Morgan: you sound like your head’s in just the right place. Especial kudos on focusing on your leadership and understanding the important of charisma and dedication in your point-people. Youll need this especially in influencing non-students.

(I hope you’ve saved enough time to lead College Council, too. And even though I know it doesn’t satisfy your very reasonable “maximum impact” calculations of what is worth effort, I hope you’ll get the minutes from after 2005 uploaded.)

You aren’t an advisor…advisors are asked for their advice

This is wrong on two levels. First, I did not say I was an “advisor.” That has a fairly specific meaning in the context of a student group at Williams. I do “advise student groups.” That is just a fact. Do you deny it? Do I need to provide copies of the scores of e-mail exchanges that I have had with various students on various topics over the last 5 years? Most prominent example is here.
Second, it just isn’t true that advisors are “asked for their advice” or even listened to. Check the definition.

Someone who posts random advice on a blog is a blogger. You blog about them, often in a way that would completely and utterly derail any success they might hope to achieve.

Says, who? We now have an empirical question as to the value of my advice. My claim is that a thoughtful, interesting protest about trustee-private-jet travel would get picked up by news outlets like the Boston Globe. You disagree? Why? What protests do you think would be more likely to achieve that end? There are no more than a handful of people not employed by Williams who know as much about the history of protest at Williams as I do. If I am not qualified to opine on this, then who is?

TNG sounds like a fantastic group, With or without your completely unsolicited advice. You aren’t an advisor…advisors are asked for their advice. Someone who posts random advice on a blog is a blogger. You blog about them, often in a way that would completely and utterly derail any success they might hope to achieve. If that’s advice, I’m never going to take any advice again in my life.

1) This is another great post. I hope that Morgan (and other TNG’ers) will keep us posted throughout the year on their activities and goals. A core value of EphBlog is connecting current students with alumni on topics of mutual interest. Morgan’s post will be read by hundreds, if not thousands, interested alums.

2) Speaking personally, I have two roles to play: First, I advise student groups on how to accomplish their goals even though I may not agree with what they are trying to do. Recent example here. Many of my suggestions for TNG are on that basis. Second, on many topics, like global warming, I am a natural skeptic. So, a different role is to challenge students like Morgan about the substance of what they are working on. I’ll try to do a better job of keeping those roles distinct in the future.

3) If those 92 students (and more?) work on global warming in a sustained fashion over the course of the year, it will be the most serious example of campus activism in years. There was opposition to housing change a few years ago. And then the Latino Studies hunger strike, but neither involved so many committed students over a long time period (although the hunger strikers themselves were probably more committed than most (any?) TNG’er). I think that you need to go back 20 years to the Divestment debates to find such activism. Counter-examples?

4) I will make this point again and again, but I think that the most effective TNG activities will a) Focus directly on Williams and the surrounding communities and b) Produce lots of hard data and analysis. Show people numbers. Highlight trade-offs. Be rigorous. That will sway opinion among the Eph community.

5) As I have said before, I love the light bulb stuff. Really! My main suggestion is to do more with it, using your Williams education to get all the details correct. For example, measure precisely (and document) yourselves the different in energy consumption between the old bulbs and the new ones. Write up the details in a report. Put it on the web. The point is not that TNG has saved a lot of power. The point is to practice and demonstrate serious analysis. Measure things. Report what you find. Document your procedure.

Many of the TNG’ers hope to (and will) grow up to make real policy changes. Practice that skill in the purple valley.

Good luck!