THE TL; DR: leveraging new technology to spread campus information quickly

On January 27th, 2017:

A week after President Trump took office, he issued executive orders stating that individuals hailing from any one of seven countries--Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. While we were lucky to begin classes a week before, students on campus found themselves either trapped in America, unable to leave, or unable to work with intellectual collaborators hailing from those countries. With a sizable international student population, the Carnegie Mellon community was shaken. Students were unsure how to proceed in a new era where they may no longer be welcomed into the US.

Members of my cabinet and I worked to figure out how to get the information these students needed out, quickly. With the introduction of Facebook Live, student governments across the country were live-streaming their meetings for anyone to log on and watch. It was a new level of transparency, which was impressive, but my cabinet felt that there could be more power to the medium that had not been utilized yet. So they brainstormed, and realized facebook live could be utilized to provide a virtual town hall for students interested. We set about to do this.

Preparing The Live Stream

In the process of assembling the facebook livestream, the work evolved. Working with the Office of the Dean of Students, we were able to bring in immigration lawyers from Klasko Law, who would be able to answer questions pre-screened, in addition to the day of. Working with the Office of the Dean of Students was amazingly helpful; while it delayed our facebook live feed, it enabled us to bring in lawyers and utilize official university live streaming methods, making legal advice available to students only. This provided much more information than our original route aiming to focus on the expertise of the head of our Office of International Education. With the addition of lawyers, we were able to offer forty windows of fifteen minutes each for students to get free legal advice from the lawyers present.

Of course, the changes took time. While the original intent was to provide this livestream within a week of the immigration changes, the final livestream took place three weeks after instead. In the meantime, we worked to market it as broadly as possible, emailing the details out to every one of the 5500 graduate students on campus and marketing aggressively through facebook, creating an event with over two thousand students invited to participate.

The university president himself couldn't attend on such short notice, so we worked with the writer on my cabinet to write a statement for him to assure students of their belonging on campus. The final result was intensely moving, and students felt assured of our president's commitment to diversity.

The International Day of Love

The Immigration Forum took place on Valentine's Day. After showing the video message, the forum opened up to one and a half hours of questioning following a brief ten minute overview of expected immigration policy in the Trump era. The crowd included all individuals, from academic advisors worried for their students to undergraduate students concerned for their own well-being, and tough questions were asked about the likelihood of being able to live in the United States. Over 200 people were present, with an additional number listening on the livestream. Afterwards the livestream was made available to all students via a link accessible through university login credentials.

The 40 spots available for consultations were entirely filled within a few days of availability. Students concerned for their future were able to get questions answered about their visa applications, the state of their family visiting for graduation, and the likelihood that the executive order would be completely struck down. 

As with any event, some questions are left unanswered--would the attendance have been higher if we had responded more quickly, or was it more important that we spread better information? Was facebook live a better medium and a school hosted live stream? What is the most effective marketing strategy, and did we use it?

Ultimately, what was most important to me was that I got to build something with my cabinet that wasn't entirely set within platitudes; that as a leader in the campus community, I was able to give students information when they needed it, which felt far better than just giving them encouraging words. Additionally, as always, it was a humbling reminder of the amazing work that the people around me were capable of, and the importance of using my skills and position within that work to serve others.