Student Leadership
The will student leadership organization provides members with leadership opportunities and a significant voice in the program. This dedicated space for students creates community and offers a structure conducive to activism. Students discuss, analyze, and act on pressing social justice issues, practice organizing and advocacy skills, and collaborate with other campus and community organizations.
The will program cultivates thoughtful leaders who make a positive difference, in ways large and small. Students learn to recognize how overlapping systems of oppression and privilege work in their daily lives, group dynamics and organizational processes. Inclusive leadership skills are continually taught, practiced, and reinforced in the will program.
Recent examples of student initiatives include:
- Creating Lavender Living, a residential living-learning program designed to create a space of support and community for LGBTQ+ students and their allies.
- Designing a project grounded in the social model of disability that used student feedback to map inaccessible spaces across campus.
- Organizing an educational campaign to expand LGBTQ+ healthcare access.
- Creating a zine designed to educate members of the UR community about lesser-known institutional histories.
- Assembling an inclusive and comprehensive sex education module for K-12 students in Virginia public schools.