Storytelling Critique: Better Make Room

Better Make Room is former First Lady Michelle Obama’s college access campaign for Generation Z. Better Make Room targets Generation Z to celebrate education, change the national conversation on education, and reach students directly where they are on social media to navigate the college process. This campaign utilizes student stories on traditional and new media.

Better Make Room lets students participate in a #BMRTakeover where they share their personal stories on Better Make Room’s Medium account. Last week, a student named Ryan Graham that attends the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University took over Better Make Room’s social media account with his story. The format of this story is text with pictures of Ryan to put a story with a face.

Ryan’s story How Community Involvement Transformed Me details growing up as a Black male in Milwaukee which is one of the worst cities in America for African American males to grow up in. In his zip code, more than half of the males have been incarcerated, making his area one of the highest incarceration rates in the country. Growing up in his tough neighborhood, Ryan chronicles grappling with the question, “What does it take to get away from the incarceration rates and oppressive statistics that says he’s not going to make it?” so he participated in discussions with students from the University of Milwaukee. The goal of these discussions was brainstorm how the students can work together to change the communities they live in. He was also involved in other community outreach programs to better the status of African American youth in Milwaukee. Ryan concludes his story on his ultimate goal to combine his creativity, humanitarianism, and passion for computer science to create apps that support community efforts to provide disadvantaged youth with the training, motivation, and opportunity to rise above stereotypes and statistics.

Ryan Graham’s story comes completely from his voice even though he isn’t using his own social media platform. Ryan is depicted as being an active hero for being a young Black man that wanted to change his community in Milwaukee. For example, as a participant in the Teens Grows Greens program, this program allowed him to host neighborhood events, mentor youth, and volunteer. After he graduated from this program, he became a board member in which he was responsible for co-creating all the education sessions at the Teens Grows Greens program. Teens Grows Greens even established a scholarship in his name.  Ryan was an active young man that served as a role model in his community for kids of color.

The most evident foundational values present is fairness and loyalty. The story highlights the lack of fairness that African Americans face in Milwaukee and the lack of opportunities this demographic faces compared to other demographics. The inner city populations of Milwaukee face lack of education opportunities, housing, and job opportunities. Loyalty is also depicted in this story because Ryan is loyal to the community he grew up by working to better his community. He is even working to better his Milwaukee community even when he is away at college. These values are the most appropriate for this story because the other values would make the story less effective.

This story effectively is integrated in the Better Make Room campaign because it highlights student success stories and Ryan is a successful student. Ryan’s passion of community involvement that he developed in high school perfectly segways into using his academic passion of computer science to tackle his personal passion of bettering communities. This story is not paired up with requests for action like traditional advocacy campaigns.