OGL 481 Pro-Seminar I:

PCA-Political Frame Worksheet

Worksheet Objectives:
1. Describe the political frame
2. Apply the political frame to your personal case situation

Complete the following making sure to support your ideas and cite from the textbook and other
course materials per APA guidelines. After the peer review, you have a chance to update this and
format for your Electronic Portfolio due in Module 6.

1) Briefly restate your situation from Module 1 and your role.

I was a part of SGA during my two years at John Wood. My first year I was just a scholarship
member but my second year I was Student President. I oversaw all of the scholarship students
and worked with five other officers to plan and create over 10 events a month. I ran monthly
meetings with the entire organization and led weekly officers meetings. I was also office
manager for the student life administrator. The monthly meetings were with the entire SGA body
and we talked about the larger events we were planning, the calendar for the following month,
and any feedback from the students. At each meeting the officers gave individual reports on what
they were working on. At our weekly meetings we worked on the logistics for each event and
who was in charge of what tasks. We also brainstormed for new events and ideas to bring to our
monthly meetings.

I was president during the year of 2020-2021. We were the first officer team that had to juggle
Covid-19 restrictions while also keeping SGA active. The restrictions were continuously
changing due to higher cases in our area so we were constantly coming up with new ideas on
how to get people together but apart. It was a challenging year for the entire officer team and
looking back there are several things that I would have changed. Having everything that I have
learned from ASU has given me a different perspective on leadership. This presidency was my
first major leadership experience and it was a year of growth and personal development.

2) Describe how the politics of the organization influenced the situation.

Our politics of power were based on the hierarchy of positions. From top down it went Dean of
Students, Student Life Advisor, Student Officers, and Scholarship Students. Our dean set rules
that we had to follow no matter what. This also became a problem when enforcing scholarship
requirements of the students each semester. Our dean was our overhead, but wasn’t involved
much at all when it came to working with students. However, she could overrule any decision us

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officers or our advisor made. This became very frustrating when students weren’t meeting
scholarship requirements and we were not allowed to give any punishment for it.

As a bottom up strategy to implement more officer decision making power, I created a proposal
for officers to have a say in scholarship requirements. My proposal was for scholarship
requirements to be evaluated every quarter by the officer team and if someone was not meeting
requirements they were to be put on probation. At the end of the next quarter if no improvements
were made, their scholarship would be revoked. This allowed officers to control how often
requirements were being looked at because the dean was not accessing them quarterly. I
presented this proposal to the dean and it was approved for the following year since it could be
added to the new scholarship contracts.

3) Recommend how you would use organizational politics for an alternative course of
action regarding your case.

One of the political skills talked about in Chapter 10 is networking and building coalitions.
Building more relationships with the faculty at John Wood would have given us a bigger network
to plan and coordinate events with. There was a large disconnect between everyone that year due
to Covid and I think focusing on these relationships more would have changed the outcome of
our events. Using this course of action to build relationships with faculty, scholarship students
and even incoming freshmen from the surrounding areas would have helped keep those
connections alive when the world was very disconnected.

These relationships would have also set the following years up for success by having the
foundation laid. This would have allowed them to have continued support through these
relationships as a more “normal” life came after the pandemic. Having this support would have
given Student Life more power to express the urgency of planning and maintaining a full
calendar of events. The more people involved in Student Life the more events they can plan to
create a campus life that isn’t common for regular community colleges.

4) Reflect on what you would do or not do differently given what you have learned
about this frame.

I would have used the bargaining methods to push for the events we wanted to create that were
getting rejected by the dean but encouraged by the students. The dean had requirements and
regulations to follow because of covid, but there were also things we could have accomplished if
given the opportunity. We wanted to please the students so they would continue to come to
events to support us. It often felt like it was Student Life against the Dean of Students instead of
us looking at the situations from the same side.

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We should have worked together more on finding solutions for both parties. Most of the time
when we brought ideas to the dean and how we would follow covid guidelines, but she would
tell us no, we would give up. We had felt like our plans were perfect to follow guidelines and
create a good atmosphere for the students but when being told no, all our ambitions were stepped
on. We would then forfeit that idea and try to work on something else. Using bargaining and
negotiation skills would have allowed us to comprise and focus on the original event idea.

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 Reference

Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2021). Reframing organizations: Artistry, choice, and leadership
th
(7 ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass