About the Archive
Campus and Wooster Community Activism is a collaborative digital archive focusing on events and grounded in interviews and resources centered on activist efforts in Wooster in the 20th century to the present. This project combines interviews with representatives from community organizations/community leaders and community-based resources to highlight collaborative efforts among the larger Wooster community and campus organizations. There are also flyers and other digitized media from collaborative events included in this archive. The main goal is to better create an archive of previous campus and community activism to better understand the network of activism within the broader Wooster community and hopefully inspire more collaborative projects.
Students in the “Senior Seminar: Feminist Pedagogy in Action” class wanted to focus our class project on expanding relations with the community. This is not only to inspire current leaders both on and off campus, but to also serve as a resource for future researchers and leaders to know the history of previous campus and community partnerships. The class (listed by name on the “About the Topic” tab) is grateful for the assistance of Wooster librarians Catie Heil, Jacob Heil, and Denise Monbarren; Olivia Geho (Five Colleges of Ohio Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Digital Scholarship); and those who generously agreed to provide resources from local organizations and participate in interviews for the project.
The following are some of the students’ reflections on the project:
“Creating this archive has made me aware of just how much activist work is being done by members of the Wooster community. What I enjoyed the most about this project, is that it bridges The College of Wooster with the larger Wooster community. It has been so enriching to connect with organizations and learn that we have similar goals and can collaborate on future projects together.”
“This experience was an exciting way for us WGSS majors to work in a collaborative and feminist way. This project was a combination of everyone’s ideas and the archival collection came from a place of wanting to connect our college experience with the community experience because the College and the Wooster community always have and always will live side by side.”
“Working on this project has been great in gaining a better understanding the relationship between the campus that we spend time on constantly, and the greater Wooster community that we are also part of for four years. I hope this will inspire more students and residents of Wooster to work together.”