Contested Issues in Troubled Times

Student Affairs Dialogues on Equity, Civility, and Safety

Peter M. Magolda, Marcia B. Baxter Magolda, Rozana Carducci, Peter M. Magolda, Marcia B. Baxter Magolda, Rozana Carducci

• Publisher: Stylus Publishing
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781620368039
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Contested Issues in Troubled Times provides student affairs educators with frameworks to constructively think about and navigate the contentious climate they are increasingly encountering on campus.The 54 contributors address the book's overarching question: How do we create an equitable climate conducive to learning in a dynamic environment fraught with complexity and a socio-political context characterized by escalating intolerance, incivility, and overt discrimination?Rather than attempting to offer readers definitive solutions, this book illustrates the possibilities and promise of acknowledging multiple approaches to addressing contentious issues, articulating a persuasive argument anchored in professional judgment, listening attentively to others for points of connection as well as divergence, and drawing upon new ways of thinking to foster safe and inclusive campuses.Among the issues this volume addresses are such topics as sexual violence; historically underrepresented racial and ethnic groups; transgender and undocumented students; the professional skills, knowledge and/or dispositions needed to thrive and facilitate systemic change in contemporary higher education organizations; the implications of maintaining personal and professional identities via social media; and self-care.In this companion volume to Contested Issues in Student Affairs (whose issues remain as relevant today as they were upon publication in 2011), a new set of contributors explore new questions which foreground issues of equity, safety, and civility – themes which dominate today's higher education headlines and campus conversations.The book concludes with calls to action, encouraging student affairs educators to exhibit the moral courage needed to critically examine routine practices that (un)knowingly perpetuate inequity and enact the foundational values and principles upon which the student affairs profession was founded.

PART ONE

Introduction

1

Why Is It So Hard for the Student Affairs Profession to Foster Inclusive Environments for Learning?

Bonding and Bridging for Community and Democracy

Penny Rue

Colleges and universities have been engaged in questioning and shaping society for generations. Social progress is developed, studied, and ignited on college campuses. And while there are numerous sectors across the higher education landscape, with widely differing scopes, missions, and constituents, they share the aspiration to make the world a better place.

The role of fostering inclusion within higher education has historically fallen to student affairs professionals, viewed less as an intellectual task and more as personal adjustment. In the 1960s, efforts toward inclusion focused on access to higher education by non-Whites, and these efforts led us to focus on the quality of the experience of inclusion in subsequent decades. Offices with a mission to support students from diverse backgrounds emerged in leading edge institutions in the 1960s and are still being formed today. As I began my professional career in 1977, diversity training focused on individual prejudice reduction. Subsequent decades brought efforts to foster positive interactions among racial groups.¹ For over two decades, research has been conducted on implicit bias² to help increase our understanding of how deep-seated racial and ethnic biases can be. Lagging far behind are dedicated initiatives to help majority students understand their stake in learning with and from diverse others.

As I write these words, the experiment that is American democracy is undergoing significant stress and challenge, as truth is undermined and voting rights are eroded. While these words from the Declaration of Independence, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” have always been aspirational, as a nation we have made deliberate, if uneven, progress toward a more just society. Currently, that progress toward equity is under assault through the rise of White nationalism—and higher education’s role in that advancement is being questioned.

In 2017, Pew Research discovered that a majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (58%) said that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country, up from 45% the previous year.³ Analysts attribute this rise to concern about cultural elitism bred on campuses and a chilly climate for conservative viewpoints. Silencing of speakers and demand for safe spaces are cited as reasons for the decline in confidence.⁴ The very purpose of higher education and its relationship to democracy is under debate, reduced by many Americans to simply getting a job.⁵

Why Does Inclusive Excellence Matter?

A series of papers commissioned by the American Association of Colleges & Universities in 2005 made a compelling case for the value of inclusive excellence, countering the often unstated belief that inclusion and excellence are mutually exclusive. Diverse learning environments lead to a broader collection of thoughts, ideas, and opinions held by students and are more likely to expose them to a wider array of perspectives. Research shows that “when students encounter novel ideas and new social situations, they are pressed to abandon automated scripts and think in more active ways.”⁶ Researchers particularly note the power of interracial friendships in enhancing self-confidence, motivation, educational aspirations, cultural awareness, and commitment to racial equity.⁷ Student affairs educators play an essential role in fostering such friendships.

Inclusive excellence is neither universally embraced as an educational outcome nor simple to achieve. College students arrive with limited experience with diversity. Existing structures built to support marginalized students were created in a less complex world. Now universities must also meet the needs of transgender students, Muslim students, Dreamers, students with disabilities, and those who live in the intersections among identities. Social and political forces press upon universities, calling into question the very curricular and cocurricular initiatives designed to foster inclusion. This essay explores these forces and considers what universities can do to bring about change and progress.

Guess Who’s Coming to College

Every year colleges and universities are recreated as roughly a quarter of our student population turns over. Those of us who work with traditional-aged students welcome 18-year-olds and want them to interact fluidly with diverse others as soon as they step onto our campuses. How prepared are they for that challenge?

