Many are pushing back against our systems of traditional dominant-culture values, White supremacy, gender binary, heterosexism and patriarchy. Movements such as Black Lives Matter and advocacy for LGBT rights are all calls for complete change. What can the higher education and student affairs professionals do to support students and advocate for inclusion on an institutional-level? How do we answer the calls for transformations of structural oppression? How can we advocate more effectively for students?

The Oar

ACPA Senior Scholars Blog

Friday, 1 May 2020 - 3:14pm
If you put your soul against this oar with me, the power that made the universe will enter your sinew from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm that lives in us. Excerpt from That Lives In Us by ~Rumi The Oar As this academic year dies, there is life emerging from the ground and the trees. It is springtime. It always feels like something is dying to me as an academic year comes...

A Response to Patricia Daugherty’s Commentary: Situating My Beloved ACPA

ACPA Senior Scholars Blog

Wednesday, 2 May 2018 - 4:52pm
Written by Sherry K. Watt "I only preach from my scars, not my wounds." - Nadia Bolz-Weber is the founding pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints in Denver, Colorado As I read Patricia Daugherty’s Essay entitled What I Saw At A College Administrators’ Conference Will Make You Laugh and Cry , I pondered many questions such as: What really triggered this barrage of defensive reactions ? Did she...

Radical Openness, Revolutionary Change: Shifting My Own Thinking

ACPA Senior Scholars Blog

Thursday, 13 October 2016 - 1:07pm
Written by Sherry K. Watt "The teacher also has to be a person who is going a little further. I don't for a minute think that we can be teachers who invite students into radical openness if we're not willing to be radically open ourselves, if we're not willing to be a witness to our students of how ideas change and shape us, how something affects us so that we think differently than we did before...

How to Start a Revolution

ACPA Senior Scholars Blog

Friday, 10 June 2016 - 6:10pm
How to Start a Revolution Sherry K. Watt Professor, Higher Education and Student Affairs Program University of Iowa ACPA Senior Scholar The Revolution has started. Many are pushing back against our systems of traditional dominant-culture values, White supremacy, gender binary, heterosexism and patriarchy. Movements such as Black Lives Matter and advocacy for LGBT rights are all calls for complete...

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It Needs to Be Improvised.

ACPA Senior Scholars Blog

Thursday, 9 June 2016 - 6:17pm
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It Needs to Be Improvised. Tracy Davis Professor and College Student Personnel Program Coordinator Western Illinois University ACPA Senior Scholar If we want to start a revolution, we need to begin not with technology, but with ourselves, becoming more critical of the media we ingest. One of the great poets and political commentators of the past 50 years, Gil...