Students Encouraged to Get Involved with HSLC

Students Encouraged to get involved with HSLC

Students at the University of Oklahoma led the High School Leadership Conference on campus this past weekend. All but two members of the staff are students who applied through Campus Activities Council. Students applied last fall to be executive members and small group leaders.

Sophomore Cailtin Rother said members of CAC encouraged students to apply to get involved in the conference.

            “There are students from every organization on campus that apply to be at this conference… from freshmen to seniors, everyone is encouraged to get involved,” Rother said. 

            This is the 13^th year HSLC has been held at the university and gets more popular among students every year.

            “It is important to us that college students are running it because we were in their shoes only a few years ago,” Rother said. “If there were adults in charge, they wouldn’t get the same experience.”

            Two OU students are assigned to a group of 12 high school juniors. The leaders encourage students to make a positive impact in their schools and communities with team building exercises. Like Rother, many of the small group leaders went to the conference as juniors and came back to get involved.

            Brianne McGuire, a high school junior, said she was able to relate to her small group leaders because they had been at the conference before.

            “I wasn’t intimidated by group leaders because we are all around the same age,” McGuire said. “I always felt comfortable with them.”

            Brianne said she had a great experience at the conference and hopes to come to OU and be a small group leader for HSLC.

            “This conference made me excited to get involved and I hope to be a part of it when I come to OU. OU was already a top preference for me but after going to the conference I'm more eager and enthusiastic about coming here.”  

Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

            The director of “Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and the Search for Identity”, spoke to students at the University of Oklahoma on February 7^th after a screening of the film.

 Students were given the opportunity to speak with Charlie Tuggle, who happens to be the director, writer, producer and close friend of the Dean of Gaylord, Joe Foote.

            The film focuses on “Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo”, an institution searching for missing grandchildren in Argentina. During the Dirty war an estimated 30,000 adults went missing and 500 of those were new mothers. Their children were given to military families and some have not been seen since.

The biological grandmothers of those children are known as Las Abuelas and have spent their lives searching for their missing grandchildren. The president of Las Abuelas, Estela de Carlotto, said the search for their grandchildren would never stop.

“The day there is not one single grandmother, this institution is in the hands of the grandchildren.”

Tuggle spent 10 weeks total in Argentina working on the film with his wife and two daughters. He hopes the film will tell the story of the struggle with identity that the people of Argentina have had to face. 

Tuggle emphasized how important it was to the Abuelas and their grandchildren to find their identities.  “To have a knowledge of need for human right is one thing, to have a passion for it is something else.”