solid relationship with Planned Parenthood. All of the details for this event will be in her transition document in the google drive! 
      • Side note, I would 100% recommend letting your interns plan events. It’s wonderful development for both soft and hard skills and allows them to work on their own passion projects inside of WAC. Tiffany, the Assistant Director, worked very closely with the interns and developed a calendar whereby each of us was responsible for planning a community event that quarter. Oftentimes, interns chose a project and then saw who else was interested and paired with them for planning, but sometimes they also worked alone. It’s super important to give the interns autonomy within the commission and allow them to explore their own passions and express themselves!
  • Self-Defense Workshop with SARVA and Feminist Self-Defense: This was another new event and easily one of my favorites this year. We partnered with SARVA, one of the commissions inside the JCC in response to a lot of the fear surrounding the increasing sexual assault cases near Greek Row. We contracted Feminist Self-Defense, an organization we found online, and paid them to teach a zoom class. The contract process will happen through working with your SAO Adviser and we ended up splitting the cost between SARVA and WAC since the class fee was kind of expensive ($1000). We had a HUGE turnout (it was our biggest event all year) and had tons of requests to do another one. This was an event that is amazing to do online and would highly recommend doing it, even in an in-person setting. 
  • “Let’s Talk About Relationships” Community Meeting, in collaboration with SARVA and Livewell: This was another intern-led community event, hosted by Benny (our social media intern) and Geeta (our external outreach intern). We hosted this right before Valentine’s Day and all of the information can be found in their transition documents. It was a super cool event that went over different ideas of ‘healthy’ relationships and ‘not-healthy relationships’. What I really loved about this event was the inclusion of different relationships. 

“A Conversation about the Erasure of History” Community Meeting: This was another intern-led community meeting, led by Sammy Mathews (our internal outreach intern). She was incredibly passionate about what erasure of history looks like, especially within higher institutions of academia and womxn’s history. All of the information can be found in her transition document in the google drive.

Spring Quarter

Events & Projects: 

    • Begin planning ‘The Monologues’ Launch Party & Zine: By spring, you should have a good idea of who your contributing artists will be. Early Spring Quarter, we set a date and began requesting accessibility accommodations and working extensively with the artists (both ‘The Monologues’ artists and artists who were creating the zine from the OCOMM Team) to set up the zine and launch party. Tiffany handled most of the communication between the artists and I worked on the programming for the event.
      • Side note: OCOMM has not ever made ‘The Monologues’ zine. We worked with Riley and Abby, two OCOMM artists, to create the zine this year because we wanted to give them a chance to have their own passion project, so we weren’t working with OCOMM per se, but two individuals who happened to be associated with OCOMM. Moreover, we wanted to house ‘The Monologues’ inside a piece of art so it was like “art within art”. 
  • ASUW Jobs Campaign: The ASUW Jobs Campaign will kind of happen throughout Spring quarter in waves. It’s important to be mindful of when ASUW Jobs open and closes and to advertise WAC positions (as well as other ASUW jobs). WAC can only serve its constituency well if we have dedicated and passionate advocates in positions – aka, people have to know about the jobs in order to get applicants in order for WAC to be the best it can be. WAC created its own graphics this year to advertise the WAC Director and Assistant Director positions. I also hosted a ton of informational interviews where potential applicants/people who were interested would come in and ask me any and every question they had as it pertained to the role and ASUW.
  • “How to Be Better”, Community Meeting: This was the first meeting of a series we alternated calling “How to be Better” and “Womxn with an ‘x’”. Essentially it was a meeting that facilitated open conversation about why spelling womxn with an ‘x’ can be harmful and action items to take moving forward. While there was low turnout for this event, we wanted to make sure we were being open to community thoughts and opinions/critiques, and so we continued to try to host these spaces to facilitate that open dialogue and discourse about the spelling of womxn/women and what WAC could do to better support its constituents. 
  • Queer Misogyny Panel with The Queer Student Commission: This was a super cool panel in collaboration with The Queer Student Commission and the QSC’s Director, Juan Torres. The event was meant to focus on the idea of queer misogyny and the ways in which we must acknowledge and actively dismantle misogyny in queer spaces. Tiffany and Juan facilitated this panel. 
  • ‘The Monologues’ Instagram Live Event: Tiffany and I held an Instagram live for ‘The Monologues’ for any potential participants to come and ask us questions or let us know their comments or concerns. 
      • Side note: IG Live is an AMAZING tool to use for “low-key” events. This year, we found that IG Live events actually garner large numbers of participants because of how easy they are to access. Instead of logging into Zoom/going somewhere, participants can just click an icon on their phone and join. Would definitely recommend doing open-mic events/Q&As/etc using this platform, even if we are in-person next year.
  • Rivkin Check Your BOObies, Spring Edition: This was the same event as in Fall quarter, but the Spring rendition. We re-did the campaign to be “spring-like” and had a pretty solid turnout. 
      • Side note: Part of the WAC’s mission statement is to facilitate educational programming. For me, it was incredibly important to host educational events that offered really crucial resources to our constituents that they might not otherwise have access to/be privy to. For example, events like Rivkin’s workshops offer a lot of medical/professional advice that are often inaccessible for students who are not familiar with the medical field/don’t have access to the medical field/cannot afford to be seen. 
  • Linkedin Workshop with Shivani Sharma: This was an AMAZING event to host Spring Quarter. This event essentially functioned to be a ‘professional development’ workshop, without being dull and boring and elitist like most professional developments are. Shivani is a UW alumni and Tiffany’s connection who essentially went over LinkedIn and resume building. I highly recommend hosting events like this in Spring quarter because graduating students are often looking for professional development resources/getting ready to go out into the “real world” and are in want of community support.
  • Women and Money with MoneyMuse and IGNITE: This was another AMAZING event for Spring quarter, for the same reason as the LinkedIn workshop. We got a pretty huge turnout at this event and the feedback we got was especially positive from students who were graduating, who were moving into jobs. WAC partnered with IGNITE (a UW RSO) and MoneyMuse, an independent organization whose mission statement is to empower womxn with financial literacy and independence. More specifically, we contracted Stephanie Xenos, the CEO and founder of MoneyMuse to come give a presentation to us via Zoom. This event took about a quarter to plan, from the contracts, to requesting accessibility accommodations, to partnering with IGNITE, to communicating and working with Stephanie/MoneyMuse. We’ve established a really solid relationship with Stephanie (whose contact info is in gmail), so if you’re interested in hosting this event again, that is totally do-able!
  • ‘The Monologues’ Launch Party: This event was BEAUTIFUL. After MONTHS of planning (literally since Fall Quarter), we held the launch party over zoom. We had all of the artists come the day before for a dress rehearsal and on the day of the event, the artists each read their pieces as Riley/Abby flipped through the online zine. This was my favorite event all year. The feedback we got from this event was EXTRAORDINARY; people were crying the whole way through (including all of the WAC team). This is one of WAC’s annual events and while you don’t have to do it, the community really seems to enjoy participating in this event; there are a lot of artists who participate every single year.

