Positivity Only
Rep. Gomez represents your district and you bond over being from the same town. As you try to engage in conversation about AB Anderson she interrupts you to talk about one her favorite restaurants from your town.
Redirect your conversation
Ex: "that's great to hear, but just to come back to what I was saying about the heating ventilation..."
You get to sen. Glee's office and you and your group walk in ready to introduce yourselves before you begin. You stick out your hand to shake Glee's hand and he ignores it. Instead he sits back in his desk and says "alright, lets skip the small talk, what brings you in today?"
Personable conversations are what make impactful and memorable stories. Say "we're here to share our stories as students from UMD. If you don't mind, we'd like to begin by first introducing ourselves."
You have a meeting at 1:30 and you're having trouble finding your room. You walk all over the state building and realize your meeting is actually in the senate building. It's 1:28 and your not going to make it.
Call the staffer and let them know you made a mistake and that you'll be late. See if the senator is still willing to meet.
You arrive to your meeting 5 minutes early and rep. Murphey's staffer keeps making small talk with you. The staffer keeps assuring you that your group is going to do great and offers some useful tips.
One of your group members absolutely values their jazz studies major. Rep Sandman starts to chuckle about jazz studies and tells your group member that SFA majors are pointless. Your group member gets mad and starts yelling at rep. Sandman.
Refocus the conversation. Try to be stern and remind everyone in the room about the purpose of BLD. Apologize for getting off track and keep moving forward
You explain to rep. Baxter the importance of updating mechanical systems and how it'll take 4.4 million dollars to accomplish. She begins to doubt the UMN financial transparency and asks "why hasn't Chancellor Gabel been truthful in where state dollars are going?"
You are not advocating for the UMN system your advocating for your student experiences. Redirect you convo like "I'm not really sure about that, but what I can tell you is that AB Anderson is in need of critical updates."
Go without your lost member. It's unprofessional to be late and we have to be respectful of the rep's time. You would just have to reconnect with your group member later.
It's your final meeting of the day and you
're feeling overwhelmed. You finally meet rep. Bernardy and she's just a ray of sunshine who won't stop smiling at you and constantly asking about your culture.
Either suck it up and get with the program for this last meeting or appoint someone else to lead who you feel is capable.
Rep. Hudson wants to be a cool & hip adult and tries to be relatable to college students. He asks you about what the parties are like as a small talk.
Redirect your convo! Bring it back to your focus
University of Mankato is also lobbying to upgrade one of their old buildings. Sen Erickson asks you "why is UMD more deserving of receiving state funding over Mankato?"
Reassure Adam that it's completely normal to be nervous. He's more than welcome to hang out in the Vault until your group comes back. Check back on his well being afterwards and see if he can handle another meeting
You walk in Rep. Pryor's office and she immediately expresses how much she loves UMD. She says to your group, "you always have my support!" within the first minute. Now what?
Take advantage of the opportunity of sitting in front of a rep! You should still talk about your student experiences.
Mental health is a pressing issue among students. Rep Straka blames the decline of student's mental health because college professors indoctrinate liberal ideologies among students and should stick to traditional practices in school such as prayer.
Make the issue relatable. Make them care. Highlight your own (if you're comfortable) or someone else's (anonymous) story about mental health, or a statistic you know about.
Your lobby group is made up of 5 other people but only 2 of them show up.
Call Ayah so she can do some rearranging to keep groups even.