 Volume 3, Number 3, May 2003
An Application of the
Transactional View: A Unique
Role
for Ombudsmen in
Campus Protest
by Susan Hobson-Panico
Editor's Note: This article, originally written in 1989, appeared in the Campus
Ecologist, Volume VII, No 2, and is reprinted with permission.
The person-environment relationship
from a transactional point of view is more than spatial.
It is more than the person
being situated in the environment (''in the way ships are
in bottles" Tibbetts and Easer, 1973). The person-environment
relationship is a transactional one where person and environment
are mutually defining and redefining.
Important to this transactional relationship is the influence
of assumptions and intentional factors on perception. Hastorf
and Cantril's (1954) classic case study entitled "They Saw
a Game: A Case Study" illustrates this point. Tibbetts and
Esser (1973) give the following summary:
"The 'Case Study' deals with a football
game between two traditional rivals, Dartmouth and Princeton,
and the extent
to which school affiliation biased what a student perceived.
As might be expected, there were no 'impartial observers';
students from the two schools literally saw different occurrances
on the playing field. When films of the game were later shown,
students from the two schools could not in fact even agree
as to when there were infractions of the rules, ..." page
445
The authors summarize by quoting Hastorf and Cantril: ''The
significance assumed by different happenings for different
people depend in large part on the purpose people bring to
the occasion and the assumptions they have of the purpose
and probable behavior of other people involved". The practical
application of this transactional view is embodied in the
observer program at the University of Colorado in Boulder
.
The Observer Program
Two years ago (i.e. in 1987) the Ombudsman Office at the
University of Colorado created an observer program for the
Boulder campus.
The observer program idea originated at the University of
California-Berkeley many years ago during an era when student
protest was common. The program uses volunteers, trained
in neutral observation, to enter a crowd of protesters and
make written observations of ''critical incidents." A critical
incident is defined as a situation where there is potential
damage to person or property. The impetus for the observer
program at the University of Colorado came from the police
department after several of the key personnel from the department
consulted with the campus police department at the University
of California Berkeley.
One of the unique values of the observer program is that
it provides protection for all groups involved in protest
activities who "need to know." Such groups might include:
student protesters, community protesters, police officers,
media personnel, administrators, counterprotesters, and those
that the protesters may be directing their actions towards
(campus recruiters, regents, administrators, student political
groups, etc.). Although police may photograph or videotape
incidents for use in prosecution, media may capture the flavor
of the protest, and administrators may observe an overall
demonstration, the written observations offer detailed up-close
observation. These reports have come to represent a truly
neutral perspective of what may have happened between conflicting
parties.
Role of Ombudsman Office
The Director of the Ombudsman Office coordinates the observer
program. Coordination involves selection and training of
volunteer observers, negotiating with administrators and
police around the need for observers, contacting observers
to request their presence at an event, supervising observers
during their work, providing refreshments, briefing observers
before an event, discussing with police and other campus
officials observer access to the vicinity of the event and
holding rooms in the case of arrests, providing appropriate
identification for observers so they may cross police lines
and enter other secured environments, receiving and responding
to requests for observer reports, responding to media inquiries.
The Ombudsman Office staff does not serve as actual observers. (2003
Editor's note: the Ombuds office at UC Boulder no longer manages
the report documents or the media contacts,
these
are handled by a senior Student Affairs administrator with
ombuds training.)
Role and Training of Observers
Observers are selected from staff on campus. Staff were
chosen as opposed to students and faculty because of the
flexibility in their schedules which students and faculty
lack. Types of people from the staff ranks who have served
as observers include: assistant to the vice chancellor, assistant
director of admissions, director of academic media, bursar,
director of the student health center, director of risk management,
tuition classification officer, personnel specialist, recreation
center coordinator, accountant. Observers are given release
time, similar to serving on a committee, from their routine
work. They are often called at the last minute (since many
protests are unannounced). They are required to meet at a
certain location, listen to a short briefing, and observe.
Some situations may be peaceful and therefore uneventful
and others may require several hours of intensive work. Observer
reports are turned in shortly after
the event.
Observers are trained once or twice a year. Training is
provided by the Ombudsman Office with guest presenters from
the media relations department and campus police department.
Training topics include: overview of civil disobedience,
police tactics, interacting with the press, neutral observation
skills, report writing, and observer program mechanics.
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