A Fish out of Water: Spirituality on a Secular Campus

One could say during my childhood I lived at our church. Sunday was worship service, Monday was Youth Night Out, Tuesday was choir practice, Wednesday was bible study night, and with two days of rest, Sunday began the week all over again. Before I came to college, my "walk" as a Christian was not easily jogged by outside influences. I lived at home so my schedule mostly revolved around the schedule of the family. And if Momma said it's time to go to church, say grace before eating, pray before bed, etc...then that's exactly what happened.

However, I eventually came to college, and my schedule became my schedule. Sometimes I woke up early enough to attend Sunday morning worship...and sometimes, I didn't. Because my university does not sanction me to attend religious activities, the decision to go or not to go was purely based upon my conviction. However, I soon learned that whatever I decided would eventually affect my walk.

Many college students are faced with this dilemma, especially those who attend school on a secular campus. While there are many reasons why students may practice, not practice, or become indecisive about religion, sometimes it is the secular campus culture that may make a student question or grow stronger about their chosen religion.

In a 2008 article in The Daily Californian at UC Berkeley, "Students Try to Reconcile Religion with Campus Culture" highlights some of the issues that students face on a secular campus. There are so many ways that a secular campus can affect the relationship between students and religion. I found the article very interesting and will give a brief snapshot of the four students in the article:

Submerge oneself in a religious environment

A devout Christian, a female student felt pressure from her professors and peers to conform to a secular lifestyle. So she joined a Christian sorority. She says that she uses the group to learn and grow stronger in her faith, and also socialize in a uncompromising environment.

A member of a culture that does not embrace spirituality

A male student, who practiced Christianity before coming to the university, finds it hard to be as devout as he was because of the organization and culture he belongs to. The university's band is known for partying and he feels it's easier to just go along with the lifestyle.

Create a culture inside a culture

Another male student also belongs to the band and understands the lifestyle and culture the band has. So he forms a bible study group for Christians who are in the band as well.

Reconsidering one's life decisions

A male student, who was once Christian, has allowed himself to ask questions and research why he believes what he believed. Because of this exploration that he feels happened because of the nature of a secular campus, he has become an atheist.

These are just four different scenarios that can play out for college students on nonreligious campuses. I think that it is important for student affairs professionals to take spirituality into heavy consideration when counseling students and creating programs to further student development.

Link to article:

http://www.dailycal.org/article/103039/students_try_to_reconcile_religion_with_campus_cul

"Do You Want to Protest? Click Confirm of Deny": A New Age of Activism

Graham Spanier, a university president, wrote an article discussing "Is Campus Activism Dead--or just Misguided?" His premise is that student activism does not resemble what it was in the 1960s and 1970s. He states things like no "nationwide campus uniting protest," and the age of Twitter and Facebook being more important that the impact of world events. However, just like any facet of university life in the 21st century, even student activism is affected by the world's social networks. Students have been utilizing websites like Twitter, Facebook, and Myspace to recruit and inform individuals of their causes. For example, in 2007, while faculty members at Acadia University staged a strike, students discussed, supported, and campaigned their faculty's efforts using blogs, Facebook groups and YouTube. These students were not physically joining their professors and instructors on the picket lines, but they were however involved because of their contributions on the web.

And it makes since to use social networks which connects so many students on a campus. According to TechCrunch.com, in 2005 as many as 85% of college students use Facebook in some capacity. Facebook's statistics state that the average user spends about 55 minutes on Facebook each day. So I think it is fair to say that Facebook is a wonderful way to get in contact with people for whatever reason.

Student activists are now using social networks to electronically protest or to organize for a protesting event. DigiActive is a group that has dedicated itself to electronic activism. Its mission statement, posted on the website, reads: "DigiActive is an all-volunteer organization dedicated to helping grassroots activists around the world use the Internet and mobile phones to increase their impact. Our goal is a world of activists made more powerful and more effective through the use of digital technology."

