Professional Documents
Culture Documents
This thesis is a political analysis that reaches out to the many different audiences
that have a stake in higher education’s past, present, and future. For those alumni of
Union, especially those who consider their relationship with the college strained by the
controversial changes that have occurred over the past decade, this analysis will help to
put some issues at rest, raise new ones, and give you a intimate analysis on why your alma
mater acts the way it does.
For the incoming students onto our campus, this analysis will give you a
perspective on the tireless and often thankless years of work that have gone into preparing
this school for your arrival and through studying it, you should be better prepared for the
years just ahead in a place that will, in all likelihood, shape your future identity. This
analysis will also reach administrators, deans and professors, and others who oversee our
enterprise of higher learning. There are serious policy implications addressed in this
research and anyone with concern for the future of student affairs or the intellectual
culture of a college should be made better aware of the mechanism that drive the
participants of the higher education community like Union’s.
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After more than six months of research, I was stunned to realize that how a small,
elite, residential liberal arts college governs itself is a mirror to America’s political history
as well. Colleges like Union have always been aimed at producing enlightened, articulate,
and responsible citizens, yet the context and the content of that all important work is
shaped by Union’s politics, that is those who can have power on campus, how those can
gain it, and how those can use it, and how those can lose it. The authors of The
Abandoned Generation state: “The path forward begins with a look backwards, back to
the basic unit of education, namely, the teacher engaged with a student. That is the source
from which education’s power flows, the holy moment at the heart of the enterprise
(William & Naylor 84).” Thus, the following chapter will detail the coming of age of
academic institutions within American history and the founding principles on which these
colleges were established and out of which Union College came to be.
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Literature Review and Historical Analysis:
Over the past two hundred years, a legacy can be traced that has given identity to
small residential liberal arts colleges in America. By examining the evolution of these
institutions, and more specifically Union College, it is evident that there are several key
factors throughout history that have evoked significant change in the dynamics of what
and who defines policy here. These changes are outlined throughout specific events in
history, all of which in some way affected the political dynamics of colligate institutions
and how they are governed.
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There are four specific periods of time that document the most common periods
of change discussed in influencing the leadership structure’s evolution on a liberal arts
college campus. In chronological order they are: The College Movement on the 19th
century and the mission of the college coming out of the spirit of the movement, The
Academic Revolution in the 20th century and it’s impact on the roles and responsibilities
of students, faculty and administration, The “Culture Wars” of the 1960’s coupled with
democratic experimentation and reforms in 1970, and finally the modern liberal arts
college identity leading up to the 21st century shaped by the rise of student affairs and the
abandonment of faculty In Loco Parentis roles. In order to understand the current
political state of a small, private, residential liberal arts colleges, such as Union College,
these specific moments in history must be examined. For it was during these time
periods that significant transformations occurred within the governance of Union College,
ultimately leading to the college’s current strategy for the 21st century.
I: The College Movement: A uniquely American enterprise.
The most influential authors and titles on the early college movement in America
and what it meant for the mission of our institutions came by recommendation of Union
College’s former Dean of Students, Fred Alford. Alford suggested the following books be
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read as a means to understand the guiding spirit that gave birth to colleges like Union, and
how such colleges formed their mission and purpose as an academic institution: John
Thelin’s A History of American Higher Education, Laurence Veysey’s The Emergence of
the American University, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s Campus Life, and a chapter from
Frederick Rudolph’s The American College and University entitled, “The College
Movement.” All four of these authors agree that understanding a college’s heritage is a
key factor in being able to determine what the mission of a specific college’s future is.
However, these authors disagree in how large a part historical legacy plays in defining the
nature of politics among the contemporary stakeholders on campus.
If we can understand better the events of the past, we can better understand how
Union got to be the way it is and where we fit in it as students, teachers, administrators, or
alumni. An advocate to this approach is John Thelin who, in his introductory chapter in
A History of American Higher Education writes, “Colleges and Universities are historical
institutions. They may suffer amnesia or may have selective recall, but ultimately
heritage is the lifeblood of our campuses.” Thelin’s theory is that a school’s identity
emerges out of the struggles and debates of its history, thus when examining the present
the past cannot be ignored.
The first colleges of the early nineteenth century had little identity, as they were
just beginning to form a place within society. Frederick Rudolph, wrote of the college
movement in The American College and University, that the idea of colleges during this
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time was a broad social experiment, whose missions and patterns of leadership were not
easily defined, fiercely debated, and whose futures were far from certain. Rudolph goes
so far as to state “Collegefounding in the nineteenth century was undertaken in the same
spirit as canalbuilding, cottonginning, farming, and goldmining. In none of these
activities did completely rational procedures prevail (Rudolph, 49).” It is evident that
colleges from their very beginning had to struggle with imbalances and inequities in
resources and stakeholders as they struggled to form their missions and mere survival
within society.
While the contemporary inequities facing a college are not nearly as extreme now
as they were during the early college movement, they certainly have always been a
challenge to the decision makers on campus. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz in her book,
Campus Life, made this evident in descriptions of the early style of “college men,” as
Horowitz calls them, whose identity was forged through student revolt against draconian
administrative laws in effect during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It
was during this time that colleges experienced a wave of collective student uprisings, led
by the wealthier and worldlier undergraduates commonly in attendance there.
What held true for all the institutions that survived these tumultuous times was the
supreme will of all stakeholders involved to endure under a guiding mission or purpose.
Truly, the oldest surviving institutions like Union and its aged peers call on the brightest
and best heroes from its past in order to define it’s mission for the future. It has been said
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that colleges in America were on the frontier of American progress at the time of their
formation and the best ones now are the ones that have stayed on the cutting edge to this
day. John Thelin supports this idea by concluding that the academic institutions that have
grown with the country and have had “toughminded awareness of changing conditions,”
while maintaining a continued purpose for the future survived this time period (Thelin,
xiii).
There were multiple motivations behind founding a college in the nineteenth
century in America. One driving factor was the rivalry that existed at that time between
neighboring states America. Frederick Rudolph, in his chapter entitled “The College
Movement,” told of how each state, as it developed, sought to make itself a new center of
learning modeled after the learning centers of Oxford and Cambridge of their ancestral
England. Such powerful institutions were needed to attract the country’s brightest and
best people to their cities to spend their dollars, in turn advancing the sates interests.
Moreover, if one’s state did not have a place of learning for native youth, these youth
would seek an education elsewhere, driving potential profitable business to other states.
Therefore, colleges in the 1800’s were founded with a provincial focus to serve the local
community and to stay regional.
A second motivating factor behind founding colleges can from religious
congregations, who also took an interest in forming new colleges. Presbyterians, Roman
Catholics, Methodists and Baptists all sought to have a college of their own in every
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American state, as a means to further stabilize and enhance their religious communities.
The idea of establishing a college during this time acted as a powerful means to advance a
group’s identity. Thus, there was little emphasis placed on creating a college with a
mission that differed from the original mission of the organization seeking to establish the
college.
The final motivation behind founding a college in this era, beyond serving a
provincial community, or a congregation, was for the purpose of serving to better
American society as a whole. This college mission was born out of the notion that men
and eventually women, had an obligation to give back to society and that it was through
these up and coming colleges that such an individual would be given the chance to do so.
It was out of this idea that basic guidelines were established for how the early colleges
would conduct and govern themselves. Fredrick Rudolph references sentiments
expressed by President Joseph McKeen at Bowdoin in 1802 in which McKeen stresses the
importance of remembering that “literary institutions” were, and still are to this day
founded and maintained for the common good of society. McKeen also argues that once
a person enters such an institution, that it then becomes that individuals responsibility to
cultivate an enhance their knowledge for the purpose to in someway improve and
contribute to the greater good of society (Rudolph, 58).
President Joseph McKeen was not alone in drawing such conclusions about the
purpose and mission of these literary institutions, as well as the role and obligation that
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one has once they enter such an institution. However, as these academic communities
have evolved it is clear that this mission has shifted and even faded out of many of the
existing college communities. The desire for individual success coupled with self
indulging behaviors by people or groups of people associated with these colleges has
overpowered the ideals on which such institutions were founded on. There is not one
specific factor that can be attributed to this shift, one that has created a need for personal
wealth rather than a global wealth, never the less such change has occurred and in turn
has impacted the governance of many colligate institutions, including Union College.
Reverend Peter Gomes, of Harvard, recently stated in a speech he gave at Union College’s
Founders Day:
“I noticed the admissions statement of the college, that ends on a glorious note
about the liberal arts education being essential to the future of mankind. It is very
noble, but it does not go far enough, for it does not state the business as your
founders did and I hope you fill, that the whole purpose of this enterprise is not
personal, private, interior decoration but rather it is to improve our commonwealth
for civil discourse, common equability, and public good.”
As one can see from the words of Gomes and other luminaries, the notion that a college
should serve to better society through the lives of dedicated graduates was not new, and
indeed as a collegiate mission and guiding purpose it would never entirely disappear. Yet,
what would stand out in the first half of the nineteenth century would be the degree to
which these colleges diluted their original missions. Fredrick Rudolph attributes many of
these mission changes to national social and political trends. Rudolph states: “As the
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public displaced the public servant in the conduct of civil affairs, the college was denied
some of its sense of purpose…Americans lost their sense of society and substituted for it
a reckless individualism (Rudolph, 60).” Certainly there were moments and speeches
recorded where the humane missions of civil service were highly touted by lead
administrators during the turn of the nineteenth century, but never the less as highlighted
by Rudolph, American society had changed and the expectations placed on these colleges
would change with it.
The now emerging leadership of the elite liberal arts college would be more
concerned about the expectations of their students than about the expectations of society.
To the students and their parents, the view of the college would become very close to
being a place where one could experience indulgence than a place where one should be
tutored in ones obligation to better serve the nation. For many years, however, a
fundamental purpose of the college movement in the United States was one that centered
on a global mission, as President McKeen had expressed so well in 1802 (Rudolph, 60).
The liberal college campus at this time was clinging to the best ideals of their
genteel tradition in the face of shifting societal expectations on what the educational
experience requires. Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz in her book, Campus Life, examines the
political and social dynamics that were beginning to emerge at this time within the
upcoming generation of students, and how this initiated change to the college mission.
Horowitz argues that man’s reasoning for attending college is what changed. Young men
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of means who were most influential in campus life of early college were free to do so
because they had not needed to depend on academic prowess to aid in securing their
future. Horowitz writes, in referencing the wealthier upper class students, “They did not
depend on the college for a position in the world…they brought to college a love of
pleasure, an attention to manners, a restless ambition, and an easy conscience (Horowitz,
27).” Attitudes, such as the one described by Horowitz began seep into colleges across
the nation.
However, not all scholars felt as strongly as Horowitz about the newly emerging
social dynamics that were beginning to develop. Laurence Veysey, who authored The
Emergence of the American University, felt, the college movement at this time was a
fascinating tale of expanding corporations. The image of these campuses was in his work
described as “an innocent, selfcontained world of student life in which may be glimpsed
by the efforts of the privileged young to escape if with a vain exuberance, from their often
monotonous upbringings. (Veysey, 259).” To Veysey, the development of the major
academic institutions after 1890 was nothing but a story of overwhelming success. The
mere fact that by 1910 forty thousand faculty members had been administered to
communities of higher education was an indicator of the arrival and entrenchment of a
new and successful subculture within society. The steady and rapid growth of colleges
impacted the national economy, but it also demanded that current and future colleges
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create strong political structures, as a means to ensure a civilized governance of the
college and its mission during periods of change.
In taking stock of the political arrangements of the academic community taking
shape at the end of this period, there existed three main focal points for ambition, or
rather three centers of vested interest within an academic community: the individual,
concerned with their own career; the department, seeking to improvement its position
with respect to other departments; and the local institution as a whole, competing with
other such institutions. All three of these groups have influenced and continue to
influence the purpose of ones college, and it is the structure and communication within
and between these groups that define the politics of the college.
II: Money & Prestige: The Academic Revolution in the 20th century and its impact
on the roles and responsibilities of students, faculty and administration
Alexander Astin, in studying life at a liberal arts college found that at the most
elite of the college levels, the quality of a students experience was unmatched. Given his
findings, one might have expected that the traditional liberal arts campus structure would
be adopted as the principal model for the many new institutions that took shape following
WWII. But the massive expansion of America’s higher education system that took place
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during the 1950s and 1960s did not duplicate such a model. Large institutions were built
along with hundreds of commuter campuses instead of relying on smaller, more intimate
ones. Research universities were created, where the only hiring and promotion
requirement was scientific or scholarly talent instead of insisting that all teaching faculty
place a high value on working with undergraduates. In Astin’s view, the two most
determining factors underlying this motivation were money and prestige (Astin, 95).
The success of big business at the turn of the twentieth century also produced a
wave of philanthropic giving no longer to starting new universities but to improving
existing ones. As a result, state universities expanded rapidly into the thousands and
eventually tens of thousands of students. World War II brought the promise of
government funding to large campus research facilities of an unprecedented kind. This
meant that at colleges like Stanford, ambitious provosts made research and publishing
new scientific and intellectual breakthroughs the standard for faculty advancement or
possibly even retention.
However, this was not the spirit of every campus, and yet, thanks to dynamic
personalities found at the highest level of administration, the competitive search began
across the nation for the brightest and best scholars to lead up new research initiatives and
eventually win government grants. “Colleges and Universities depend upon a market,
upon government, and upon philanthropya situation with few if any parallels in other
social institutions (Millet, 248).” For those large state universities, the promise of
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millions of federal dollars proved too tempting to resist. Research and not classes and
relationships became the primary function of many a department on the larger university
campuses.
As faculty were recruited, retained, and promoted on the basis of producing
notable scholarly works, the emphasis moved away from the teaching and the student
interaction side of the faculty role. Therefore, the rise of the modern American research
University began with it’s own unique ethics and culture that is beyond the scope of my
research. But this important national trend in higher education is relevant in its profound
impact on the identity of the liberal arts college as it strove to respond to the rapid social
changes. The response was a reworking of the total mission of the institution. “Usually,
in the name of ‘raising standards’ and ‘broadening the base,’ these college have largely
succeeded in adapting to their own purposes the methods and styles of the larger
institutions. A casualty of this wholesale adaptation is often the loss of an institutional
character or personality that would justify its existence in comparison with the very
places it imitates, and with which it competes (Gomes, 103).” The religious ethics and
genteel tradition and values needed to be played down so that our overshadowed academic
communities could still appear “fashionable” in relation to the larger and more secular
research universities.
In a structural and academic sense therefore, the liberal arts education has become
associated more with completing a series of course credits and a Bachelor’s degree than
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with acquiring the skills, mindset, and values personified in the founding college’s
mission statement. College as a rite of passage, as places for “boys to become men”
seemed less and less a goal but more of a fortunate bonus, should the graduates receive it.
In essence, to many larger state universities and many nonresidential and less selective
community colleges, a liberal arts education was interpreted in credits and not in the
community of learning.
“A Broken Consensus”
This change in national trends both social and economic factors contributed
greatly to the changing identity of the traditional college education. More and more, the
distinction between teaching roles and research roles was blurred. The vanishing
distinction post WWII was that professors at colleges taught and professors at universities
did research. Small residential and highly selective universities of the northeast found
themselves in the minority and now having to compete with larger universities that
offered more affordable education for students, and greater research capability and
exposure for rising faculty members.
Each stakeholder’s role and responsibility on campus became individually
motivated and not community oriented. Faculty members were there to advance their
research and thus their careers. This shift in faculty priorities on private liberal arts
campuses meant to Reverend Gomes that, “college culture was more frequently defined
and maintained by professional administrators hired for the purpose and often at a remove
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from the central academic mission of the school (Gomes 105).” The result was
fragmentation of the traditional residential college campus. Faculty broke down into
competing departments, students increasingly into social organizations and further into
cliques. The result was less time and energy necessary to contemplate the ideals, culture,
goals, and values necessary for a shared community to remain stable. Gomes defined this
is his articles as “A Broken Consensus.”
This is evidence of a shift in roles and responsibilities for not just the faculty and
administration but for the students as well. This change in responsibility across different
colleges affected perceptions on who was responsible for what. When it came to
responsibility for the economics of paying for education, a shift began to occur here as
well, which affected the content and the style of students who were entering these
communities.
Harvard’s president in the first half of the twentieth century spearheaded an
innovative phenomenon to expand the pool of applicants that Harvard could pull from.
Reaching outside the traditional group of private high schools, he began the first
programs of financial aid for the hefty tuition. These innovations would not only keep the
small communities competitive, but would begin to attract students from all financial
walks of life. This would in turn bring economic diversity to the formerly closed and
homogenous campuses of the northeast, but gender and racial diversity would not show
itself on the scene of colleges like Union until the nation became to simmer and boil with
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the seeds of national unrest over two powerful movements that followed each other in
rapid succession: the civil rights movement, and the antiwar movement. Both
movements would bring greater diversity to the private college campus and change the
nature of living and learning there.
The buildings that for the previous centuries had made many of the liberal arts
colleges what they were: closeknit, residential communities of values. This issue can be
described in this way, forty years ago historian Allan Nevins described the importance of
campus architecture in the institutional saga: “One of the more difficult obligations of
these new institutions has been the creation of an atmosphere, a tradition, a sense of the
past which might play as important a part in the education of sensitive students as any
other influence. This requires time, sustained attention to cultural values, and the special
beauties of landscape and architecture…. (Thelin, xxi).” Taken from an example more
close to home, The Garnett Yearbook’s 1952 edition describes the college fraternity
houses as representing “concrete living evidence that Union not only provides for the
scholastic and cultural enlightenment of her students but also for their social education.”
Reverend Gomes agrees with Thelin in terms of the impact that traditional and
historical structures of a college like in Harvard’s case, their main chapel or in Union’s
case, the fraternal mansions, can influence its identity greatly. The result, he believes, has
not always ended up for the good. Gomes states:
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“If, in the felicitous phrase with which the president of Harvard confers the
several degrees in design, architecture helps to ‘shape the space in which we live,’
then simply by looking at so many of our older elite residential liberal arts
colleges we are able to imagine both what the founders intended to say about their
schools and what is now, for so many of them, the ‘problem’ of that legacy
(Gomes, 102).”
This suggests that the culture of a society can transition rapidly with current events, but
the building of the campus and the traditions upheld underneath their esteemed roofs may
not always project an image for the school’s identity that’s convenient or even compatible
at that current time.
III: The legacy of “culture wars” of 1960, experimentation and reform of 1970’s
The “culture wars” on many of the country’s larger research universities over the
issue of diversity and greater participation occurred because of events driving profound
shifts in America’s system of values, namely those espoused in the civil rights movement
and the antiwar movement ending in the Watergate scandal. The Watergate scandal
represented a rift in the moral infallibility attached to the highest levels of our government
administrators and this was reflected on the leadership of the college campuses as well.
Few institutions of higher education were spared from these “culture wars.”
Notions of civility, deference, and a treasured sense of continuity had fallen victim to
crises for relevance, engagement, and transformation. The small residential colleges,
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which depended for their successful operation upon a genteel consensus and the faithful
transmission of traditions from one generation to another, were especially vulnerable to
the breakdown of the institutional and individual trust that was characteristic of the period
from 1963 to 1973 (Gomes, 105).
While the shock wave from these social movements was not always equally felt on
smaller campuses such as Union’s, on all colleges, the students and faculty sentiment
reflected a call for in a more definite and representative arrangement in campus decision
making. The response to campus disruption and argument was to open up the
opportunity for greater participation in the processes of power. Students were given more
options to participate in campus politics, though how much depended on the campus.
John Millet, in his book written during the aftermath of this time period entitled,
New Structures of Campus Power conducted studies on various university governance
structures and college decision making arrangements and commented on the effect of the
period on them. The call for greater participation was felt across US society and was not
unique to campus governance. The U.S. Congress, distrustful of presidential leadership
in the 1960’s and 1970’s, expanded its role through expansion of staffs and proliferation
of various subcommittees (Millet, 252). The extension of voting privileges to 18year
olds occurred at this time as well along with the expansion of presidential primary
elections.
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When assessing the impact of cultural and national conflicts, he claimed that all
of the experiments in campus wide governance after 1966 had two characteristics: One
was an attempt to formalize participation in an allcollege senate or council bringing
together faculty, students and administrators along with the president. The other was that
the councils or senates, along with serving as an advisory body directly to the president,
expected that leader to follow their advice in making recommendations to the governing
board (Millet, 253). This new type of model was enacted on campuses based on the
assumption that this type of body could gather and faculty and students reach consensus
on decisions in a timely and efficient manner and that the goals of all the parties involved
would be the same: What’s best for the school, or something of that nature. This
assumption, according to Millet, “was not borne out by expertise.” The truth was that the
matters to be resolved at the center of the institution were not all equally important to all
the stakeholders involved.
These colleges before the time of the moves on the part of the students for
increased participation and less controls, had distinctive goals and structures especially
that emphasized faculty as “In Loco Parentis,” with Union as no exception. Mirroring
that of a parent, the college set the limits of students’ freedomin dress, in conduct, and in
curfew hours. Like a parent, the college strove to be flexible yet firm, benevolent but not
indulgent. Also, similarly, the college commonly found that its benevolent concerns
elicited resentment, grudging compliance and frequent circumvention (Hoekema, 13).
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Millet writes also that as in the past, the behavior of student leaders and some
student organizations continued to result in some “adverse public comment” and replied
that to the campuswide governance, the preparations of regulations to prevent or control
disruption of the community required considerable debate and care (Millet, 253). Faculty
members, on the other hand, did not want students meddling in what were viewed by
them as purely faculty affairs such as policies and standards affecting faculty personnel
actions. These stakeholders as a body were accustomed to coming to their own consensus
on things such as degree requirements and curriculum and presenting their decisions to
the deans and the boards for consideration. The participation and criticism from student
representatives in a central forum where such issues were now considered struck them as
a diminution of their authority (Millet, 254).
Another major weakness in the development of campus wide governance
structures like this was the belief that the other overarching governing bodies for both
faculty and students could be dispensed with. For how could the faculty treat with
students as equals and still impose rules and regulations on their conduct that relegated
them as children? Furthermore, these students did not want their conduct limited without
the equal say in faculty conduct and curriculum. The result was often deadlock or an
agreement that both parties would stay out of each other’s camp as they teamed up against
the efforts of a common “parent”, the administration and the president’s office.
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In an open participatory decisionmaking structure, the third major party, the
administrators found it necessary to spend a great deal more time and effort than in the
past explaining and justifying various support services, including auxiliary enterprises.
The college management’s role in the delivery of support programs was now subjected to
a degree of student and faculty oversight and interest that had not existed in the decades
prior. There was even some record of how presidents and their administrative colleagues
claiming just how much more costly and less efficient rendering support services were
becoming as a result of this unwelcome type of interference. In The Encyclopedia of
Union College History, the shortcomings of the open participatory model enacted on our
campus at this time are recorded from the president’s office,
“Our oneyear trial of the new governance system…has gone fairly well. It is
apparent, however, that is consumes time voraciously and that is has compounded
more than it has clarified the widespread confusion about authority, responsibility,
and accountability…Administration is unquestionably more difficult in the new
system in every way I can measure…” President Martin in a report to the trustees,
June 1972.
Presidents and administrators found their hands tied during a time in which
faculty and students were determined to bring about politically and socially hostile
changes in their roles in the name of increased freedom and participation. It is important
to note from the close of this section is that college governmental changes and reforms
mirrored those felt on a national level and occurred alongside a cultural reform. It was a
movement that demanded the institutional leadership abandon the traditional stance of
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moral guardians over student life and to vest its hope instead in increased tolerance,
dialogue and participation among all the stakeholders.
Never the less the question for these institutions still remained: would such a move
still preserve our identity and purpose? Who or what would fill the gap? At the time of
Millet’s writing, he did not foresee that most campuses fell short or fell back from
complete open participatory models, although he did comment that a major weakness of
this experimental model would be an abandonment of faculty and student senates outside
the all college senate (which Union never did, although we did abolish our “all college
senate”). The constant state of action, crises and reform in the 1960’s and early 1970’s
made it difficult for a necessary consensus to evolve into a system that could successfully
take the place of the original authority figures.
IV: The modern liberal arts college: The rise of student affairs and the
abandonment of faculty In Loco Parentis roles.
By the 1980’s, student movement within academic institutions had begun to roll
back. Helen Horowitz, in her book Campus Life, uses the examples of the killings at Kent
State University and Jackson State College in May of 1970 as a means to prove that
college students had indeed expressed a level of political unrest that had reached a
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breaking point. Such events drew national attention, forcing the greater public to question
the social and political security and management of many of these institutions. When
tragedies, like those mentioned by Horowitz occur the institution itself must also re
examine their current state of governance at that time.
John Millet, in his section titled “The Future of Academic Governance”,
highlights just how important effective management is for these institutions. Yet, prior to
being able to successfully reform or even administer sound policies back into these
colleges and universities, Millet states that there are basic grounding principles that must
be recognized an upheld in order to obtain such reform. First, Millet notes that academic
institutions are not “a debating society, a legislative assembly or a recreational center.”
Secondly, these institutions were “enterprises” established as a means for which one
could learn, as means to further improve ones self so as to positively effect a greater
community. Finally, Millet notes that during this time of social unrest and reform, there
was little communication and discussion of the successful application of “campus wide
governance.” Thus, if colleges wanted positive reform they would need to create a
structured political system that would be engaged in articulating and maintaining a
dialogue of “campus wide governance (Millet, 258).”
Millet defines fundamental ground rules for change, however, these ground rules
become difficult to apply to colleges for most find that their academic, social and political
networks have become so interdependent on the consensus with one another, such reform
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easily escalates into a tedious challenge. For example, the learning process that often
occurs within a student residential environment and how this is managed should also
dictate the residential life and cultural values. What is an evident change being managed
effectively by our small institutions in the perception of quality of a elite, residential,
liberal arts learning experience. Less and less was this measured in the quality of the
degree a college produced, but rather how many prospective students and their parents
desired that degree and the price they were willing to pay for it. Colleges in line with
Millet’s emphasis on production, saw liberal education as a marketable product to
dispense. The size of the market determined the schools selectivity, and the level of
selectivity determined that institutions elite stature, and it is that stature which became a
hallmark of quality.
In regards to how a college fits into the market against its competitors, selectivity,
among other factors, is probably the most commonly used element in determining a
college’s degree of “eliteness” in its identity. The fact that so many of these institutions
have been able to survive and even prosper during several decades of massive expansion
of lowcost public higher education can only be attributed to the belief among many
prospective students and their parents that small, private, residential liberal arts college do
in fact provide benefits not likely to be found in any other institution they compete with
for students and faculty.
25
One unique aspect that elite liberal arts colleges find have practical value in an
admissions and marketing sense is the fringe benefits of a degree from their particular
institution. Meaning, these elite institutions act a means for one to further their
educational and social life, as well as lay the foundation for career advantages are
associated with having a degree from these particular institutions (Astin, 80). The highly
selective or elite liberal arts college has a perceived advantage in quality on account of its
superior learning environment.
Hugh Hawkins, a Professor of History and American Studies at Amherst College,
wrote on “The Making of the Liberal Arts College Identity” how the private liberal arts
education was marketed more and more in providing a substantial increase in earning
power. “No one could recall when careerism had been so power in liberal arts college.
‘My folks want to know what I can do if I major in your department?’ was a question
often heard.” Between 1970 and 1987, the proportion of entering students who claimed
their goal for coming to school was a goal of “being very welloff financially” rose from
39 to 76 percent (Hawkins, 23). One of the most dramatic changes in college students
during the past three decades has been an increase on their materialistic values (Astin,
86).
In Astin’s conclusion, most of the effects of the private liberal arts college are
“indirect.” These environmental influences are what affects the community most, not the
26
curriculum the mission, or the environment. Independent colleges possess a pattern of
unique environmental characteristics that appear to explain most of these effects as these
institutions tend to have student peer groups that are liberal, permissive, and artistically
inclined, faculties that are also liberal with “progressive” course offerings (for example,
women’s and ethnic studies, and a strong diversity emphasis).
One of the reasons these elite colleges were found to exemplify the best in
educational practices were the amount of resources spent on services for students and the
selectivity of more elite institutions in shaping the quality of the students interacting with
professors. Yet, when it comes to the learning environment, the administration’s
responsibility was limited to imposing upon them minimal institutional restraints relying
on the primary levers of moderation being rigorous intellectual exposure on the academic
side and social tolerance from the residential community side.
In review, one can conclude from the national trends in American higher
education that the values that came to be known as a hallmark of quality and prestige for
an elite liberal arts college in a residential setting have, through history, influenced the
political behavior of stakeholders on campus. Residential colleges pre1960 had been
anchored in a virtuous mission of teaching good men to be better. They rested that
mission within a moral culture derived from a religious identity, a genteel fraternal
tradition, or possibly both. They were communities one that relied upon their
organization passing down a tradition of high ethics, learning, and a sense of obligation to
27
the community. The cultural wars and reforms of the 1960’s and 70’s, greatly stirred the
moral character of students, faculty, and administrators. The students became more
empowered and experimental forms of democratic government were implemented during
this time period.
The policy changes that occurred during the 1980’s and 1990’s created a need for
the residential liberal arts college community to address questions facing the institutions
sense of civility and community. Though these factors impacted the structures of campus
power through history, the mission the residential community continued to draw from
remained more or less the same. The mission of the college, to train students to become
balanced, ethical leaders and change the world in which we live, remained constant even
in the face of cultural change. Union’s coming of age and maturing politically indicates
our campus was influenced by the same historical trends. In the second chapter we’ll
examine, Union through its unique history and how that has governed the politics of the
decision makers of our college.
A case study proving this will be the U2K committee as a “relationship model” on
how successful policy should be implemented on a campus to maintain quality and
prestige coming into the 21st century. This is evidenced by the charge given to this
committee composed of influential members of the faculty, students, and administration.
It is stated in the first passages of the committee’s proposal for “Residential and Social
Life at Union.” The aim of the committee was, “To propose a set of reforms that would
28
preserve the traditions of Greek life that are consistent with an academic community that
values open inquiry, seriousness of purpose, diversity of opinion, and a broad, equitable
choice of residential and social options.”
The following historical and political analysis reveals how the U2K committee
constituted a microcosm of the most effective style of policy formation in a private,
residential, liberal arts college setting like ours. It involved some of the dedicated and
influential minds and leaders from all three camps, bringing them together in a
community of open discourse, serious inquiry and trusting relations and produced
forward thinking ideas that will change the higher education community both here and
around the nation. Indeed that is the only types of influence relationship that have
worked at colleges and it is exactly what happened with U2K and why the fertile ground
was laid for the idea and ideals behind the Minervas to take root and grow today.
29
CHAPTER TWO
The Garnet Revolution: A historical study and political analysis on
causes of the U2K “Crises”
“There are two camps at Union, although not every person fits neatly into one or the
other. One camp ardently believes that the Greek system is a benefit to the campus, and
the other sees it as a detriment.”
Preliminary Report of the U2K Committee
The “Garnet Revolution” describes the latest in a series of progressive steps to
transform Union within the changing politics of the nation at large. While we cannot go
back to those turbulent days where the compromises and innovations originated, we can,
30
in this next chapter analyze the events which shaped the viewpoints of the separate camps
at this time so we may make more informed strategic policies in the present day.
In the years leading up to the Garnet Revolution, a “culture war” existed between
those who wanted change and those who did not. Specifically, it marked a constant
debate between the social cohort who had taken up residence in many Greek houses in
recent years and the faculty who taught there and the serious, intellectually focused
students of its day.
There were three distinct phases of political action during this time. First, was the
faculty’s resolution to move the Greeks to a sophomore rush and form a committee to
address the increasingly antiintellectual social atmosphere growing there. The second
phase, coupled with the inability of the established governmental structure to produce a
cohesive plan to ensure the security of intellectual culture on the campus on their own,
was President Hull deciding to bring all the leaders of the three camps under one
committee dubbed, the U2K committee. The work of this committee was instrumental in
influencing the chain of events to formulate a new social policy to recommend to the
Board of Trustees. The third phase of actions occurred within the U2K committee as all
three parties, the faculty, students, and administrators discussed, debated, and built
consensus.
Amidst these challenges facing a modern campus, the students and the faculty
shared something closely in common when it came to the new order that was taking
31
shape within the decay of the old social system: both were engaged on campus in a
passionate quest for relevance. Both of their roles and purposes were in varying degrees
of identity crisis and looked to their leaders serving on the U2K committee for signs of
hope.
Before we begin, it’s important to clear up one of the most common
misconceptions of these events of the not so distant past which is the belief that the
formation of the recommendations of the U2K committee were part of an administrative
conspiracy to get rid of fraternities at Union College. Proponents of this view should note
following a serious examination of the reports and personal testimonies from those
involved revealed the opposite was true. U2K was, in all reality, nothing less an attempt
by certain members of the faculty, students, and administration on the behalf of the future
members of the college to save the best aspects of the Greek system here at Union that
was achieved despite great personal risk for all those involved in the controversial
endeavor.
To illustrate what the alternatives to reform were, I’ll share the answers I received
from one of the interview questions that I asked most of the faculty and administrators
involved in my research which went, “What do you expect would have happened had
President Hull not formed the U2K committee and sophomore rush was not enacted?”
Alan Taylor, professor of mathematics and a U2K committee member told me, “Oh
faculty would have done away with fraternities, Taylor said confidently, "again, we’re
32
talking influence. We have enough influence to do it. There’s no doubt in my mind in
terms of exerting influence in the administration and the board, you can’t have the whole
faculty unhappy, nope. President Hull probably would have gone away during the
process; it would have been a serious thing (Taylor, 2007).”
When I met with Dean Leavitt, the current Dean of students he echoed this
assessment of what was at stake, “I suspect that the faculty would have forced the issue.
They would have ended up coming together and putting a resolution down for the
administration to take a final stand on the future of Greek Life at the college. That was
the way it was headed. It was headed for a showdown as to whether we were gonna keep
Greek life. And by that time I think there really were faculty who were committed to
seeing this through. So in a sense, what the President was trying to do was stave that
off.” I pressed Dean Leavitt further and asked what he predicted would happen if the
President would not do something about the Greek dominated social system. What would
the faculty have to do? He answered, “Well, you organize a vote of noconfidence in the
President. The idea is that they’d sort of take a stand against the administration with the
Board of Trustees that they’re so dissatisfied that they want a change. And that has
happened in the past.”
Dan Lundquist, as the longest serving senior administrator on the President’s
cabinet and as Dean of Admissions and Communications for the college, also shared with
33
me his predictions on what the alternative was to change: “It’s possible that the faculty
wouldn’t have let the issue drop and they would have pushed it and pushed it until a
compromise might have been cut off and the issue might have gotten so volatile and so
hot that it might have ended the existence of Greeks. If the energy hadn’t been shunted
off into the U2K and the house system, it probably would have just continued to fester and
I don’t know how long it would have been sustained.”
And finally, our new Dean of Campus Life, Tom McEvoy shared his predictions
on how different today’s campus might be had it not been for the decisions made in those
crucial years, “I think Union would really be risking its reputation as one of the more
selective colleges in the country. I think if the college had not taken stock of itself of
where it was at that moment in history and instead said, ‘it’s gonna be status quo,’ I think
you would have had a student body that had flattened out in it’s potential…I think the
college would have been in a major funk.
I’ve always believed that if you don’t change, you’re doomed…I would doubt that
the college would be a major player right now…I doubt we would have attracted Steven
Ainley who cited the housing system as one of the reasons he came…I know I wouldn’t be
here, that’s for sure.”
The question that follows is, on a modern liberal arts campus how was an issue
allowed to reach a high level of polarization within the community that the campus was
34
quickly approaching a crises? An analysis of the formative events and relations that
preceded the movement provides insight into the role of Union’s history dating back
almost two centuries in defining the forces giving rise to U2K.
The evolution of the Greek system at Union:
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz in her book, Campus Life, described the foundation of
Greek societies as the student’s political response to the repressive stance that was
common in many early colleges towards life outside the classroom. Horowitz attests to
the vision of our earliest alumni in starting this dynamic movement emerging as a general
trend in the organization of student culture.
“In 1825 Union College was growing into the largest college in the nation. Its
student body reflected the range of its region, drawing the sons of upstate New York
Aristocrats along with the young men from the country and the new frontier towns. A few
prominent students confirmed their friendship by adopting the name Kappa Alpha,
choosing the watch key as an emblem, and surrounding the society in vaguely Masonic
ritual. By 1840 fraternities had spread to most New England Colleges and would take
solid root in the Midwest before 1850 (Horowitz, 29).”
35
The rapidity of the fraternity’s adoption and its early strength suggests that Union
students hit on the right form for the age as these fledgling institutions grew. Fraternities
of the “Union Triad” were established during a time of strong antiMasonic sentiment in
America. Soon after, this sentiment also spilled over to fraternities, which held ritual
secrets. The wave of animosity directed toward secret societies led a member of Delta Phi
to argue the benefits of the fraternity system so convincingly before our early President
that Dr. Eliphalet Nott relented and permitted the organizations to remain in existence at
Union College.
Throughout their formation and ascendancy in the 19th and early 20th century, the
Presidency helped these semiautonomous student societies grow, take on responsibility
and pride in the school which nurtured them. Happy to see the students organizing
themselves in a way that not only fostered pride in their school but also taking on the
burden of housing the students, feeding themselves, and providing social programming,
the administration gave the fraternities generous 100year loans on choice college land,
and a position in the centerpiece of Union with many mansions being erected fewer than
200 yards from the Nott Memorial.
The sprawling collection of societies, which often numbered over a dozen
chapters, possessed some of the finest real estate on campus. They provided homelike
atmospheres and living accommodations to a substantial portion of the student population
even with regular meal service and dining facilities. Within their halls, common interests,
36
friendships, and loyalty to their alma mater were cultivated. The students and alumni of
the fraternities donated flagpoles to the school, gates to Jackson’s Gardens, and instituted
in their private curriculum that taught social etiquette and style alongside the mandated
learning and singing of songs about “Old Union,” expressing their fond love and gratitude
to their home, the “mother of all fraternities.”
One of the chief supporters of the fraternities during the first half of the 19th
century were, in fact, the faculty members themselves, with at least one professor belong
to each house as an advisor along with mutually beneficial socializing after class. Happy
to see their students fed, trained and nurtured into leadership positions and taught to be
life loyal alums, the higher education community was happy to lend support to these
institutions as the college campus matured and grew. The major conventional power that
many of the fraternities (and later sororities developed) was an interstate network of
undergraduates and alumni across the country which soon formed into “Grand Chapters”
and national councils that could govern and coordinate the expansion, rules, and rituals of
the chapters. Large fraternities like Sigma Chi, a member of the Union Community since
1923, have grown to over 200 chapters and quarter million members, including alumni.
Taken collectively, Greek letter societies can take pride in being included among of a
roster of fraternal alumni that could make most of their host institutions blush with envy.
For over a century and a half, fraternities existed at Union in this way,
withstanding the ravages of time and change and increasingly becoming so important and
37
essential to college life here that their activities became a platform for faculty and student
relations well into the second part of the 20th century.
Fraternities were not a central of student life at Occidental College, the alma
mater of Professor Byron Nichols. Yet when he came to Union in 1968, he recalled how
several chapters still worked to foster their strong ties to the faculty,
“I was amazed at how important a feature they were in student’s lives. So, my
students immediately began to invite me over to their fraternities. And my wife and I went
and it was interesting interacting with them. They were gentlemen putting on adult
parties. There was a lot of good conversation. For the first six to eight years from when I
came, a normal part of Linda and my social life would be to go to fraternity dinners and
cocktail partiesnot all the time but a couple times a term. As far as I could see,
fraternities were in the business, as one of my former students said, of turning late
adolescent males into men. That was the explicit mission that fraternities had and that
appeared to be what they were doing and that seemed to fit very well into what a small
liberal arts college was all about (Nichols, 2007).”
However, the administrative branch of the school grew over time and the ability to
provide greater support services and campus activities outside the classroom broadened
with an increase in professional staff hired and trained for that purpose. The extra
curricular activities on Union’s campus ballooned from a small nucleus of clubs closely
38
aligned with the academic mission (engineering, chemistry and debate societies alongside
the newspaper, radio station, theater and Christian student unions) to eventually almost a
hundred by the late 1990’s. This steadily began to dilute the central reliance on
fraternities to foster these activities on behalf of the school and gradually influenced their
role and perceived relevance in extracurricular life.
As the proliferation of organizations commanding the student’s attention, time,
and loyalty increased with each year, it became extremely tempting for nonparticipants in
the Greeksystem to write them out of the legitimate machinery of cultivating student
intellectual life. The “nail in the coffin” for the student and faculty social relations within
Union’s Greek organizations may have been the raising of the national drinking age from
18 to 21 in the early 1980’s. This now made the style of cocktail parties that most
students, now “underage”, had engaged in with faculty members unethical, at least in the
public eye. Moreover, the school had gone coed (over much controversy) in the early
1970’s, bringing a whole new element onto a campus that was not built to accommodate
it, either in its identity or design.
It was also the student’s increasingly flagrant violation of modern state drinking
and hazing laws that diminished the Greek tradition from solid support in the higher
education world. Though the faculty had once been present often in the fraternities, the
combined social stigma of underage drinking and hazing often made them to risky to
approach. The school turned a fairly blind eye to this following the student movements of
39
the 1960’s and the death of in Loco Parentis in the early 1970’s, allowing their students
the ability to “grow up” during a time when the definition of what “grown up” at college
was supposed to be was no longer easily defined. Therefore, the Union students who
became Greeks, in the absence of suitable guidance and incentive to do otherwise, took
their lessons from whatever campus role models that were to be found among the
upperclassmen and alumni who stayed connected with the chapters. Students who were
responsible for a lot of the “negative activities” also learned that what was legal or illegal
did not determine right or wrong on the campus when it came to the social life as many of
the students have not properly been engaged by faculty in intimate conversations about
life outside the classroom. While attempting to allow young adults distance to
experimentation with different modes of living, to try out ideas and insights free of adult
domination, the faculty had moved from a developmentally healthy distancing to a
developmentally detrimental virtual abandonment (William & Naylor 88).
It is not clear to this day if the school ever built consensus on the trajectory of
their Greek organizations they had fostered for so long would take after going coed.
While heirs to an impressive legacy and network of resources, most Greek leaders have
proved either unable or unwilling to translate these terrific opportunities and resources to
proactive ends for their chapter’s advancement and continued survival of a quality
standard on campus. Proper standards of quality programming never appeared to be
40
institutionally defined or enforced on the future leadership of both of the school and of
the students who inherited the leadership positions of the societies every four years.
The raising of the legal drinking age and the weakening influence of faculty
members in Greek life marked a shift in campus culture, which would give rise to a new
power game on campus. That is what I call “Party Politics.” I define this as the primary
fixation of a fraternity and sorority’s pride, purpose, and identity around the ability to
host weekend parties with each other and dealing while minimizing the consequences and
responsibilities that come with it.
Professor Nichols personally observed this change, “Once the alcohol age
changed and the student alcohol consumption went underground, fraternity life changed
considerably. There was much more tendency to public drunkenness and so forth and
faculty became disanamored with what they saw going on. And they became much more
concerned with the costs to academic life that fraternities were having as opposed to the
contributions (Nichols, 2007).”
The Greek system at Union was large and historically resilient to be sure with a
large percentage of the campus included as members, but it also existed at a time when
public opinion of their style of student organization had reached an all time low. Much
had changed since the days of cocktail parties with faculty and the interfraternal balls of
the first half of the 20th century when the organizations were advised and supported
41
logistically by the faculty and administration. The Greek system at Union College was
gradually becoming a system without direction.
By the 1990’s, with the student affairs office and residential life eclipsing their
historical preeminency and the faculty and alumni distancing themselves from
organizations, the houses and their societies that received the next generation of
unassuming Union students were isolated from external support as the quality of their
membership became compromised by students who had little interest or incentive to run
against the grain of the social system that had evolved over the past 3040 years. The three
main houses left in the middle of campus were the last of over a dozen mansions on the
campus grounds and in the adjoining neighborhoods that had either been sold, shut down,
torn down, or just plain abandoned in the past two decades. By 1996, the Delta Phi house,
home to Union’s second oldest fraternity was boarded up. It needed a million dollars in
repairs to be saved from being condemned. On the other side a campus, the porch of the
Alpha Delta Phi house, which had for years overlooked Payne Gate, the traditional
entrance to the campus, was ready to collapse. Those freshman that entered these lonely
buildings as pledges in 1998 had no idea that they were among the last cohorts of a
residential system that had dominated the social skyline of the campus for over a century
and a half and would soon be returning to the fringes of campus from whence it came.
What the remaining fraternities came to lack in physical stature during this time,
they more than made up for in influence on the minds of many students who seek a
42
secure place in the campus social culture outside of classes. In terms of social influence
among their peers, the Greeks had a lot of power due to their control of the widely
attended party circuit. The contemporary source of social capital for the socially
ambitious Union student was derived from participating in the modern arrangement.
