On Civility - It Gets Better Right?

We all remember the line that grew from the horrendous bullying of LGBTQIA teens around the country. Many campuses responded with videos, website and outreach to those in our communities to show that we care, and we are here to listen and to help.  It is those behaviors that I want to raise back to our consciousness as we look at consolidation.  We challenged our communities, colleagues and students to treat each other with civility and respect.  We didn’t try to force a perspective on them; we just encouraged them to respect and understand the diversity that makes up our communities, our campuses, and our profession.  We said this with a unified voice!  We said this knowing that many of our colleagues do not agree with homosexuality but do agree that people should be treated with respect.

With that unified voice, we called out for civility and for the future.  Why then is it so hard for us to do that with our peers?  It started when a group of former NASPA Presidents brought a resolution to the NASPA business meeting in Chicago asking for financial due diligence and further study of the concept for consolidation that passed by a majority of the voting delegates.  This group was quickly called “trouble makers,” “old guard,” and other things I choose to not post in this document.  Was this because what they were asking for was so wrong, or because we didn’t agree with what they were saying?

In the meantime, the Proposal for Consolidation was completed after a lot of hard work by members of both ACPA and NASPA, and the feedback came in.  The financial due diligence came back with significant differences in the financial situations of both groups, but it showed that the organization as proposed would work  and the Plan for Consolidation (the legal document which indicates we would become one organization) was approved by the NASPA Board to be sent forward to a vote.   Since that time, whenever the financial situation has been discussed, there are cries of foul from those who think it is elitist to consider the financial difference and utter dismay by those who think it is critical. Couldn’t it simply be considered as one factor in your rationale to vote?

On Civility…

The main challenge that I have seen with the time it has taken to get to a point of voting is what some of us have come to calling “consolidation fatigue” - the concept that we’ve known how we were going to vote all along, so why are we still talking about it?  I believe this has led to many of us exhibiting the same behaviors that we abhor in our students and colleagues.   Here are a couple of examples:

1)       Twitter – When the concept of consolidation came up in a Twitter stream, anyone who raised objections to consolidation were quickly shot down as not being forward thinking, and challenged to “prove” what they really know and why.  This ended up being not a good dialogue of asking questions and trying to learn and understand, but having people feel attacked and vilified for not agreeing with the majority.

2)      NASPA Yes e-mail – Last week there was an e-mail sent out in collaboration with the NASPA office (so no e-mail addresses were compromised) that provided a “con” view of consolidation.  Unfortunately, for some reason many of us – including myself – did not receive that initial e-mail, with the rationale being it must have gotten caught in our spam filters.  For those of you that didn’t receive it, it can be found here.  While I have concerns about the tone of the initial e-mail, I was surprised by the number of e-mails that I was copied on that demanded to be removed from whatever list was used.  Again, where is the civility of recognizing that others have different opinions and in a transparent process we should be sharing both sides of the issue?

3)      Privilege – One of the concerns that was raised related to the e-mail was that the majority of professionals that had signed on as supporting NASPA Yes! are VP’s or faculty at Tier 1 Carnegie Institutions, and many wondered where the mid-level and other colleagues were.  This is something that I have thought long and hard about.  If I publically support consolidation, how will I be viewed by those whose roles I aspire to achieve?  If I publicly support NASPA Yes!, how will I be viewed by those that don’t?  We talk frequently about our professional organizations being about networking and connections, so this has been a very hard personal decision, and one for which I may never truly know the ramifications.

4)      Finally, I will turn to Twitter one last time to illustrate this point.  When the e-mail was sent, there was lots of chatter about it, and one tweet called it a hateful e-mail.  When I challenged that individual by asking whether it was hateful or simply a different perspective, I received no response and still have not.

 

So…Will It Get Better?

I absolutely believe that it will get better.  Regardless of the outcome of the vote in March, I believe the right decision for the future will be made.  I believe that as professionals, we will be able to take the information that we have learned from this process and make either an incredibly strong unified organization or make some significant improvements to NASPA (the first of which for me will be voting rights).

So while I am currently a NO vote on consolidation, I am committed to hearing all sides of the conversation and embracing fully the decision of our members.  Now the final question I have is… ARE YOU?