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March
2, 2004 issue
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Students
learn about the Civitas campaign from Valerie Verra, assistant
to the dean of students, left, and Katie Auerbach of Judicial
Affairs.
Photo by Jeff Watts |
Towards a Civil Campus
by Sally Acharya
A student—let’s call him Elmer—bursts into the classroom,
late again. As others try to concentrate on the lecture, Elmer strides
to the front row, puts up his feet, and whips out a newspaper.
That’s one possible scenario for a video planned by Patrick Jackson,
School of International Service, as part of an effort to encourage
civility and responsible citizenship in the campus community.
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“Tranquility,
joy and happiness are, to a large extent, gifts we give to
ourselves. They are the result of our smart choices in the
way we think and the way we act.”
—P.
M. Forni
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“It’s
humorous and exaggerated. We are producing deliberately over-the-top
characters,” Jackson says of his plans for the video to be filmed
this summer. But the issues are as real as ringing cell phones in
the classroom. That’s why they’re the focus of a campaign
launched by the Office of Campus Life and marked by bold black-and-white
banners that bear a single word: Civitas.
Civitas is a Latin word that lies at the root of “civility”
and “civilization” but also suggests the concept of a civic
community. If it seems a rather abstract subject for a campaign, the
problem it tackles is all too vivid —at AU and at campuses across
the country.
There may not be many Elmers around, but it doesn’t take many
to have an impact. It’s true that most students come to classes
to learn and not to read the newspaper or instant-message their friends.
And it’s also true that, outside the classroom, students can
regularly be heard thanking drivers as they step off the shuttle,
while staff and faculty show concern for others in countless daily
interactions. Yet AU is hardly immune from what many see as a disturbing
trend in contemporary culture toward the coarsening of social relations.
“There seems to be a general trend, nationally, towards incivility,”
muses Gail Hanson, vice president of campus life.
The idea of forming a campaign around that subject emerged out of
a retreat last year with the directors of the Office of Campus Life.
As usual, the group first prepared with a book—in this case,
a book by a professor of Italian literature at Johns Hopkins University.
But they weren’t planning to discuss Dante. “When we go
on retreat, we select a book that is our guiding text, so it’s
a learning opportunity as well as a planning exercise. About two years
ago,” Hanson recalls, “we talked about networked organizations,
and in the course of that conversation, we kept using the word ‘civility.’
When we looked at our notes, we found one of our concerns was for
the quality of interaction in the campus community and creating an
atmosphere of consistent concern for others.”
So while looking for a book for the 2003 summer retreat, Abigail Lipson,
director of the Counseling Center, suggested P.M. Forni’s 2002
book Choosing Civility: The 25 Rules of Civilized Conduct,
which includes such practical tips as Rule Number 12: Be Agreeable.
(“There are two fundamental abilities to cultivate in order to
be agreeable in conversation: The ability to consider that you might
be wrong, [and] the ability to admit that you don’t know.”)
The discussion began in part as a way of augmenting AU’s focus
on customer service. Forni, who founded the Civility Project at Johns
Hopkins University, led a preretreat discussion with student leaders,
deans, and others on how the principles of civility applied to everyday
life between students and faculty, staff and students, colleagues—everyone,
in fact, who is part of the community. At the retreat, they reflected
more on it, ultimately forming a civility project team in the Office
of Campus Life designed, Hanson says, to “look for ways to teach
and model and discuss civility.”
Katsura Kurita Beltz, director of Judicial Affairs and Mediation Services,
chairs the committee and views the Civitas campaign as a way to spotlight
values that many people share but may be overlooked in the rush of
life. “We are a civil campus,” Beltz says, “but there
are certain interactions we have that would benefit from a little
more of a reminder that these particular values are important to members
of the AU community—like respect, consideration, kindness, courtesy.
“I think AU is in a very complex and stressful environment where
people are just in a rush to complete their daily tasks, so it’s
often hard to really have this as a focus to your life. I think people
are very driven for their own pursuits and tasks, and because of that,
the community can get lost.”
New technology, such as cell phones and instant messaging, also come
on the scene before the etiquette is clear. “I think it’s
just evolving. I think the rules are still being ironed out and becoming
knowledgeable about what those rules of etiquette are is very important,”
Beltz says.
“For instance, most reasonable persons would agree that when
a faculty member is lecturing, the phone should be on vibrate or turned
off. But maybe some people are very forgetful in their rush to get
to class and get assignments together and prepare for class.”
While tabling early this fall at the Ann Ferren Teaching Conference,
the civility team attracted the interest of faculty member Jackson.
“I’ve always thought that civility was an underrated notion,”
he says. “We don’t do enough thinking about civility as
a way of governing our public life and our conduct. It always seemed
to me that the prerequisite of having a good discussion is some measure
of civility toward each other—not a philosophical claim that
we can reach some consensus, but rules of decorum.
“I have noticed—and it’s not just AU—that the
quality of public discourse over the last decade or so has become
very sound byte-ized. We don’t have Lincoln-Douglass debates
anymore. It’s turning into the CNN show where people just get
up and yell at each other. That’s interesting, but it’s
not a reasonable discussion of the issues. This is the model we see.”
Jackson volunteered to work on a video, with Justin Schauble of the
Center for Teaching Excellence, to help faculty deal with uncivil
behavior when it arises in the classroom. The notion is also being
incorporated into training with staff. “What we’re trying
to do is sort of an infusion strategy to try and introduce topics
of civility into [staff] orientation, into training with student employees,
into our own conversations with staff,” Hanson says. Part of
that effort may include a Civility Week next fall.
Last week at the Mary Graydon Center, members of the campus community
discussed on videotape the other side of civility: the wonderful impact
that can be made when people are thoughtful in their daily interactions.
The comments will be streamed on the Civitas Web site and turned into
a commercial for ATV.
“When you focus on the positive, people start to get pride in
their community,” Beltz says. And the silent majority—those
who appreciate a civil environment—are empowered to help make
it happen.
The Civitas Web site can be found at www.american.edu/ocl/vp/civitas/.
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