Dean Alford remarked on this, “You’re a student, Nick, it’s a proving ground. In
the classroom, the faculty gives the grades, in the social life; you guys have a way of
rating yourselves. You determine who’s cool, you determine who gets to be friends with
people who seem cooler or whatever the social power is, but proving ground to me is the
best term. So the proving ground in this case was the basement of Chi Psi, the basement
of Psi U, it was in Alpha Delta Phi. Having access to that was definitely a source of
power. If you could cut people off from coming to your house, or make them seem like a
pariah there, in some ways you are cutting them off form potential romantic
relationships; from the envy of their peers (Alford, 2007).”
Dean McEvoy, who was hired to come in and help implement the new social
system at Union which would center on the new housing system expressed similar
sentiments in our interview, “I think there were subtle cues around campus that sort of
signaled: Hey, we’re the people, we’re the movers we’re the shakers and if you don’t fit
into this kind of a context, you’re probably not gonna have that great of a time here.”
43
The dominance of this type of institutionalized persona was not the only dispute
that faculty had with the Greek societies on campus. Their relations had come
increasingly strained due to several factors. Even though the administration supported
these parties open to most everyone by allowing their students to host them with little
penalty for underage drinking, there was still dispute over the selectivity of the
organizations themselves, the strategically centralized location in which this all was going
on, and there was the lingering aspect of hazing and abuse that, if and when it surfaced on
a college campus, would be splashed across national headlines. Professor Taylor, looking
back, remarked how this behavior was observed by the faculty at Union, “It was a huge
thing…we could pretend it wasn’t there but it was…once the awareness came up, people
said, ‘What are we thinking? Come on, this is the 1990’s.’” Meanwhile on Union’s
campus, in its smaller yet more concentrated form, fraternity and sorority pledges were
showing up in teachers classrooms reeking of alcohol or smelling from not being able to
bathe during certain pledge periods.
Dean Leavitt shared these examples with me as reasons for faculty building
consensus against the status quo. “The biggest complaint that you were hearing was the
pledging process was just plain interfering too much with student’s academics and it was
going on during the first year that they were here when students were taking these
44
required courses, like freshman precept. So there was this concentrated effect at certain
times of the year when you know, a lot of them were ‘zoned out,’ He said jokingly.
“The other thing, there is always an element in the faculty that feels that Greek
organizations, because of their selectivity, their exclusiveness tend to be kind of ‘elitist’
and to select certain types of people. The ‘I only wanna be with people who share my
values,’ kind of feeling… And it goes against a lot of the values faculty try to promote…
these are all based on stereotypes of course, but I think a lot of those stereotypes were
there (Leavitt, 2007).”
Lack of discretion and oversight on the part of the organizations who sponsored
this behavior among their members actually resulted in many “pledges” proudly telling
their professors that they were late or missed their classes due to a pledge event, much in
the same fashion that a varsity athlete might ask to be excused for an athletic obligation.
“Something that characterizes most academic communities,” Dean Lundquist said
to me while discussing faculty attitudes towards the Greekmembers, “I call it the ‘itch
that can’t be scratched’, that professors are professional questionaskers, I think it’s gotta
be a challenge for men and women who are professional intellectuals to see American
adolescent kids regardless of their GPA’s, acting out.” While Lundquist is not a faculty
member himself, his years of experience leading Union’s admissions program has brought
him upclose and personal with many facets of Union’s academic community and our
45
peer institutions. He went on to say, “I gotta believe that there are people who have
devoted their lives to their disciplines, and if they’re in the wrong mood, what an insult to
have someone coming in with a hangover or falling asleep in class and I think that rightly
or wrongly that the frats got tagged as the bad guy.” Lundquist stated with some
sympathy, “Whether or not anybody liked fraternities or not, because undergraduate
fraternities were and are the locus of underage drinking, whether they deserved it more
than kids getting a sixpack on the floor at West College. In the court of public opinion
at Union College and elsewhere, fraternities were easy piñatas to hit, and so they did.”
Whether in perception or reality, it was embarrassing for the faculty to be shown
up by these “social clubs.” It seemed that within a matter of months from stepping on
campus, a freshman and eventually sophomore male could have more influence on the
student’s minds than the faculty. These could become very challenging and eventually
threatening factors to a faculty member who has dedicated their life to the profession.
Steve Leavitt, was a former professor of Anthropology at Union and described his
perspective on the faculty versus the social situation in this way, “The faculty dynamic
has to do with the quality of their life. The quality of their life has to do with whether or
not they have chosen for their life mission something that makes a difference. So for
them, having an impact on their students is a way for them to make a difference in the
world. Therefore, the students need to regard what the faculty does as central to why
46
they’re here. And anything that takes away from that, that you are not a central part of
our life, makes faculty very anxious. Cause they’re like, to be totally flippant about it,
‘Why have I decided to devote my life to a bunch of spoiled brats who want to waste their
life partying away so that they can get their Union degree so that I make no difference. I
don’t have any impact on them. What a waste of my life. So it’s a visceral thing with
faculty. In fairness to the poor beleaguered Union students, I think a lot of faculty think
that they do make a big difference, and a lot of students say that. So I don’t think the
overall situation is really that bad (Leavitt, 2007).”
For many professors, though, enough was enough. In the spring of 1998, leaders
in the faculty senate accused the Greeks of being detrimental to the intellectual life of
freshmen students and proposed a vote that passed almost unanimously for a movement to
sophomore rush. The Student Affairs Council, the leading policy body on student affairs
composed of a studentmajority membership, received the recommendation from the
faculty and rejected it in a 54 vote. The issue was defeated by the very governance
structure the faculty had designed several years before. Not to be deterred, several
professors threatened they would take effective action to abolish the Greek system and
those who harbored it from campus if the school’s leadership did not take action to set
things right. Professor Taylor assured me that the faculty were not in any sense backed
into a corner by the split SAC vote sending back their recommendation for sophomore
47
rush. “I think what people didn’t realize is it was fragile enough that if even nudged
slightly, the faculty were on the verge of saying, ‘this is the end of the Greek system, this
is it.’ Yeah, the Greek system came very close to disappearing at that time.” Faculty
attitudes and perspectives are succinctly captured in the concluding passage that was
published at the end of the summer in 1998 by a committee formed by the president to
look into the growing controversy:
“Union has many proud and long standing traditions. In 2000 Kappa Alpha will
celebrate its 175th anniversary, a milestone that surpasses the founding date of most
American colleges. However, there is one Union tradition that is older, and far more
important. For 203 years Union has been shaping minds and characters by bringing
together cohorts of bright, capable students and a gifted faculty. Through exposure to one
another, to important books and ideas, and to a regimen of scholarly discipline, we have
sustained an outstanding academic enterprise. However, these two traditions Greek life
and the educational and developmental imperatives of the College now appear to be at
odds and must be reconciled…. During one of the open debates, a student gave a litany of
good things fraternities do, and inquired in a Rodney Dangerfield manner, 'Why can't we
get respect?' A wag in the audience retorted, 'Why can't you be respectable?' Neither got
it entirely right, but the example shows both how close and far the two sides are from one
48
another. We believe that this community working together can bridge the
gap.”(Conclusion: Report from the Committee on Sophomore Rush August 27, 1998)
Dean Leavitt, when I interviewed him, made it clear that by not initiating an
Greekled solution to the matter, the students at Union at the time had “internationalized”
the conflict and brought college intervention (especially in the form of U2K
recommendations) into the heart of the Greek system. Not only that, but lack of
discretion with activities that involved hazing or underage drinking in their organizations
had made college leaders appear weak and foolish for trusting them. Therefore, their
behavior alienated the people whose opinions in the higher education community
President Hull and the Board of Trustees relied on most, this was a contributing factor to
why the students who were Greek members and their supporters were not prepared to
prevent the intervention. One can see here in the continued presence of relatively
unsupervised parties, and the continuation of nondiscrete hazing practices that the nature
of campus life can still be described as being governed by “selfhelp.” Without
deterrence or mentorship, students entering and learning on Union’s campus become
disconnected from the influence of the intellectual mission of the college.
The Administration’s Perspective on the U2K decision:
49
Gathering Consensus and Building Trust
“If Union is to move to the next level of excellence, we must change the social
culture at the College. Although many might argue that fraternities should be eliminated,
as have several colleges with which we compete, I believe that it is not the existence of
fraternities that harms Union, but their dominance. Simply stated, fraternities, in my
judgment, can be a part of Union's fabric in the future, but they should not be the force on
campus that they have been for the past 175 years.”
Roger Hull to the Members of the Board of Trustees, October 26, 2000
As one can see from President Hull’s remarks, the problem was not to determine
whether the situation that the Greek houses were involved in should be addressed, but
rather would the college, in an attempt to undue the mistakes of past policy makers, get
wrapped up an a contentious crises that could destroy relationships on campus.
President Hull called on Dean Alford and others to form a special committee to
look into the committee on sophomore rush’s recommendations on the future of social
life on campus in an entirely new and separate committee that could eventually report to
the trustees directly. Student government organizations, namely the PanHellenic Council
for the Sororities and the InterFraternity Council were asked to pick their representatives
50
to address the matter that would eventually decide the future for student life on this
campus.
