From: Vice President
To: MilVets
Re: Statement of Goals
Date: 08OCT05
Contents:Introduction.
Criteria.
VP’s goals for 2005-2006.
Fraternity.
Dear MilVets member,
I hope classes are going well and they aren’t too stressful yet. For our graduates, I hope you’re showing the world what a Columbia milvet can do.
Introduction. My name is Eric Chen. I am the 2005-2006 Vice President of the U.S. Military Veterans of Columbia University. For more personal background, you can read my biography statement on the website. This is my vice-presidential statement of goals. It should not be confused with the President’s vision statement, which Oscar shared at our general body meeting in September. What’s the difference? Think of Oscar’s vision as the destination for MilVets. What I discuss in this letter are some - but not all - of the signposts that can help us travel the path. “Criteria” discusses why we do, and “VP’s goals” discusses specific organizational goals I want to see achieved before I cycle out.
Criteria. For any activity we take on, it’s imperative to know why we do it beyond the undertaking of the event itself. Every MilVets action should serve as an investment into long-term development. Here are my 7 criteria for evaluating MilVets activities, not in any particular order:
1. Allocation of resources. As executive planners, it’s essential that we derive the most benefit we can from every action we take. At this stage of our development, MilVets is severely limited in capability, not only by funding, but more so, by lack of bodies-manpower, time, and creative input. We’ve always had good ideas; the obstacle has been lack of resources. The more individual investment that MilVets receives from members, the more we can do.
2. Infrastructure. We need to strengthen the organizational foundation. That means cultivating accountability and executive responsibilities, duplicative standard operating procedures, funding sources, networks, and perhaps most importantly, a high standard of governing traditions and succession.
3. Team-building, society-building, culture-building. Team-building is fostering mutually supportive personal relationships among milvets, or the fraternal aspect of our group. Society-building is expanding the “goods and services” offered through the infrastructure of the organization. Culture-building is upgrading the norms and values of members and executives as they relate to and act for the group, and fostering quality future leadership of the group.
4. Support the military community. I’m less inclined for MilVets to advocate on campus for military-related public policy or the military as public institution. I am inclined for MilVets to advocate for and educate on campus about the military culture and community, i.e., soldiers and veterans. Our people.
5. Visibility and exposure. All organizations exist as shared concepts; therefore, the real value of any public organization is based in large part on the public’s awareness and perception. The intangibles of PR translate into tangible returns. Raise the public stock of MilVets and the greater will be each member's benefit by their association with the group. How we define MilVets to the public is much of how we define the group to ourselves and more importantly, future members. Networking on an organizational level is important. Public relations and outreach is important. Publicly recognized achievement is important.
6. Serve our members. If we as members are not personally benefiting from MilVets, then we’re doing something wrong. First and foremost, we ought to be having a good time with classmates we’re comfortable with. Second, the group should serve as a logical collection point for any opportunities, scholarships, offers, goods and services tailored for student-veterans. As a fraternal group, we should be energetically networking within and through MilVets on social, academic, pre-professional and professional levels (more on this later).
7. MilVets as national phenomenon. This is the idea with which Oscar convinced me to return as VP, after I had declared my retirement as a student leader. While we are part of a long rich American heritage as veterans, comparatively few members of our generation share our qualifications. That fact can feed our insecurity, but it also offers us a special opportunity. As a student-veterans organization, moreover a student-veterans organization in a flagship institution, we are leading the way in the nation. MilVets leadership allows us the opportunity to do greater than follow the generational mob on paths worn by others. It is harder to blaze a trail, but as Columbia milvets, we have the chance to create, to pioneer and to lead a national phenomenon – if we have what it takes.
VP’s goals for 2005-2006. The first time I was the VP, in 2002-2003, I wanted MilVets to become immediately a socially-culturally normative force on campus to complement the other campus movements I was nurturing at the time. In 2005, I’m not politically disinclined, but as a senior, I am much more concerned about building up long-term infrastructure. To that end, my 2005-2006 goals are not meant to represent Oscar’s agenda or the agendas of other MilVets executives.
1. Banner. Every self-respecting student group owns two things: a banner and a website. With Zhuo, our website is a work in progress that is in good and reliable hands. On the other hand, the banner has proven to be problematic because we are such a diverse group. What unified symbol can properly represent the entirety of Columbia student-veterans? We haven’t figured that out in over 3 years. If the 1st generation of milvets has been unable to design a proper banner or guidon for MilVets, hopefully a newer member can. Any volunteers?
2. Services. The Columbia administration offers little in the way of veteran or reservist-related services. Unfortunately, the GSSC also chose to kill a proposed veterans’ representative position. I would like to establish, through MilVets, reliable name-and-number contacts with local veterans service organizations. To that end, I need feedback from the general body on veteran-related services and activities we would like at Columbia.
3. Alumni outreach. I would like to network all veterans who have attended Columbia University, particularly vets who attended General Studies before we started MilVets.
4. Improve networking functions. With alumni and within the group, but also outwards into society-at-large. As I said in “Criteria”, MilVets should be a logical collection point for any opportunities, scholarships, offers, goods and services tailored for student-veterans. The present plan to facilitate this network is an on-line resource center.
Fraternity. Question: Name one totally self-interested reason to personally invest into MilVets right now. Answer: MilVets as fraternity.
A reason to attend an incredibly expensive “elite” university like Columbia is to establish functional relations, with “elite” classmates, which benefit us professionally and socially throughout our lives. MilVets certainly isn’t the only avenue for student-veterans to network at Columbia, but it is an under-appreciated one. We share positive and negative common bonds. Rare within our generation, we share the transformative experience of military service, made more poignant by our increasing number of war veterans. Most of us commute. Most of us don’t join sports teams or fraternities. Most of us are significantly older than our classmates, some of us are even married, and many (but not all) of us struggle to form functional fraternal bonds with our younger classmates. In short, we are our own natural networking resource.
Keep in mind that we aren’t only veterans. We aren’t only student-veterans. We are Columbia student-veterans, and
we are elite. For MilVets to function as a fraternity, we need to add the necessary working conditions so that by working together, we can get to know each other, judge each other and impress each other. As we grow to trust each other on a functional and quasi-professional level, we will thereby develop our base of collegiate fraternal relations. We can draw upon this professional and social pool throughout our lives -- just like other college students do. In other words, if you fail to impress me today when we are Columbia milvets together, chances are you won’t be on my short list when I fill out a professional team 10 years from now. Chances are, I won’t be on your short list either . . . and what a loss that would be.
Sincerely,
Eric Chen
Vice President
U.S. Military Veterans of Columbia University
