Any Illinois College Dems?

[CubsFan1982]

Hey, any College Democrats hanging around here? I'm an officer with the Rock Valley College group up in Rockford, and I'm always looking for fellow College Dems!

[neverborn]

1. Graduating High School in a week... expect me to be one ;)

[JHBowden]

2. I'm back in school at UIC.

I study physics at Carol Moseley-Braun's alma mater.

[Tweed]

3. Hey, Illinois College Dem here!

I go to DePaul and I'm an officer here too. We were really successful in campaigning this year. We even went up to Lake Zurich and did some work for Melissa Bean. Our first meeting of the quarter is coming up and it will be interesting to see if we can retain our membership level we had during the election. Is your group going down to the IFCD conference this year?

[CubsFan1982]

5. Sweet!

Awesome what you guys were able to do at DePaul! I don't know anything about the IFCD conference yet, but you can bet that I'll be there.

[Tweed]

7. Yeah and we are hoping to accomplish even more this quarter

I'm expanding what we do times ten. Right now we have about 600 people on our E-mail list and I want to build it up to 1,000. We have played soccer in intramural sports for the past two quarters but now I want to have a Volleyball and a Floor Hockey team. We are launching a Book of the Quarter program and encouraging all of our readers to read the same book and using Meetup.com to reserve space in a more laid back atmosphere than campus. It should be a great quarter.

[CubsFan1982]

10. That's awesome

Obviously it's a little easier to expand and maintain your membership, being on a university campus. It's doubly difficult, I think, to do that at a community college, though I think we've been quite successful. We're at nearly 50 members, though we have maybe ten consistently active members who attend meetings. I expect it will be easier to become involved with the College Dems once I xfer to whatever four-year college I'm going to.

[Radical Activist]

4. I know a lot of College Dems

Are you working with the NIU group at all? I didn't know there was a RVC group.

[CubsFan1982]

6. Not a whole lot...

But we do have some connections to the NIU group, our charter president is now part of the NIU chapter. We've been in existence for almost three years now, and I've been involved for nearly two. We were quite active during the campaign, we had RVC students going to WI and IA to do canvassing, phone banking, GOTV on election day, went to the Kerry rally in Madison the week before the election, and we were fortunate enough to host Obama on RVC's campus for a press conference in September. Hopefully we can maintain the heightened interest, but it'll be a tough task, for sure.

[Tweed]

8. How close is Rockford to DeKalb?

Could you guys have meetings every once in awhile? Are you the only college in the area to have College Dems club?

[CubsFan1982]

9. It's possible

DeKalb is about 50 miles SW of Rockford, so I imagine we could have joint meetings once a month or so if the interest was there. We have one community college (RVC) and one four-year school, Rockford College, which does not have a College Dems chapter. We've been trying to help them get one started up, but it's a highly conservative campus, and interest is intermittent at best. Right now, our current chapter president is hoping to start one up when he transfers to Rockford College next fall, so we'll see where that goes.

[Tweed]

11. Thanks for the update

News chapters are always good to hear about. I'm using Meetup.com to help Chicago College Democrats meet together and for people that come from schools that don't have Democrats chapters, we can be there to help them through the starting days of their organization. We can also encourage them to keep up the good fight and help give them ideas and tell them things we have learned from our experience. Also, all the groups do have things that they have thought and do, but no other College Dems chapter does the same thing. The Meetup can exist as a way for people to network and exchange winning formulas. Glad to see you posting again on the DU!

[CubsFan1982]

12. Meetup is an awesome tool

We're considering utilizing it for our meetings this semester, cause there are way too many time conflicts with everybody working and studying and all that good stuff. Were you able to make it to the CDA national convention in Boston last July? We were able to meet up with some chapters in and out of state to discuss and exchange ideas and experiences, and that was pretty awesome.

[Tweed]

13. Which chapters from in state did you talk with?

I'm curious as to which chapters go beyond the link at IFCD's website.

[CubsFan1982]

14. Quite a few, in fact

We talked with several in Chicago, UIC, University of Chicago, Loyola, Eureka College, Elgin Community College, U of I and others that I can't think of off the top of my head, plus a few from MN, FL, NY, CA, PA, and MA. A really good resource that was added quite recently is the eChapters (or CDA Student Corps) link on the College Dems' website (www.collegedems.com). It lists most all of the state chapters and allows you to get in contact with the officers of each chapter. My ideal would be to increase awareness of such a resource so the IFCD can better function in the way of linking all the state chapters together. Perhaps that's something that can be discussed at the conference.