Although this committee was concluded to be out of the ordinary, there had been
no previous action on the part of the administration involving such a move as terminating
the Greek system on campus, therefore the quiet and drawn out gathering of momentum
of this committee and its leadership were not actually given much attention or publicity.
At worst, I suspect, the students expected another inevitable screw turning on their
already difficult situation in maintaining their organization’s operation weekend to
weekend.
Like most people outside of the walls of their organizations, the faculty and the
administration were bewildered with the nature current student life centering on Union’s
fraternities & sororities. Fear of the unknown can be a very powerful force, as Fred
Alford recalled for me in our phone conversation together. “One of the ways that
everybody influences each other in all these groups, whether it’s a dean influencing
faculty or faculty influencing the president was the notion of assumptions and playing on
assumptions and so for the president, the fact that the faculty voted 1202 and if we don’t
do this they’re going to be up in arms, that threat, based on who knows what, is very
powerful. What I’m telling the president is, ‘Well look, this is a way for us to look at
things rationally, to slow things down’, but I’m also thinking, this is a way we can begin
51
to actually deal with the social problem. So, everybody is manipulating everybody else
(Alford, 2007).”
Fear and assumptions are effective levers of influence when the campus
leadership is disconnected from a definite set of campus values. When this is the case
with our college leadership, we can hardly be surprised when administrators of a
community without a welldefined sense of direction, can be easily be influenced by
students, alumni, and powerful faculty (William & Naylor, 59).
Also influencing the administration’s decisions, as it had in past crises with
Union, were the national trends taking place across America’s system of higher education.
These were issues of rising competition, apathy among students and many alums, and
increasingly uncontrollable flows of information and media coverage where perception of
one stakeholder becomes the reality for another.
Fred Alford, Union’s Dean of Students at the time, commented on the influence of
these perceptions on the direction of policy, “Another thing that was in the fertilizer of all
of this was the notion thathere’s this good little college that’s ranked, I don’t know, #38
in the U.S. News and World Report. I think it’s better than that; most everybody thought
it was better than that. There are notions of selfesteem and ambition rolled up and this,
but it was about, ‘How is Union going to develop the respect it deserves in the larger
academic community?’ And the U.S. News and World Report is one of those things that
52
is the measure that everybody goes back to. They will also say, ‘oh it’s a flawed
instrument’, but everybody is paying attention to it (Alford, 2007).”
President Hull had been in the higher education business for some years and knew
how to handle the protests of students and alums. If banned from campus, the Greeks
would simply go underground as they had on so many other campuses. There were close
to a dozen active fraternities and four sororities ranging from half a dozen members to 60
members with no heavy governing mechanisms between them or any substantive
relationships between chapters and the faculty or administration. There were also
hundreds of alumni who kept up with their Greek chapters either by advising directly,
visiting during weekends or at least reading the periodic newsletters and publications put
out by the undergraduate members. This created a financial aspect to the decision as
well. A move to abolish them or even evict some of them could provoke exactly what they
did not want: a violent protest followed by financial or legal sanctions by alumni. This
was later recorded in an article on the subject published by the Chronicle of Higher
Education, “Union took a lot of risk by displacing the Greeks. In addition to the cost of
the Minerva plan, said Thomas C. Gutenburger, Vice President for College Relations, the
loss of support from alumni 50 percent of whom were Greek members – was expected to
cost Union as much as $940,000 in donations to its annualgiving fund in just the first
year. And then there was the likelihood of lengthy legal battles.
53
At Colgate University, administrators were on the receiving end of four separate
lawsuits filed by Greek alumni this falls after the college announced its plans to buy the
fraternity houses in order to gain more control over them. Hamilton College spent four
years fighting similar lawsuits after it decided to make fraternities and sororities
nonresidential in 1996. Colby College, Bowdoin College, and Middlebury College all
faced litigation when they tried to reform and or get rid of their Greek systems (The
Chronicle of Higher Education, 2006).”
Dean Leavitt also concurred about policy at other schools influencing local
student perceptions: “Those students who were opposed to U2K were looking at what
was happening to the Greek system in school after school after school where Greek life
was eliminated… I just found that a little bit interesting that everyone was so sure that
this is where we were heading. And the President probably could’ve done more to head
that off, but to be fair with him, he stated said over and over again, ‘We’re not interested
in getting rid of Greeks.’ So they were not really responding to what they said, they were
responding to what they thought was the subtext.”
The principal players in the politics and decision making process surrounding
U2K decision were President Hull and his relevant Vice Presidents: Dean Alford, VP of
student affairs, and Christie Sorum, VP of Academics. The principal representatives for
the faculty that I was able to speak with were Alan Taylor from the Math department, and
54
Suzie Benack, from Psychology. Representing the Greeks were Kate Stephanik, Noah
Truger, Matt Barry and others that appeared throughout or served on subcommittees.
The members of the U2K committee included leaders chosen by the Greeks to represent
them and the committee had gained the blessings of the President, the Dean of Students,
the Dean of Faculty as well. What follows is a brief overview of the models governing
these decision makers surrounding the U2K discussions and their policy formation.
“At the beginning, there didn’t seem like any way they were gonna be on the same
page,” Allen Taylor a faculty representative on the U2K Committee told me in our
interview. In debating their options, some professors on the U2K committee were
pessimistic “You absolutely could not go into the 21st century with the castles in the
center of campusreserved males. I could picture bringing my daughter on campus and
pointing to those buildings and saying, ‘well, those are residences, but you can’t ever live
in them.” As I’ve said before, she would have had a quick, twoword answer for me
(Taylor, 2007).” The students on the committee, through serious discussion and debate,
made sure that the faculty and administrators they worked with realized which policy
actions would, in their opinion, kill the Greek chapters on Union’s campus.
Alan Taylor recalled the unifying effect that all the hard introspection and
association had on the committee as it matured, “It was a long time building up the trust,
as it should have been. In the end, you really had a group that was not just looking at
55
what was happening now, but looking 25 years ahead when the faculty would be retired
and the students would have long graduated and saying, ‘we have to do what’s best. This
is not really going to be affecting us as individuals.” I have enormous respect for them,
especially for the students.”
During the debate on what to do next, they made sure that they outline the goals to
achieve on campus. The three that were decided upon were:
1.) A need for the Greek system to disassociate itself from the supporters of
“regressive activities” i.e. those groups of students that engage in alcohol abuse
and hazing.
2.) Gender equity in housing and equal access to social space.
3.) A need for faculty to participate more in outof class intellectual life of the
campus and administrative support to make this happen.
The Fred Alford decided that their first objective was to come up with an
alternative that would provide for all three. “I was looking to do something to stirup, to
break this monolith that is the Greek dominance of the social life there. I was looking for
it, and a lot of faculty members were looking for it (Alford, 2007).” This alternative was,
in very rough terms, the original idea for the Minerva Housing System in effect on
campus today. Dean Alford briefed the committee on a scenario, which would involve
moving almost every fraternity out of standalone housing and establishing a new
56
residential system within the old buildings with equal access to every member of the
Union learning community. As a feeling of mutual respect developed among all the
representatives, the work to develop the recommendation represented in some ways the
physical embodiment and in some ways the programmatic embodiment of the way that a
residential college ideal defines undergraduate education as having a curricular and co
curricular part. The steering committee met on a weekly basis and also got to socialize
together at Fred Alford’s home as equal participants in a of serious discourse and
exchange of ideas on how to better the community in which they lived.
The best policy for social and residential reform was obviously not easy to agree
upon, however, considering the unpopularity of change among many influential students
connected to the U2K members. The faculty members and administration had to muster
all of their finesse on the committee to compromise with student leaders in government
that they would need and should accept the committee’s proposal if Greek organizations
were to have any sort of future on Union’s campus. “There was a student, Noah Truger,”
Dean Alford explained, “Noah was a Psi U brother and it was a very difficult thing for
him because fraternities demand a lot of loyalty. He was the president of Psi U and he
understood that if the Greek system was going to survive at Union then this was probably
the smartest thing for him to do.”
57
Kate Stephanick called how all the members of the committee, though coming
from different perspectives and fields of experience on the campus, were united over time
around their belief in the value their recommendations would bring to the school.
“It was demanding of all of us,” Kate recalled, “I joke with people that I met my
husband on the committee, that wasn’t coincidental…we together constantly and we were
kind of bonded in a way…and the faculty were dealing with criticism from fellow faculty
members too because they were afraid that not enough was going to change, that this was
all going to some big sham where you appoint a committee and nothing changes. So, we
were all kind of bonded in that I think (Stephanick, 2007).”
It was this conviction that lead to almost all of the leaders present to signing and
adopting the recommendations of the U2K committee. In the fall of 2000, the U2K
committee published their preliminary report in the Concordy that stunned the campus
community. It called for almost every remaining fraternal mansion to be turned over to
the college to make way for the largest social change on campus since the college went
coed about 30 years before. The entire committee then presented itself before the Board
of Trustees and answered their questions regarding the situation at hand. Kate Stephanik
and her colleagues detailed the proceedings of the committee over the past three years.
On the 26th of October, Roger Hull addressed the members of the Board of
Trustees as he endorsed U2K’s recommendation.
