Margaret Ecker elaborates on the early dissonance among archive project participants about who to partner with and where to document the Coalition story: at Vanderbilt’s University Archives or UNC’s Southern Historical Collection. Follow this link for access to the full-length panel discussion with the Websters. Recorded December 2022.
Margaret Ecker and John Davis offer insight about the initial impetus behind and collective vision for the SHC archive project. They cite the collective memory restoration that transpired at a 2012 Landon House reunion, the subsequent inspiration to further uncover stories about their post-Coalition trajectories, and a shared and rising sense of mortality as together …
Seeking to frame the role of quiescence in unjust sociopolitical structures, John Gaventa delineates the intricacies of power across three different dimensions. He cites his Oxford mentor Steven Lukes, author of Power: A Radical View, as a purveyor of the concept of “invisible power”, or the internalization and acceptance of an unjust status quo. This …
Sharon Roberson and Margaret Ecker discuss how Vanderbilt University no longer has a Student Health Coalition or Center for Health Services, in part due to an unspecified anger more characteristic of the 1960s and 1970s student generation, on top of the more often “shiny” and “required” nature of volunteer and/or activist work today. Full …
On the anti-establishment origins of the Coalition and Center for Health Services Read More »
Barbara Clinton shares about the program she started as an appendage of the Student Health Coalition (SHC), known as the Maternal-Infant Health Outreach Worker Project (MIHOW). The largest and most renowned of the SHC’s various outgrowths, this program sought to draw on the talent of local hard-working, intelligent women to further support women’s health and …
“Freedom from drain” and the Maternal-Infant Health Outreach Worker Project (MIHOW) Read More »
Barbara Clinton delineates the incitement of Vanderbilt’s Student Environmental Health Program following discovery by SHC participants of widespread water contamination in several rural and inner city communities across Tennessee. This student-led organization attracted those from hard science disciplines to tackle the environmental issues underpinning a number of health problems in the surrounding area. Recorded on …
Barbara Clinton discusses the influence of Vanderbilt’s Student Health Coalition (SHC) on various subsequent initiatives, speaking specifically to the extension of its core mission and student-led approach to several programs. She focuses on the Center for Health Services (CHS) and its role in creating space for and supporting the logistics of longer-term relationships between students …
Barbara Clinton on the emergence of Vanderbilt’s Center for Health Services Read More »
Bill Dow co-founded the Student Health Coalition while in medical school at Vanderbilt University, in 1969. His larger-than-life role in the SHC origin story and beyond warrants special telling, which we attempt in the essay that follows. Contributed by Margaret Ecker, compiled in collaboration with friends Bill Dow energized a generation of student activists and …
Nancy worked with SHC in the summers of 1973 and 1974 as a community organizer in St. Charles, Va. and then as co-director of the Coalition in East Tennessee and western Virginia. She was at that time an undergraduate student at Vanderbilt. She was instrumental in getting the first community clinic off the ground in …
Contributed by Diane Lauver, February 2018 Growing up, I was close to my paternal grandparents; they lived in a pastoral valley looking at Appalachian hills in a northern state. With their 8th grade educations and practical wisdom, they taught me how to garden and “put up” its produce. My maternal grandparents worked for a travel …