In a 2017 study of over 40 years of racial segregation in southern schools, researchers found that Black student contact with Whites has fallen steadily since 1980, and White student contact with Black students is disproportionately low.⁸ The Supreme Court decision in the University of Michigan case that argued for the ability to consider race as a factor in admissions recognized that the majority of students came from racially homogeneous high schools and residential communities.⁹

Students from fairly homogeneous school environments have had scant opportunity to learn about America’s history of segregation and discrimination. Reports by the Southern Poverty Law Center¹⁰ find that the civil rights movement receives little attention in high schools. The further the state is from the South, the weaker the civil rights history curriculum, with some notable exceptions, including California and New York. Henry Louis Gates notes that the history of the Jim Crow laws that maintained segregation after the end of the American Civil War isn’t taught, and he wonders how today’s students can be expected to understand the importance of Brown v. Board of Education, the March on Washington, or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 absent that context.¹¹

Julie Park conducted a qualitative study that explored students’ high school experiences and found they lacked meaningful engagement around issues of diversity, thus doing little to prepare students for such interactions in college. She identified that many students lack exposure to diverse others in high school, that teachers there do little to foster such interactions, and that high school students are less developmentally equipped to manage the complexity of race and identity issues.¹² This limited experience makes students ill-prepared to contribute positively to the campus racial climate.

According to a 2014 MTV poll,¹³ 91% of millennials believe in equality and 89% believe everyone should be treated equally. Likewise, 84% say their families taught them to treat everyone the same, no matter their race, and 89% believe everyone should be treated as equals. Yet, only 37% of respondents (30% of Whites and 46% of minorities) say they were raised in families that talk about race. And although they believe their generation is more progressive than previous generations, they do not believe that racial preferences are fair and believe that focusing on race prevents society from becoming color-blind. It is safe to say that students arrive on our campuses with little preparation for engaging with and learning from diverse others.

Today’s students are coming to college from an increasingly politically polarized environment. The Pew Research Center notes that from 1994 to 2004, the spread and overlap on ideals from consistently conservative to consistently liberal remained virtually the same, with considerable overlap on many issues between Republicans and Democrats. In the past decade, however, these groups’ attitudes have moved right and left, now showing virtually no overlap.¹⁴

For the first time in surveys dating from 1992, majorities in both parties express not just unfavorable but very unfavorable views of the other party. And today, sizable shares of both Democrats and Republicans say the other party stirs feelings of not just frustration, but fear and anger. More than half of Democrats (55%) say the Republican Party makes them afraid, while 49% of Republicans say the same about the Democratic Party.¹⁵

Students are coming to college, then, from a largely homogeneous educational system, with little understanding of our racial history or of root causes of systemic inequality and from families who likely hold stridently negative views of those with political differences. What could go wrong?

The Identity Development Journey

Developmental theorists and student affairs educators alike have long recognized college as a place where identity is solidly established. Students naturally navigate to niches where their identity is affirmed, where they are mirrored and have voice. Despite our best intentions that college be the optimal time for learning from diverse others, the individual identity search often takes precedence. Until I know who I am, difference is threatening. Most colleges are admirably equipped to foster the identity development of majority students, to help them find a niche, defend a position, develop a skill, follow their interests, branch out to the unknown, fall in love, find a mentor, and develop passions—all of which help individuals figure out who they are and what they stand for.

For underrepresented students, it’s a different story. They are likely one of a handful of students of color in the residence hall, and faculty role models are hard to find. They may be asked regularly to speak for their race in the classroom. Frequently assumed to be an athlete or a product of affirmative action, their very right to be in college is questioned.

Critics lament the self-segregation of identity centers on campus, believing that they undermine the opportunities for cross-racial interactions that lead to greater open-mindedness. Yet for students trying to establish their identity, they are a lifeline. Scholars cite their effectiveness in creating buffers against acts of bias and providing coaching on how to tap into informal networks, navigate to leadership roles, and address stereotypes when confronted with them.¹⁶

Torres and colleagues ask the question, “Why should higher education be concerned with the identity development of diverse students?” They write,

the desire to intentionally influence positive learning and development requires those working in higher education to understand the conflicts students must resolve to develop their sense of self and in turn how we can assist them in resolving those conflicts.¹⁷

Since the 1970s numerous theorists have posited models that capture the added task required to develop a strong sense of identity as a member of a nondominant population. Cross’s theory of nigresence¹⁸ and Helms’ people of color model¹⁹ were early portrayals of these theoretical approaches. Though the lived experience cannot be captured within any model, many scholars followed this foundational work to illuminate nuanced identity development experiences for a diverse array of subpopulations and intersecting identities. In healthy development, over time we can achieve a secure inner sense of self and appreciate both the positive and negative aspects of our own culture and other cultures. Allies are made, and cross-racial interactions become fluid and natural, with other aspects of identity—student as poet, daughter, athlete, scientist—becoming integrated with racial, ethnic, and gender identity. Fostering this development is the natural and critical work of student affairs educators.

This work is an essential pillar of the student affairs profession; it is for good reason that most of our graduate preparation programs and our professional competencies²⁰ focus on student learning and development. I ...