In this paper I'd like for you to examine some aspect of leadership at Oberlin College or in your previous experience. There are a number of ways you might do this, and it would be useful to consider and use (with proper documentation) Cornel West's ideas about leadership in your examination of this topic. Here are some suggestions for approaches to this paper, but feel free to try your own method if you have an idea not represented in the following list:
1. Chart the kinds of leadership that affect your life on campus at Oberlin. This may include obvious authority figures like teachers or administrators or staff, but it may also include less formally recognized leaders like the person in your dorm who always gets people to participate in activities or organizes rebellions against rules, etc. Do campus organizations provide leadership in your life here? Do you find yourself exerting your leadership abilities to get others to do things you feel are important? How effective are the leaders you describe? What conditions affect their leadership?
2. Describe an experience of leading or being led that you can vividly remember. This might be an experience that occurred someplace other than Oberlin. Did you consciously take on the role or simply find yourself in it before you knew what was happening? How comfortable was the role for you? How much previous preparation for the role had you had? What did you learn from the experience about the responsibilities of leaders?
3. Discuss one way in which external leaders affect us at Oberlin College. Since it's an election year, one set of external leaders you might consider are the presidential candidates currently campaigning. Do leaders like these affect what we do at Oberlin very much? Do they provide us with ideas about how our community should conduct itself that affect the way we live together at all?
last updated 9 October 1996 by
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