The Mission of a Student Union

[Lionel Mandrake]

The word "mission" has religious connotations. It brings to mind, for example, the California Missions and the Spanish missionaries who built them.

Nowadays, for some reason, every organization justifies its existence with a peculiar document called a "mission statement". I have read hundreds of these documents. Some are at least grammatical, but none has any real meaning that I can discern. Most of them exhibit something like religious fervor, suggesting that their authors felt no need to produce anything that could withstand close analysis.

The following mission statement was written by some students at a local college. What do you think about it?

"The University Student Union team believes:

• That our programs and services must enrich students' lives, contributes toward their retention, and enhances their educational experience.

• That creativity and quality in our programs, facilities, and services are essential to our success.

• That the people of the USU are our organization's most valuable resource.

• That who we are is defined by whom we serve.

• That, with a healthy dissatisfaction of the status quo, we will continue to improve, address the ever-changing needs of students, and seek greatness

These beliefs drive our shared focus to create a strong campus community at California State University, Long Beach"

[Capn Sunshine]

1. the "Mission " is a combat term as well

Where a unit is assigned to perform an objective task successfully (The Mission)with minimal loss.

CSULB students have a nice mission statement there. Now go do it. :hi:

[Lionel Mandrake]

2. Yes, "mission" has a special military meaning.

The English word "mission" is derived from the Latin verb mitto, mittere, misi, missum, to send.

A military unit on a mission is a group that has been sent somewhere.

[CreekDog]

8. When did "Mission" become a bad word?

The National Park Service has a terrific mission statement and has had it for almost 100 years:

"...to promote and regulate the use of the...national parks...which purpose is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

National Park Service Organic Act, 16 U.S.C.1.

this kind of thing is a weird thing to argue against.

[TZ]

9. Every place I've worked at the company has a "Mission Statement"

and biotech firms aren't exactly known for their promotion of religious issues.
This kinda reminds me why so many people hate political correctness...because sometimes its crap like this that results.

[Lionel Mandrake]

24. The National Park Service

was created by a 1916 law, which states that

"the fundamental purpose ... is to conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wild life therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

I agree that these words were aptly chosen, but they were not referred to as a "mission statement" in 1916. The custom of writing "mission statements" and "vision statements" is more recent than that.

IMHO "mission" is not a bad word, but it is overused.

[Bucky]

3. Mission is code speak for boring sex

[Chan790]

4. I think their mission statement is trite and full of cliches.

As far as mission statements go, I give it **** out of 5*s.

[Lionel Mandrake]

5. It's also full of grammatical errors.

I'm surprised you would give this mission statement such a high grade.

[Chan790]

6. Oh not at all..

it fulfills the general purpose of mission statements perfectly: to not be read.

(I only read the first 2 or 3 bullet-point and said "Yup, that's a mission statement.")

[Lionel Mandrake]

7. Heh heh.

How did you get to be so cynical?

My excuse is that I am old. :evilgrin:

[tigereye]

10. I hate mission statements- usually boring, obvious bureaucratic tripe

[Lionel Mandrake]

16. A funny thing about bureaucrats

is that they think they can write, because nobody dares to tell them otherwise.

[tigereye]

19. ha ha! I remember rolling my eyes during one such meeting and getting

the hairy eyeball from a management sycophant back when I was a manager. Needless to say, that was another great reason to get out of middle management. Ugh.

[CreekDog]

11. I think proper judgement of a Student Union should be based on the food, buildings, and bookstores

The mission statement is however, not well-written.

I'm not sure if you're familiar with the decline of California's public education thanks in part to a near freeze in property tax reassessments as a result of Proposition 13. Much of the instruction in things like grammar, was compromised by larger class sizes (my class sizes in high school in the late 1980's rocketed to near 40 students --in my English class for example). In a school, such as mine, with a large immigrant and first generation student body, more individualized attention to students' grammar and English abilities would've been very helpful.

We'll be lucky if the only thing that was compromised was the grammatical integrity of a mission statement.

[TZ]

12. Oh Creekdog..forgive me...

but I'm going to play Grammar Nazi...You realize you critiqued the mission statement in a equally poorly written sentence..."the mission statement is however, IS not well-written"....:evilgrin: :rofl:
Now you need to do a Dr. Strange and edit the mistake away and play innocent...:D

[CreekDog]

13. is is not!

