Week 3
We started off Monday by discussing our reading, “Kairos Revisited.” The theory of Kairos is about “Now is the time, this is your moment.” You must cease the opportunity you are given. We discussed how unique moments create urgency and make what ever you are organizing more exciting. This connects to Ethos because we are excited to cease the opportunity and with our excitement we must create urgency to pass on this excitement to others in our Boise State community. We created a “Story of Now,” which included our own perspective (Kelsea, Zach and Candace) of what we think will motivate people at Boise State to get involved with Ethos. We directed our “Story of Now” to different audiences such as students, faculty, and administrators. Even more broad audiences such as politically apathetic individuals and motivated protesters.
Later that day we started a continued discussion on motto and mantra from the previous week. We hit key points such as advocacy is a mantra and not a motto. To us, advocacy means integrity. We talked about or morals and values as an organization, which lead us to the thought process; instead of saying “we listen,” we should ask a question. A great question Dr. Myers asked was “why not you?” This opened my (Presley) eyes, not only does this question create a sense of urgency, but it also INSPIRES you to get involved in Ethos.

We discussed mottos such as “Opportunity surrounds us.” That stemmed from our thought process of, Ethos is growing people, not things. The word opportunity made us think…should we be looking for opportunity or be acting on opportunity. There is plenty of opportunity around us, but people do not see it. That is were Ethos comes in, we are “The More,” another motto we pondered on. We imagined this place where we all come together to create something more. Harvard has a great example with their iLab and their motto, “One Harvard.”
Below is a link to our Kairos article
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Should we completely change our logo and motto?
On Tuesday we started with rebranding, not a different name but a different logo and motto. We stated that our logo needs instant recognition and translation. We also knew we wanted to keep trust, vulnerability and expression while recreating a new logo and motto.
WHAT IS OUR ANCHOR?!
This question drove us mad as we began to examine places like the Boise Bike Project, Woman and Children's alliance and Terry Riley. All three of these places had a “thing” wether it be bikes, woman and children, or health care. They all had something that people could instantly identify them with or by. We decided ours was stories. Stories that inspire action, which led us back to the theory of Kairos. Story telling had been a main piece of Ethos since the beginning but we didn’t know how to translate story telling into a powerful movement.

The idea of story telling led us to many questions; what are we? Are we advocates? Do we have credibility? Are we students helping students tell their stories? THATS IT! We are students helping students tell their stories. A mini motto came about, “Change begins with your story.” IS THAT THE NEW ANCHOR?! Ahh so much excitement and so much confusion all at the same time.
With that we came up with our motto “Stories Connect” this incorporates people, programs, resources and opportunity, which all is under the big picture of culture.
On Wednesday we met with Luke Jones, professor at Boise State who has plenty of experience with starting and running organizations. Luke informed us that things at Boise State are turning more student oriented. He let us know we need to find our “Next experiment.” We need to get beyond assumptions when figuring out facts. Looking at past alumni could give us answers to questions we have. Rae Felty also joined our class and gave us insight to the beginning of the Ethos project. She put the idea in our heads of “Student run, student done.” …still questioning if we like that motto. Rae let us know that we still need our “thing.” Who are we? What do we do? How do people identify us? Rae left us with a book to read on story telling, I’m sure our findings will be included in next weeks blog :)
