Commentary:
I'm a strange person in some respects. I like Mondays. I enjoy spam, both the edible and the email if funneled into a folder to be read later with amusement. But the one that gets me into the most trouble is that I have no problem going to meetings when others do.
It feels like a cliche, but I started getting engaged with my community when I had my first child. I tried a lot of organizations, from the getting-out-the-vote groups to nonprofits' community gatherings, from altruistic professional development groups to your typical neighborhood improvement meetings. One meeting, filled with older women, ended with them swarming me and one clutching my hand and saying, "We need new blood."
Yikes, that didn't sell it.
The leadership from that organization and others would ask how they'd bring in more and younger — as they looked wistfully in my direction — members. My answers have never changed: Be more flexible in time, be more flexible in location and allow for children or have child care.
Given my daughter's age keeps count, it's an answer I've been giving for almost a decade. In many meetings, I am still the youngest person. I am a privileged person as well. My mom watched my daughter with glee, nearly pushing me out of the house to have me "go do things."
Currently, most of my civic duties involve me sitting in meetings listening to subject matter experts who talk about their projects, to which my fellow board members and I can give feedback and suggestions. I promise it's much more fascinating than you'd think, and I promise you can learn, and change, more than you think.
Last night I learned that the summer pool smell is actually chlorine that kills bacteria. (Fun?) But it also means that the pools in my town are safe. (Fun!)
With COVID-19, these meetings moved online in my state. It was a boon for an odd duck like me. I could sneak in even more meetings, even statewide ones, and learn even more things, meeting even more interesting people. Some of these meetings were streamed online and recorded to be watched later. Much to my horror — because even as a pre-pandemic work-from-homer like me — I had to make sure I was displaying the best of my children's artwork on the wall behind me and make sure my husband's weight rack that shares my office was out of view, or I'd get comments on it. No, I cannot lift that weight. Yes, my children are the next Picasso.
We all got tired of Zoom at points, but we have to give technology the win on the idea that it did wonders for connectivity and accessibility.
As we're trudging back for meetings that could be an email, we are cutting off access to those who might gain traction from a more connected world: the younger, the older, the busy, the people with disabilities and people who are economically disadvantaged. They'd like to be the change they'd like to see, but they cannot physically get to a meeting, or now, catch up on meetings that had been recorded. Meetings could use more input from their actual audience, those people who would be using possible solutions discussed, voted on and implemented from those meetings.
The reasoning to go back in-person is always framed around access, that in-person naturally provides easy access. But those without a car, nearby bus routes or child care might disagree, particularly when most have a phone in their pocket that can access the Zoom app. When more access is given during a hard time, it's hard to put the genie back in the boardroom, and the influence that the internet has on our connectivity — for better and worse — will not and should not go away.
Cassie McClure is a writer, millennial, and unapologetic fan of the Oxford comma.