DigiActive also has a manual to help guide students who choose to utilize social networking for their activism needs. "A DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism" goes into detail about how one's cause can be helped and hindered by Facebook. The pros and cons described in the guide are listed below:

PROS

• Lots of People Use Facebook
• The Price is Right
• Hassle-Free Multimedia
• Opt-in Targeting

CONS

• Content on the Site is Disorganized
• Dedication Levels are Opaque
• Facebook isn't Designed for Activism

DigiActive's guide is a good resource because it even lists some successful and productive "Facebook Campaigns" and critiques what they did and why it worked. I think that student affairs professionals can benefit from this resource because it can help guide students to plan, gather, and execute their activist efforts in a productive and efficient manner. From researching the news articles concerning student protests on college campuses, it is safe to say that student protest is here to stay, and in my opinion, is really healthy if done in a safe, productive, and efficient way.

Links:

"Is Campus Activism Dead — or Just Misguided? A President Wonders Where the

Campus Radicals Are Now" by Graham Spanier

https://www.acui.org/uploadedFiles/Programs/Online_Programs/2008/Is%20Campus%20Activism%20Dead%20-%20or%20Just%20Misguided.pdf

"I Heard it on the Grapvine" --Blogging, Facebook, YouTube, and Student Self-

organization during a Faculty Strike" by Emilie W. Gould

http://www.springerlink.com/content/y640786183tq26q0/fulltext.pdf?page=1

"A DigiActive Introduction to Facebook Activism" DigiActivism

http://www.digiactive.org/wp-content/uploads/digiactive_facebook_activism.pdf

Take a walk in my Sneakers: Restorative Justice on College Campuses

According to Karp, colleges and universities are lagging behind the juvenile and criminal systems because of their "uncreative, cookie-cutter sanctions." Karp believes that judicial professionals should seek out unconventional ways to teach students life-long lessons about their wrongdoings and the consequences of their actions.

The U.S. Department of Justice adds that restorative justice was a way to find common ground between camps who support harsh punishment and those who support more lenient justice. It breaks down the implementation of justice into two categories: Restorative justice, and retributive justice. Retributive justice has an outlook that "justice determines blame and administers pain." Under this model, the roles of the victim and offender are passive, and justice becomes a "contest between the offender and the state."

The department has seven guiding principles concerning restorative justice:

1. Crime is an offense against human relationships.
2. Victims and the community are central to justice processes.
3. The first priority of justice processes is to assist victims.
4. The second priority is to restore the community, to the degree possible.
5. The offender has personal responsibility to victims and to the community for crimes committed.
6. Stakeholders share responsibilities for restorative justice through partnerships for action.
7. The offender will develop improved competency and understanding as a result of the restorative justice experience.

So when I take this logic and apply it to a university setting, I can see how restorative justice can play a major role on a college campus. Higher education states that our main goal is to help students develop and mature into more conscious, thinking, feeling human beings than they were when they entered this place. Restorative justice aids this mission by putting perpetrating students into situations where they can feel and understand the hurt, inconvenience, and confusion their actions have caused.

As a resident assistant in a all-sorority residence hall, I saw restorative justice "at work." My hall director believed that residents should know and understand why the policy they disregarded exists. For example, a resident was documented trashing the hallway and her floor's lobby. My RHD could have easily sanctioned her with a warning, meeting in her office to ask her why she did it, put in on the resident's record, and went about her day. However, that's not how restorative justice works. This resident was sanctioned to pair up with her floor's custodian every Monday for a semester and help her on her floor rounds. At the end of the semester, the resident wrote a paper discussing her experience and what she had learned, and my RHD could see a profound difference in this woman. The resident stated that she learned to respect and appreciate the people who help make her life easier. She also found herself experiencing anger and disappointment when she saw her sorority sisters throw trash on the floor without any regard, something that she did all the time without even thinking about "who has to clean up my unnecessary messes." She ended her paper saying that this was a lesson that she knew she could apply to any life problem because she learned to walk in someone else's shoes and be more responsible.

I do not think that this resident could have learned this if her punishment was retributive. Restorative justice allows for students to interact with what they did wrong, which in turn has a greater chance of creating learning opportunities.