Getting the gravy train rolling

Hey there readers,

Well now that the excitement of the kick off is over, we got down to the real bees wax. This time we talked over with some of the new people that actually stayed with us one the changes they'd like to see around here. Then we discussed plans on what we can do for those issues on campus. I was with the social justice division this time but sometimes I'll report on what the environmental people are doing if I go with them. Anyway we are going to spread awareness of consent culture. Consent culture is essentially the opposite of rape culture, do not blame the victim and try to prevent this kind of violence.

This Sunday I will be going to Duluth to attend a state wide meeting where all MPIRG group representatives meet once a month. I'm going because the guy who'd normally do it is busy and I'm an alternate.

Kick off meeting results

MPIRG had its first official meeting of the semester at Augsburg and man were my fellow team members satisfied. The meeting took place @ 5:30-6:30 in the Marshall room on Thursday. If you've been around Christensen center recently we've been handing out fliers for weeks just so we'd raise awareness about who we are and what we do. Read my past blog posts if you'd like to know a thing or two. We had 42 people attend our first meeting which, according to our campus organizer Ian, will be enough to give us grant money from the Augsburg staff. Everyone was really happy that we could achieve such a turn out and that we'll have more opportunities available to come! If you are still intrested you can catch us next time 5:30 in the Marshall room.

One week untill kick off.

Once again we talked about getting new members for MPIRG so if you are a cool enough guy/girl to join please contact me. (koon@augsburg.edu)

Other then that we also wanted to work with the LGBTQA on something but due to miss communication they took it the wrong way because our representative used feminine terms when he shouldn't have. (she instead of ze) The issue which he was addressing was getting free tampons in women's bathrooms. Now being male I have no idea what going through menstruation is like, but to my understanding tampons should be like toilet paper in the bathroom.

Now for some honesty. Looking back we don't usually get along with other campus sponsored groups first Res-life and now this. Ellie Kruger, one of our campus organizers, thinks its because we get things done around here and I agree.

Here is a link to the Face book event: https://www.facebook.com/events/623405421023820/

Ally Trainning

Today we were coming up with Ideas on how we can gain more members to join our weekly meetings so I'm going to do my part and use this blog!

Do you care about social justice issues? Would you like to see improvements around not only Augsburg, but the rest your community as well? Want to impress that hot hippie chick?

WELL STOP ASKING QUESTIONS AND JOIN MPIRG!!!!
Meetings every Thursday from 5:30 PM-6:30 PM inside Marshall room


Mike Gerwe, leader of Augsburg's LGBTQIA club was also there to give us all ally training which deals with how to interact with the LGBTQIA community. He told us about pronouns, stereotypes, and gender identification. Back when things were simple, people just used male and female and based it on body parts, then treated them as such (man or woman). Nowadays its more complex.  People are showing more deviation form the traditional male/female categorization and instead coming up with something else to be called by. Not to mention that gender roles is starting to become less relevant.

Links: www.forge-forward.org  www.glbta.umn.edu/trans

Draft post-introdution

Hey there fellow classmates (among others). I am Tim Koon and this is my blog talking about MPIRG!

First off what is MPIRG? Well curious reader, MPIRG stands for Minnesota Public Interest Research Group, this means we are an activist group looking out for what we think is good for our fellow Minnesotans. We've got members from all across the state and Minneapolis is ,of course, no exception.

I will be updating our plans for Augsburg here but If you would like more information on us as a whole, visit our website in the link below:
http://www.mpirg.org/index.html