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Danielle Haynes
November 28, 2015
T.Th
ENC 3331

As a member of the Classroom Outreach for the Civic Engagement Campaign, the goals
we established were to spread information about the event through word of mouth, and with
flyers. We established that we could target different areas due to our own different daily
encounters on campus. We all clearly understood our exigence, as well as the constraints to the
execution of our individual tasks. For my own role I helped with information dissemination, as
well as brainstorming, and communicating in the classroom.
My own role for classroom outreach was thinking of places that would be highly
populated but still reach an audience that would share common interests. I put up flyers in local
coffee spots because I understand that students rely heavily on caffeine, but also knew that a
wide variety of people with different interests gathered there. I also went around to different
classrooms and wrote about the event on the board, which helped further spread the message
while also contributing to certain ideas about the event- for example, the forum focuses on being
a green community, and by writing on the boards instead of putting up tons of flyers, we are
promoting the event in a green way.
Our groups actions were rhetorically formulated because we all clearly understood our
exigence- we were motivated to speak because of a desire for the forum to do well, as well as for

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our individual success. We also understood that as the Classroom Outreach team, our constraints
would mostly be the time available to accomplish our goals- whether it be personal, or with a
professor. We navigated around these constraints by dividing up the tasks amongst ourselves, and
figuring out which times would be more beneficial to the professors. All of our responses were
motivated by the need to fit our information into the worldview of a student, so our campaign
was constructed around popular occurrences in student life- posting flyers on bulletin boards,
handing them out in the student union, and distributing them in the classroom setting itself.
Having a professor who allows for us to speak shows the students that we have the support of
someone that they respect. The students have particular terministic screens that block out
anything that might mean exerting time or energy, so our discourse had to maneuver around
those blockades when it came time to speak and interact with them.
My teams involvement in the Civic Engagement Forum relied heavily on an
understanding of the audience- knowing how they think and act, and what they would be willing
to listen to. It also faced a large amount of constraints- due to time and our busy schedules. But I
think the prevailing rhetorical element would have to be the construction of worldview and my
understanding of it. All of our discourse catered to what we thought students would be receptive
to- whether it be assigning them a responsibly to engage in their community, or telling them that
someone important wanted to talk to them. Our motivations led us to produce discourse we
believed effective to our audience, and we had an amazing upper hand because we are part of
that audience and personal stakeholders.