What does student self-governance actually look like?

It is one of the most familiar phrases at UVA and one of the hardest to define. For many, it calls to mind the Honor Committee or Student Council. But those are only part of a much larger picture, one made up of students committing to what they care about and learning from it along the way.

That is what "Your Power" set out to show. The five-part docuseries was led by Julie Caruccio, Assistant Vice President for Strategic Initiatives in Student Affairs, with support from a Jefferson Trust grant. Rather than explain student self-governance from the outside, the project put students behind the camera. Three student filmmakers spent months on the ground interviewing their peers and capturing student life as it happened, and the production company Nite4Nite helped bring their vision to life through editing and production while serving as mentors.

Katie Frick, a third-year Global Security and Justice major, spent the semester running from class to interview to club meeting. When her parents visited, she was filming the Concrete Canoe Team's test launch, and her dad ended up helping load the boat into a U-Haul. Somewhere in all of it, the project turned back on her. "Eventually, I realized that I was experiencing the exact thing I was trying to document," she said.

Daniel McCain, a fourth-year Media Studies major, joked that he was the crew's "glorified tech support guy," but running cameras and lights gave him room to listen. One of the interviews that stayed with him was with the president of If You're Reading This, who spoke openly about the harder parts of being a student. "One of the great joys of documentary filmmaking (and frankly being alive) is watching someone's eyes light up once they start discussing something they care deeply about," he said. "I like to think we captured that."

Chloe Schueman, a third-year Media Studies and Foreign Affairs major, spent the semester lugging the camera bag around Grounds, ready to film whatever student life put in front of her. In interviews, she asked questions out of curiosity and heard a different leadership style from nearly every student she met. What they had in common was that someone, at some point, decided to start. "We students have the unique role to make UVA our own," she said, "and nothing is stopping you from making a leap of faith decision to better this place we call home."