This material resides on an Indiana State University server and is maintained by Will Barratt.
Please forward any problems and comments to him.
Since the recent publication of the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching's Campus Life: In Search for Community, many
campuses are beginning to think more seriously about the condition of their
campus community. What is the climate of the campus community? What are the
values of the campus?
In seeking answers to these questions, the question of what are the criteria that a campus community should be striving toward also emerges. The Carnegie document suggests the following criteria:
"First, a college or university is an educationally purposeful community, a place where faculty and students share academic goals and work together to strengthen teaching and learning on campus.
Second, a college or university is an open community, a place where freedom of expression is uncompromisingly protected and where civility is powerfully affirmed.
Third, a college or university is a just community, a place where the sacredness of the person is honored and where diversity is aggressively pursued.
Fourth, a college or university is a disciplined community, a place where individuals accept their obligations to the group and where well-defined governance procedures guide behavior for the common good.
Fifth, a college or university is a caring community, a place where the well-being of each member is sensitively supported and where service to others is encouraged.
Sixth, a college or university is a celebrative community, one in which the heritage of the institution is remembered and where rituals affirming both tradition and change are widely shared." (pp., 7-8).
Role of Student Affairs
What roles can campus student affairs organizations play in the search for
campus community? It seems quite apparent that a campus student affairs
division could and should play a very active role in building and supporting the
concept of community. Concerns, however, need to be pointed out. If student
affairs entities and professionals subscribe to the traditional perspective of
assisting the adjustment of individual students, then they may in fact be
inadvertently deterring the campus's ability to achieve community. Programs
focused on students may be helpful, but at the same time these same efforts may
take the resources away from building community. Here are some of the
concerns.
Lack of Attention to Community
When students are viewed as the primary focus of our attention, it
becomes easier to see them as deficient in some manner or needing assistance.
This focus turns our attention away from the environment or community. In other
words, when students are seen as "clients", seldom do we search for the systemic
issue in the community that may be preventing the achievement of a more healthy
campus. Our efforts targeted at individuals may in fact help protect a community
that does not meet the Carnegie Foundation's criteria.
Passive in Approach
When attentions are focused on individual students, our efforts often
become more passive. Our activities and programs aimed at students are usually
initiated only when we become aware of problems or the students become
"symptomatic." In these circumstances, we usually assume the students will come
to us "self-referral for treatment." This "wait and treat" stance may utilize so
many resources that any active attempts to intervene with the community on
broader systemic issues get placed on the "back burner." A sick community
continues to exist as we treat and program for the individual student casualties.
Isolation in the Community
When we view our role as only assisting individual students student
affairs entities often isolate themselves from the rest of the community. Our
services become defined by the types of students that use the services. Students
needing counseling go to the counseling center, those needing advising go to the
advising center. Unfortunately these service entities often become "outposts"
within the campus community and seldom communicate in an organized way
with the community. Systemic issues within the community fall between the
many "cracks" that exist between and among the various student services.
For these reasons, student affairs may in fact be hindering the
development of community. We may be creating more community problems by
focusing on only part of the system called the student.
The Issue of Perspectives and Community
In addition to hindering community by focusing only on the student,
student affairs programs may also hinder this community development by
enacting traditional intervention perspectives. The most traditional is the removal
perspective. When there is a community problem, this problem may show up in
an individual or small group of students. At times our efforts to "save the
community" call for removing the student or students. Such action may be
necessary on some occasions, but the mindset behind such action often obscures
the role that the community may have played in causing the individual or student
group problem. Removing the student does little to address the community or
systemic issues that may have played a part in the difficulty. A removal
perspective could hinder the development of community.
A more sophisticated variant of the removal perspective is the adjustment
perspective. The student is not removed, but asked to adjust to the community by
seeking services or somehow changing behavior. While such a perspective may
appear less drastic and more caring than removing a student, from a community
point of view the results will be similar. The burden of change is placed on the
individual or small group rather than looking at possible systemic or community
change.
Case Illustration
The following case will help to illustrate the foregoing points.
At a large university in the Western United States, the counseling service
conducted a survey of all women on campus who were 25 years of age or older.
The results showed that those women who were also working part-time, or both,
felt stretched between their educational and family responsibilities. As
background information to this illustration, the university only allowed those
students attending part time to enroll after all full-time students had completed
their enrollment. Thus, the women students who were mothers and/or working
part time were usually faced with limited courses to choose from when in fact
they were a group that needed maximum flexibility. These circumstances did not
create a campus community that appeared just, caring, celebrating, or
aggressively pursuing diversity.
How do we respond in search of community? If we focus on the women as
individuals or a special group and also take the removal perspective, the response
is something like this: "The institution was not designed to handle special
problems of returning women, therefore if women cannot handle the
circumstances they should leave."
If we focus on the women and take the adjustment perspective, our
response might include offering special counseling sessions to deal with the
anxiety associated with dual roles, or we could offer a "brownbag seminar" on
time management, or direct them toward a women's support network.
If however, we move our focus away from individuals and small groups,
we might then be able to focus on the systemic issues of enrollment policies that
exclude a significant group of community members. In so doing, a much different
course of action might be taken. A policy change rather than individual change
might be sought. If so, then the efforts could be viewed as contributing to the
search for community.
All student affairs endeavors must be held up to the question: Even though the effort may be beneficial to an individual will such effort lead to a purposeful, open, just, disciplined, caring and celebrative community? Our efforts toward individuals and community need not be mutually exclusive, but with a student-only focus, and with a removal and adjustment frame of mind, the search for community will remain elusive, at best.
This material resides on an Indiana State University server and is maintained by
Will Barratt.
Please forward any problems and comments to him.