:spank:

[TZ]

14. should be " the mission statement, however, is NOT well written

Don't need two is -Bill Clinton! :evilgrin:

[Lionel Mandrake]

18. I agree with everything you have said.

Having lived in California all my life, I am familiar with the consequences of Prop. 13.

There are winners and losers under Prop 13. The winners are those who have owned the same piece of property for a long time, i.e., most owners of commercial property and some homeowners. The losers include the rest of us. Cities, counties, and school districts have also lost out in a big way.

Food, buildings, and bookstores on college campuses are topics that interest me. There is a lot to say about each of these topics.

[HEyHEY]

15. All my student union did was hijack fees to support their own personal pet causes.

Upside though, I got one of them booted off for threatening a reporter at the college paper when I was editor. So, that was fun.

[Lionel Mandrake]

17. It must have been tough on the ex-bureaucrat,

going back to being just a regular student. :nopity:

[triguy46]

20. Well, if you're going to write a mission statement, then go ahead and boilerplate...

a strategic plan. Get them on the shelf now where they all end up.

Seriously, I think the last one sucks. I've never heard an indictment of the present in a mission statement. How many jumbo newsprint post its were put up on the walls of the meeting room to get to this point?

I had a CEO once tell me that the mission statement is whatever the lowest paid worker understands to be the important part of his/her job. If you cannot push you message down the organization, then it is all just more bullshit. But if the worker would say, "We're here to make sure our students get what they need," then you've got a mission statement. But he/she sure isn't going to say much of what is written there.

[Lionel Mandrake]

21. Shall we deconstruct the last bullet point?

The last bullet point reads as follows: (The University Student Union team believes ...)

"That, with a healthy dissatisfaction of the status quo, we will continue to improve, address the ever-changing needs of students, and seek greatness"

The authors screwed up in a couple of ways:

1. The word "of" is misused here. It suggests that the status quo is, or ought to be, dissatisfied, which is not the intended meaning. The "of" might be changed to "with", but then the phrase "with a healthy dissatisfaction with the status quo" would be awkward. This is a problem the authors struggled with, but did not solve.

2. The quoted clause ends with a list which is ambiguous, because the scope of "continue to" is not obvious. The first item in the list could be either "Improve" or "continue to improve". The second and third items are "address the ever-changing needs of students" and "seek greatness".

So much for the syntax. There are also semantic problems. Promising to "continue to improve" includes the immodest claim to have improved already. Promising to "continue to seek greatness" (if that meaning is intended) suggests that we are doomed, like Tantalus, to forever be reaching for something beyond our grasp. (Presumably we would stop seeking greatness once we found it.)

[petronius]

22. There's not much emptier than a mission statement with nothing to say

They can be useful, but mostly it's just an exercise in boilerplate and tedium. That one in particular - if I was on the CSULB faculty or staff I'd be a bit embarrassed...

[Lionel Mandrake]

23. Sometimes there is also a vision statement.

The vision statement expresses the views of far-sighted leaders who focus on the big picture. :sarcasm:

[jmowreader]

25. What I think is, it's not a Mission Statement

This is a mission statement:

"The mission of A Unit that Closed in 1992 is to provide radio relay and secure communications to United States Government operations in Europe."

If you can't explain your mission in one sentence you're not thinking clearly. The CSU-Long Beach "mission statement" looks more like a statement of values.

I went through this with my mom when she ran a library in North Idaho. When I was in a school in Massachusetts, all the libraries in Idaho had a big meeting because someone in Boise decided libraries needed a mission statement. She went all the way to Boise and all the librarians wrote a mission statement that was modified to meet the services each library offered. The one Mom came home with was large enough to paper over the window in the front door, and it had shit like providing access to encyclopedias in it. In school I had a class on writing mission statements, so I figured since the fine taxpayers in St. Maries helped to provide the funds needed for me to learn this, they should take advantage of this investment and I rewrote the thing.

"The mission of the St. Maries Public Library is to meet the educational, business information, and entertainment needs of the area's residents."

I haven't been back to St. Maries in a while, but that's probably still on the wall of the library.