Rebecca Mueller/Winonan

AJ the green critter is a new arrival to Winona State University.

He was the mascot for the Activism Jam, which kicked off Winona State’s 2013-2014 university theme, “Civic Action: Meeting the Challenge.”

“I think that civic action is at the heart of university learning and education,” Tamara Berg, who coordinated the Activism Jam with fellow professor Emilie Falc, said.

The event took place Sept.10. in the main campus courtyard. Students were invited to a barbeque dinner and had the opportunity to speak with various community organizations to learn about volunteer opportunities and the upcoming Camp Wellstone event.

“We’re making them do a little work [for dinner],” Berg said. To earn their meal tickets for the barbeque dinner, students needed to talk to at least two organizations, learn how to get involved and collect contact information.

Students also contributed to the Democracy Wall, which consisted of two whiteboards with questions about civic action and democracy.

Kara Lindaman, a political science professor and the coordinator for the American Democracy Project (ADP) at Winona State, explained that Democracy Walls are featured in both permanent and temporary forms at many schools participating in the ADP. Winona State has been a participating school of the ADP since 2004.

“There are lots of excellent organizations here,” Winona State student Ashley Belka, who came to participate in the Activism Jam as an assignment for her WAGS 420 Field Experience class, said.

The organizations in attendance included Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Developmental Achievement Center, Project Get Outdoors, Ridgeway Community School, St. Anne’s of Winona, the Women’s Resource Center, Winona County Restorative Justice and Winona Volunteer Services.

“Without volunteers and things like that, we wouldn’t function,” Emily Dierling, representing the Women’s Resource Center, said. Her organization and others featured at the event provide numerous volunteer opportunities for students.

In the days leading up to the event, the senior graphic design team released an advertising campaign featuring AJ the green critter.

“He’s kind of the ambiguous face of activism,” Kate Effertz, one of the students on the graphic design team, said. AJ is meant to be nondescript in appearance. The critter sports a variety of hairstyles throughout the campaign.

Effertz and her fellow senior graphic design classmates worked together to create the advertising campaign in a week’s time.

Part of the advertising campaign leading up to the event was a campus-wide scavenger hunt. Participants read clues on a puzzle board and collected a total of nine puzzle piece stickers that formed a picture of AJ.

The puzzle piece stickers could be found in locations where activism played a role, such as the Women’s and Gender Studies office, the Inclusion and Diversity office, and the Nursing department, Effertz said.

Participants earned the final puzzle piece by taking a picture with a cardboard cutout of AJ. They entered the completed puzzles into a drawing for prizes donated by area businesses.

“I’d like to see more events like this happening on campus,” a Winona State alumna who graduated in the spring of 2012 said.

With a degree in political science, she now serves with Americorps working on community technology empowerment projects. She thinks activism is important because college students and youth might not yet realize the amount of change they can make.

Contact Rebecca at [email protected]