Committee on Privilege and Oppression
COPAO is a subcommittee in OSCA and stands for Committee on Privilege and Oppression. The COPAO subcommittee makes up the entirety of the Accessibility Committee with two Accessibility Coordinators holding All-OSCA positions. The Accessibility Coordinators run weekly meetings of COPAO representatives of all the co-ops, deal with individual issues of accessibly in housing and dining co-ops, and sit on the OSCA General Management Team and Board.
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[edit] Mission Statement
The Committee on Privilege and Oppression (COPAO) is a coalition of OSCA members united to challenge issues of oppression and privilege within the OSCA Community. By facilitating dialogue and encouraging collective self-education this group hopes to promote a more open, respectful and critically aware community--a community more capable of living out the ideals of cooperation.
[edit] Goals
- Finding innovative, effective and inclusive ways to challenge issues of racism, sexism, heterosexism, religious oppression, gender oppression, classism, ableism and all other forms of oppression in the OSCA community.
- Becoming an ally organization—a committee of individuals who are committed to actively listening to and supporting members of OSCA who experience all forms of oppression.
- Promoting change and social awareness on all levels of OSCA: individual, communal and institutional.
- Building relationships and coalitions with other campus organizations in order to promote and address social justice issues throughout the Oberlin campus.
- Recognizing that oppression and privilege exist in OSCA because systems of oppression and privilege exist in our society as a whole. These systems are a part of all of us and affect us in different ways, and if we are not actively engaged in combating them then we are condoning them.
[edit] Conflict
COPAO was created in 1993 to increase dialog about race, gender, sexuality, class, ability, and other identities in order to make OSCA co-ops more inclusive and accessible to diverse Oberlin students. COPAO representatives in co-ops have struggled with how to create dialog around these issues. Some attribute the difficulty of discussing issues of privilege and oppression in co-ops to the negative approaches used by COPAO reps in the past. Others attribute these difficulties to a vocal segment of many co-ops that has refused to engage in COPAO discussions or events due to ideology or close-mindedness. Still others have contended that COPAO is a monolithic body that seeks to indoctrinate OSCA co-opers.
[edit] Unofficial version
The 'Unofficial' page on COPAO is located at Resistance to COPAO
[edit] See Also
- OSCA
- co-ops
- The Co-ops category: a collection of articles related to co-ops
- The Co-op policies category: a collection of articles about co-op policies, past and present
