Leadership on Campus: The Art of Recognition

CDT xxx

5 December 2008

Leadership on Campus

The Justin X. Carroll Residential Hall Honorary (XRHH) serves to cultivate leadership and service to residential life within the Washington University Community. Membership is comprised of past and current student government leaders on campus. It is devoted to the recognition of excellence among WashU leaders, believing that such recognition both rewards past service and encourages future action. To accomplish this, XRHH presents “Of the Month Awards,” ranging from Student Leader of the Month to Community Outreach Event of the Month, hosts a spring leadership retreat, judges the “Of the Year” competition between residential colleges, and awards scholarships to deserving student leaders. As the Publicity Chair of XRHH, I am responsible for promoting the group through Student Life, the WashU student run newspaper, and in presenting the awards to selected groups and individuals. In addition, although the honorary has had a long history at WashU, it had languished in recent years. I was one of a select group of students who re-established the honorary. Not only has it become a visible presence on campus, but it has also helped streamline many internal WashU administrative duties in regards to recognizing groups on campus.

Being in a small group environment, each of the members must pull his or her weight in order to make the group successful. To that end, I have talked to school administrators and student leaders in order to consolidate administrative duties and to serve the WashU community through better programming. I feel that the pressure ROTC places on being able to effectively “get the message across” has been essential to allowing me to perform my responsibilities in the organization. Getting up and speaking in front of other people has even, at times, become an enjoyable experience, especially since everyone in the honorary has known and worked with one another in student government. Being able to contribute to an honorary is important, and to that end, ROTC has helped tremendously. In addition, honorary members are responsible for one to two residential college councils and must advise them on ways to improve their service to their residential college. ROTC has helped me affectively communicate to councils, made up of mostly freshmen, on ways to improve the WashU experience. Unlike ROTC, where we can delegate to our subordinates, leading councils require guidance and patience. Leadership becomes an advisory role.

Moreover, besides the practical leadership attributes that have been taught, ROTC is in essence the practical application of the principle that there are other people and ideals out there that matter more than you do. While many college students choose to party their way through college, I have chosen to step up to the plate and take on what many people would characterize as a trivial matter: recognition. Recognizing student leaders and groups across campus not only shows them that the students care, but it also helps to improve other aspects of student life. When leaders feel that they are recognized through their hard work, whether that is through newspaper articles or a certificate of achievement, they transfer that appreciation back to the people they serve. In the past, when awards use to be bestowed without significant meaning, people, myself included, didn’t appreciate or care about them. However, with XRHH’s active encouragement of groups to make themselves better known and the publicity that they will receive, groups and leaders have started to reveal that they do care about being recognized for their efforts. Being a leader for me is doing all that I can to better the lives of other people.

-This was written as part of an assignment for the Gateway Battalion ROTC program.  XRHH is an honorary at Washington University in St. Louis dedicated to making leaders better through recognition and leadership retreats.  To learn more about XRHH, go to http://xrhh.wustl.edu.  The author is a current member and also an ROTC cadet.