People
The Voicebox requires many volunteers to run the center. This page contains the full definitions of each position. The names and e-mail addresses of each person who currently fills one of these positions can be found on the "Contact" page.
Administrative Assistants
The Committee would include two part-time paid administrative assistants, who would maintain the daily, mundane operations of the Center. However, they would serve at the pleasure of the Committee as a whole. (Significant decisions would be left to the Committee, and the administrative assistants would participate in these decisions as Committee members, rather than on their own.) The duties of the administrative assistants would include the following:
- Maintain email account and be a sort of "switchboard" through which email contact would be coordinated
- Assist in caring for the Center's physical space (e.g. clean up, stock paper)
- Coordinate volunteer monitors of the Center (see below)
- Coordinate reservations for the use of Center space for meetings and other activities
- Maintain and solicit contributions to the large events calendar in the Center, so that it is current and well-used
- Maintain budget
- Secure funding for operations and purchases, preferably from more than one source
- Track all purchases and regularly report to the group
- Draft future itemized budgets, based upon the Committee's decisions
- Assist groups and individuals in finding funding for their activities
- Work with Liaison and Librarian positions (see below) to help track and promote events and help manage checkout items
Unpaid Positions on Committee
The Committee also would include several defined volunteer positions divided among its members. There has been disagreement about the specific nature of these, but several possible positions are listed below. We expect them to become more solidified as the Committee begins meeting.
All positions on the Committee would be rotated by semester. One idea is to make them yearlong positions but offset by a semester, so there would be overlap. This could help create more continuity from semester to semester.
- Liaison
- Maintain contact with groups at other schools
- Promote contact/sharing/coordination between students, faculty, staff and community
- Librarian/Checkout
- Manage checkout system for books, videos, megaphones and whatever else is available for checking-out to students
- Track overdue materials
- Solicit donations and manage purchasing of new materials, based on input from the Committee and greater activist community
- Historian(s)
- Gather past records of Grinnell activist groups and projects in a central filing cabinet and/or online
- Continue to collect records from current activist activities
- Keep records organized and available for use
- Release a semesterly publication recording events in activism at Grinnell
Volunteer Monitors
Volunteer monitors, similar to those who monitor the SRC, would be solicited from groups and individuals who use the Center. Although the Center would remain open throughout the day, volunteers would monitor the Center during peak hours (likely afternoon and evening).
In order to cut down on lost items, the library and other checkout materials would only be available while a monitor is on hand. Monitors would be responsible for properly recording all checkouts, so that the librarian could easily maintain them.
Structure group organized by Caitlin Carmody.