In the mid-1980s, students in the Women Involved in Living and Learning (WILL) program established the WILL student organization.  The student organization provides members with opportunities for formal and informal leadership roles and gives them a significant voice in the program.  Students keep the program strong and vital and perform many of the program’s critical functions.

Opportunities for Leadership

Each spring, WILL members elect a committee that runs the student organization.  This committee includes such positions as president, vice president, secretary; in addition, any member may choose to be on the committee as a member-at-large.  Among other things, members of the committee plan and conduct meetings of the membership, administer student activism projects, and direct a mentoring program that links first-year WILL students with older students.

Activism and Social Change

The WILL program strives to make active service to the campus and the community a central component of each member’s experience at the University of Richmond.  Because students learn best when their knowledge and experience interact, WILL encourages its members to integrate their classroom learning with out-of-the-classroom projects and campaigns designed to foster social change.

One way that WILL provides students with opportunities for service as well as informal leadership roles is through gender action projects.  As part of their membership in the program, many WILL students organize and take part in projects that actively seek to raise awareness of issues related to women and/or gender.  What follows are several examples of such projects:

• Two WILL students organized and headed the Young Feminist Conference at the University of Richmond, which drew college women from across Virginia;
• Two WILL students focused on spreading awareness of honor killings in the Middle East by writing articles for the college and international newspapers and by holding programs on the issue that included interpretations of the Qur’an, faculty commentary, and video clips;
• A group of WILL students organized and led the University’s Take Back the Night Walk, which promotes awareness of violence against women;
• Over the course of the year, WILL students organize campus awareness campaigns about issues such as breast cancer awareness, minority women and employment, eating disorders, and sweatshops.