Check out the attached document to learn about creative ways to strength train at home!

Leadership Blueprint is a program that helps first year, sophomore, and new transfer students learn how to craft a more fulfilling college experience by sharing practical design thinking tools and ideas, while relating them back to their leadership and involvement plans for UMBC. However, all students are welcome to apply!

There are two different cohort times to choose from starting the week of January 25th, 2021 and ending the week of February 22nd, 2021:

• Retriever Cohort
• Tuesdays 4:00pm - 5:30pm 
• Jan 26th, Feb 2nd, Feb 9th, Feb 16th, Feb 23rd

• True Grit Cohort
• Wednesdays 11:00am - 12:30pm 
• Jan 27th, Feb 3rd, Feb 10th, Feb 17th, Feb 24th
  

To participate, you must be available to attend all five sessions within your section of Leadership Blueprint. The deadline to register is Wednesday, January 20th by 11:59pm. 

For questions contact Coordinator for Leadership, Beatriz Gutierrez-Malagon at bgutierrez@umbc.edu

On the day after Election Day, I felt exhausted. I had followed the election closely and participated actively in what had felt like the longest campaign season I had experienced. I struggled to process all that was happening:the messiness of democracy playing out on a 24-hour news cycle, on top of the long overdue reckoning on racial justice and the global pandemic.  

But what struck me most about that anything-but-ordinary Wednesday morning was a conversation I had with my neighbor about the events of the night before. For her, it had been like any other night, but with her favorite TV programming replaced  election results coverage. I asked her what she thought of all of it, and she noted that while she had gone out to vote the day before, it had been no big deal: “the sun was still going to rise the next morning.” Life would go on.

Initially I was impressed by her untroubled perspective. But in the days since, I’ve been thinking about her remark and the other versions of it I have heard from friends, neighbors, and loved ones. What strikes me is that they share the assumption that politics--or at least the need for them to participate--begins and ends on Election Day. I think that perspective misses both our power and our responsibility between elections.

Voting is not and has never been enough. Is there an area in your neighborhood that could use a stop sign? Do you need a sidewalk to connect your community to the next one over? A thriving democracy takes time, commitment, and perseverance. I keep thinking of the work of a local group of Baltimore residents who over the years organized to prevent CSX trains from carrying volatile crude oil through their backyards. It was because they connected with their community members, organized, and pulled together that they were able to work with local government to bring about change/advocate for the safety of their community.  

There is still a lot to process after the election and the coming weeks will be difficult. But if you need a reminder that the work is not over, let this be it. Our duty as members of a community and as participants in a democracy is to keep working to bring about the changes we want to see. 

Contact the author, Meghan Lynch, at mlyn1@UMBC.edu.