Students groups are advocating for change in several areas to benefit student life. It's part of the Florida State University College of Social Work Macro Mingle event.
The groups included Park Core, Payment 4 Placement, Students for Safety, and Macro Social Work Student Network. These groups advocate for better parking on FSU’s campus, paid student internships, and campus and classroom safety.
Eden Deckerhoff, with Macro Social Work Student Network, says the group is working to build the next generation of "fighters for politics." She defines macro social work as advocating, working toward, and encouraging voters to support a policy change. Her colleague, Makenna Bernstein says advocacy is one of the core tenets of social work.
“Part of the value of advocacy is trying to uplift voices of people that aren’t usually uplifted—the marginalized people who can’t really speak for themselves," Bernstein says. "And that really ties into policy because a lot of policy is targeted toward those minorities and underprivileged communities”
The event included petitions and surveys for students to sign in order to help fight for improvement. Shalay Jackson teaches a communities and organizations class at FSU, and the macro mingle event is one of their class assignments. She says everything will be the same unless someone steps up and demands change.
“They’re doing a social action project and this step is recruitment and power building," Jackson says. "They're going to take the information from these petitions and surveys and they’re going to present it to the target of their campaign."
