In
this article I explore historical changes in the campus
context as it relates to mediation and conflict resolution,
and make note of apparent trends in the writing and research
on campus conflicts and conflict resolution. Describing
the history of a social innovation like campus mediation
services is an inescapably subjective, imprecise, and
ongoing process. Despite these limitations, I think telling
the story of campus mediation (or at least one version
of it) is quite useful. The historical narrative provides
newcomers to the area some grounding in what has come
before, and provides practitioners and researchers who
have worked in some subset of the field, often in relative
isolation, a sense of the bigger picture.
Defining
Terms
For
the current purposes I use the term higher education to
refer broadly to any post-secondary educational settings,
including universities, colleges, technological schools,
and community colleges. The word mediation itself has many
different and sometimes conflicting connotations. To provide
a shared starting place, I am defining mediation broadly
as conciliatory interventions by a party (or parties) not
directly involved in a problem or dispute, who work with
the parties involved to facilitate the development of a
shared and mutually acceptable solution to the problem.
Please keep in mind that the actual practice of mediation
in higher education varies tremendously according to the
degree of formality or informality, the openness of the
process, the amount of time the parties spend face-to-face,
the type of person(s) chosen as intervenor, and the relative
emphasis placed on transformation (both individual and systemic)
or problem-solving and settlement.
Changes
in the Campus "Conflict Environment" Over Time
The
university and college environment has always had it's share
of conflicts, large and small. Approaches to dealing with
these conflicts has varied over time, based on prevailing
norms, societal conditions, and available resources. Susan
Holton's article “It’s Nothing New! A History
of Conflict in Higher Education.” (Holton 1995) provides
a quick sketch of some of the earliest struggles that helped
shape our higher education system, and the ever-changing
parade of issues providing the grist for conflict and contention
on campus.
Campus
Upheaval and Change
The
Cold War and the McCarthy era had a profound impact on the
conflict climate on university campuses. While I don’t
wish to discount the significance of this period, for the
purposes of this article I will begin my analysis in the
mid 1960s, as this is the era where campus conflict became
particularly visible and significant structural changes
began to occur on campus with regard to handling conflict.
This is also the first time that I find any significant
research or scholarly writing on campus conflict and conflict
management. In fact, research reports and studies of conflict
in higher education were relatively common in the literature
from the period between 1965-75. Two relevant examples are
the edited volumes Conflict and Change on Campus: The Response
to Student Hyperactivism (Brickman and Lehrer 1970) with
articles such as “Student Unrest in Perspective,”
“Anatomy of a Revolt,” and “A Strategy for
Campus Peace” and Academic Supermarkets: A Critical
Case Study of a Multiversity (Altback and others 1971) which
included articles on topics such as the “Anatomy of
Faculty Conflict”, “Departmental Clashes”,
“Four Decades of Activism” (charting student initiated
conflicts from 1930-1968) and “Generational Conflict.”
Carolyn Stieber, a longtime campus ombudsperson at Michigan
State University, describes the campus climate in the late
1960’s as follows (Stieber 1991):
1967
was a different world in many ways. The concept in loco
parentis was in its terminal stages. Virtually every campus
of any size was traumatized by repeated demonstrations
against the Vietnam War. A military draft was in effect.
In 1968 disorder spilled over to the streets of Chicago
at the Democratic National Convention, undoubtedly influencing
the presidential election. Yellow ribbons belonged only
to a corny song; military recruiters came on campus at
their peril. Recurrent political protests, which involved
faculty as well as students, were joined to other complaints
about bureaucratic indifference and professorial casualness
toward teaching responsibilities.... There was a generalized
sense that no one cared about major, much less minor,
injustices, system glitches, organizational errors, or
unclear rules and regulations with arbitrary if not capricious
enforcement.... Police were often called upon to clear
out buildings and arrest demonstrators or escort people
into buildings, picking their way over shards of broken
glass... (At the same time) Universities were still experiencing
rapid growth; no one thought that strenuous recruitment
efforts and sophisticated marketing strategies would later
be needed in a search for warm bodies. There was money
then. The word "Budget" did not have all the
connotations of uncertainty, if not mystery, which now
attach to that term. However, top administrators often
were attempting to assert more centralized control over
burgeoning campuses while faculty, historically anxious
about protecting their prerogatives, had no great enthusiasm
for the notion...
Given
the turmoil of the times, it is not surprising that most
of the writing during this period focused on political protests,
campus crisis management approaches, and responses to student
demands for greater influence over university policies and
procedures.
The
Emergence of Campus Ombuds
Administrative
responses to this period of activism and change varied considerably,
but one creative and relatively widespread university adaptation
was the development of a new role, a variation the Swedish
“grievance man,” called the campus ombudsman.
Michigan State University became the first major US university
(in 1967) to establish an ombuds office. Ombuds offices
were an attempt to respond to demands for a neutral, confidential,
and "safe" place to discuss concerns and voice
complaints. The early emphasis of ombuds programs was to
increase the perception and reality of “fairness”
and justice of procedures and decisions made on campus,
and to assist people in navigating the increasingly complex
maze of procedures that were being developed. The California
Caucus of College and University Ombuds (CCCUO) was founded
in 1973 to help networking among programs, in particular
by hosting an annual conference at the Asilomar Conference
Center in Pacific Grove, California. The First Canadian
Conference of College and University Ombudsmen was held
at Concordia University in Montreal in 1979. In the United
States, following a range of regional networking initiatives,
the University and College Ombuds Association (UCOA) was
formally established in the mid 1980s and remains the central
organizing body for campus ombuds in the United States.
In
terms of campus conflict research during this period, the
emergence of ombuds offices in the late 1960s was accompanied
by quite a few dissertations and descriptive projects trying
to document and define this "New Bird on Campus"
(Norman 1968) . As proceedings from early gatherings such
as the The Ombudsman in Higher Education: Advocate or Subversive
Bureaucrat conference (1969) suggest, the role of the new
campus ombuds was never cut and dried.
From
a campus conflict systems perspective, a number of interesting
theoretical pieces were written during this period including
Victor Baldridge’s book Power and Conflict in the University:
Research in the Sociology of Complex Organizations (Baldridge
1971), and Rensis and Jane Likerts’ conflict systems
theory as described in the chapter "System 4 Structure
Applied to Conflicts in Universities" found in their
1976 book New Ways of Managing Conflict (Likert and Likert
1976).
Page
last updated
11/27/2005
A
project of Campus Conflict Resolution
Resources.
Supported by a FIPSE grant from the US Department of Education
and seed money from the Hewlett Foundation-funded CRInfo
project.
Correspondence
to CMHE Report
(Attn: Bill Warters)
Campus Conflict Resolution Resources Project
Department of Communication
585 Manoogian Hall
Wayne State University
Detroit, MI 48201.
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