Miscellaneous 

Miscellaneous:

  • Collaboration: As I’ve touched on a bit, collaboration has become a large part of the WAC this year, and I really hope this mission continues. It’s hard to not have other intersecting identities as a womxn, it’s commonly an identity that is shared with others. With that being said, the very nature of this commission should be collaborative and intersectional in everything that we do (at least, this was my belief). It’s important to uplift and support each other, within and outside of the ASUW. Collaboration with other JCC entities is an AMAZING way to create these systems that uplift and support each other, as well as affirm intersectionality of identities. I would really advise getting to know your fellow entity directors and having sit-downs early in the year to meet with them and see where their passions lie and where your interests may overlap. These can be as informal as just popping your head in during office hours, but it’s a really wonderful way to start brainstorming collaborative events and forming those relationships. 
  • External versus Internal: I know we already touched on this a bit in our transition meeting(s), but it’s something I wanted to reiterate here. As you can see with the transition documents, WAC definitely split our efforts between external and internal work/outreach. I did a lot of external work (communicating with other entities, UW RSOs, outside organizations, responding to outside requests/emails/questions/representing WAC), while Tiffany did a lot of the internal work and communication with our intern team. The Director commonly takes on that ‘external’ role. As we move into next year and an in-person/hybrid model, this will probably mean that you will be going to more meetings and being “the face of WAC”. 
  •  
    • This year, I also created another outreach list which can be found in the google drive. While these are pretty thorough lists, they are not dispositive. Please continue to reach to do diverse outreach and be in communication/contact with anyone who might fall under the WAC’s constituency, even if they are not affiliated with a “UW RSO”. 

Logins & Passwords

Slack (Slack will be your BEST FRIEND – I would download it on your phone, computer, etc)

asuwomn@uw.edu

WACrocks02

Mailchimp: (for weekly newsletter!) – The Assistant Director typically does the newsletter, but we did it collaboratively the first couple of weeks as we got into the swing of things.

asuwom1 

Asuwac2k19!!

Security Questions for Mailchimp: Mascot–huskies Childhood Hero: Frida Kahlo Coffeemaker brand: Mr. Coffee

Access Website: 

You can log in with your UW NetID! Here is the site link: 

https://women.asuw.org/wp-login.php

Hub Res Logins (I did not use this because we were online, but it was left by previous Directors)

Asuwomn@uw.edu

asuwomn-wac

Director Gmail Account: 

asuwomn@uw.edu

WACrocks02

Instagram: 

@asuwwac

Womxn20

Printing code: asuwomn-wac

ASUW WAC Budget number: 16-9407

Google Doc Version of This Page:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xi0gwQ20EsIoqLKHQdS8_edXYoncPWFFRKUDbGHiSdQ/edit?usp=sharing