58
“During the past 10 years, we have transformed this campus and our environs
dramatically; we have broadened and expanded significantly our academic programs; we
have addressed a variety of technological and educational challenges; and we have met
our admissions and financial goals. While beginning to create social options for students,
though, we remain locked socially in a nineteenth century model. It is time to create the
model for the twenty first century. Just as 30 years ago, alumni argued that coeducation
would ruin Union; so today some alumni will make the same argument with regard to this
proposal. It did not take 30 years to prove critics of coeducation wrong, and it will not
take 30 years to do so with regards to the U2K recommendations.”
Back on campus, the students strongly opposed the new plan. “People were acting
like the Greek system was being eliminated and then that the whole system was rigged,”
Kate expressed to me, “I mean, no one was questioning our participation on the
committee prior to the report, but once it didn’t say what they wanted it to say…people
were just grasping at straws…the faculty had to compromise much more on the committee
than the students did.”
The Board of Trustees formed a special committee to review the U2K. Pressed
against a corner, the IFC and PanHellenic Council responded with a recommendation of
their own for reform within the social system. Apparently, it was too little too late.
During the final days of the U2K crises, the more moderate chapters were scrambling to
59
forestall the conflict with a flurry of phone calls from alumni to the President, personal
visits from alumni, and angry opinion editorials in the Concordy. The U2K committee
was receptive and supportive.
“The students had an incredibly strong voice,” Kate recalled in our interview,
“And that was the part that was so frustrating was that once that all this came out and
people saw that fraternities were going to be moving out of their houses, I mean the
Greek system ended up dodging a huge bullet because of the students on the committee.
Compared to what could have happened, what was happening at other schools and what
was on the table, this was a very minor change, certainly yes, a big change for Union…we
managed to keep the Greek system exactly the same except for a few moving from their
residences.”
Around the same time that the U2K committee had committed its plan to the
Board of Trustees, student protest became widespread on the campus. “Kate and Noah
took the beating most because they were the head of the Greek system and the Greek
system felt that they had sold out the Greeks somehow where in point of fact they saved
the Greek system!” Professor Taylor stated emphatically, “If it were not for them the
Greek system on the campus would be long gone right now.” The realization that their
situation was desperate was evident in their proposal as well as the current leadership’s
willingness to reform in a bid to forestall losing exclusive ownership over the three
60
mansions that their organizations were housed in, was evident in the sweeping proposals
presented.
To President Hull, the U2K committee, and eventually the Board of Trustees, the
unhealthy dynamic of “party politics” among the current houses was unacceptable and
there was no evidence from the preceding months from the IFC or PanHellenic Council
leaders that they could reason with the undergraduate members currently living in the
Greek chapters on their own. Collective and institutional action had to be taken. The
Board of Trustees and the President himself had made it clear that they would not accept
the status quo as it was now. Historical precedence was not enough for any institution’s
survival on campus. This reality applied to the academic divisions as well. Engineering,
for example, underwent substantial change.
“Throughout our work, we have been guided by one principle ... to determine the
best course of action that will allow Union College to be among the nation's most highly
rated and respected liberal arts colleges. To achieve this, Union must attract premier
students and faculty, which in turn requires that it provide topnotch facilities and
programs and a cultural environment that nourishes intellectual pursuit and academic
excellence as well as a fulfilling social life.”
–Union College Board of Trustees
61
Despite what students might have thought at the time, the current nature of the
social life outside the classroom was a vital interest to the stakeholders of Union College,
from the professors, to the Deans to the Board of Trustees. The Chairman of the Board
reviewed the report on the current state of campus life and concluded that a new
committee would be appointed to determine the outcome of the recommendation.
However, if this committee was in favor of keeping Greek life a part of the campus they
must prove how Greek life was an asset to the college. The “Report of the Board of
Trustees’ Special Committee on Student Social Life and Housing”, once published, made
it clear that in order to remain competitive, the culture of the campus had to change. The
judgments of the committee, accurately identified the key vehicles of influence and
persuasion related to student social life that block Union being betterperceived among
the most highlyregarded liberal arts colleges in the United States:
*Virtually all Union social life seems to revolve around alcohol; though three
quarters of our students are not of legal drinking age, alcohol is easy to come by and
largely unsupervised within the fraternities that host parties and other gatherings; in
view of this, it is not hard to understand how other social activities have difficulty taking
root; the consequence is a very onedimensional social scene, especially among
underclassmen, that excludes those who don't wish to participate and precludes
alternatives;
62
*There is considerable evidence that the party scene interferes with intellectual
pursuit and academic achievement of many students; cultural norms and peer pressures
exist that discourage 'intellectualism,' particularly outside the classroom and in social
settings;
*Many students indicate they wish the social scene were different, but do not
(or do not know how to) mobilize to change it; they don't seem to realize how many others
feel similarly; there is a sense of powerlessness to change things;”
*We (the administration, the faculty, trustees, parents) have accepted the heavy
drinking paradigm of current students as a given of 'modern' college life as if we are
helpless, sending the message that we don't care enough about our kids . . . or our college
. . . to strive for something better.”
(Report of the Board of Trustees' Special Committee on Student Social Life and
Housing, Feb. 15th, 2001)
In 2001, the Board of Trustees published The Plan for Union, which would be an
official school policy approach to reforming and strengthening the quality of residential
and social life on campus. Steve Leavitt, Dean of Students, described the influence these
competitive values have on administrative policy, “Ultimately what we’re all caring for
here is an institution of higher learning. That’s what it’s all about. And we pride
ourselves as being one of the better ones in the country. And we are all committing our
63
personal lives to it. And when that fundamental stewardship process gets threatened,
people really take notice, and it’s true of the faculty, it’s true of the board, and it’s true of
the administration, and for the students to a certain extent it’s also true because they will
always be Union alums and they care whether Union is a stronger school or a weaker
school later, but NOT as much as the people who have dedicated their lives to it (Leavitt,
2007).”
The stakes of the game of advancing policy ends can be highly personal. Indeed
the decision to support the U2K decision proved very costly for Kate in terms of her
standing among fellow students (Stephanick, 2007). The U2K committee, however, acted
with bold personal conviction and used their authority given by the President of the
college to use collective reasoning and compromise as an instrument of college policy.
They called on the lessons they learned from their previous experience on campus plus
the input of those who lived at Union in the past and realized how the unpopularity of
intervening in the past had lead to the decline of institutional values inside the Greek
organizations themselves. An excerpt from the Report of the Board of Trustees' Special
Committee on Student Social Life and Housing reveals just how personal and
fundamental this policy change was for the top decisionmakers of the college.
“Relatively early in our deliberations, we came to appreciate that the issues
before us concerned the very fundamental culture of Union College. By this we mean the
64
kind of place it is, how new ideas are accepted and put into practice, how one makes
his/her needs known and how easy it is for someone to have his/her needs met, what is
seen, heard, and felt by people who are part of the community, the feeling that parents,
prospective students, and faculty candidates get when they visit and, at a deeper level,
what these sorts of things imply about Union's values, about what is encouraged and
discouraged, and about what is neglected or overlooked. As a consequence, while our
required judgments are focused primarily on Greek life and the proposals of U2K for a
house system, this report will offer some observations and recommendations that might
seem at first glance to be beyond the scope of our charge. We see them as being all of one
piece, for the real issue is the nature of Union's social systems and their relationship to
the mission and purposes of the College.”
Report of the Board of Trustee’ Special Committee on Student Social Life and Housing,
2001
Over the months that followed, a “House Implementation Committee” was then to
be formed and staffed with many of the most dedicated professors involved in U2K and
included some of the finest young minds entering the institution following the proposal.
A new Dean of Residential Life was hired to spearhead the implementation and shepard
the fledgling movement, Dean McEvoy. The Minerva’s, as the house system would come
be known as, was hailed as one of the most innovative movements coming out of higher
65
education today, and would eventually be written in the Chronicle of Higher Education as
one of the boldest attempts of an institution to refine itself in the 21st century.
CONCLUSION
In review of the material presented in my research, three different models are
available in judging how a college like Union governs itself. The nature of the people
involved, the nature of the organizations involved, or the nature of the relationships
between stakeholders involved.
In the first model, those who would hold the “type” of student, faculty, or
administrator as the principle source of political behavior would then naturally conclude
that a higher quality of student or faculty are the most essential to achieving the type of
66
community government the administration sought to achieve. In other words, if only we
could change the student type coming to Union, we could change the social culture here.
However, even the brightest students can be apathetic, hedonistic, or simply uninvolved in
the mission of the college. Moreover, those student leaders on U2K who sought to
achieve a more equitable learning environment through reform were also leading
members of Greek organizations as well. Noah Truger was the president of Psi Upsilon,
himself. This model proves inadequate as it assumes a rigid and uniform nature within
people.
The second model to choose from in explaining the nature of campus politics
would be in the nature of its organizations. This model is proved to be unsatisfactory in
my analysis also. For, although the faculty and administration were pursuing policies for
a more competitive and intellectual atmosphere on campus, the nature of their
organization has no collective power in this area of the college governmental structure
beyond individual faculty who make up portions of committees. Their growing conflict
was a dispute over the dominance of societies that were in fact, valuesbased
organizations whose national governments encouraged responsible leadership and
scholarship in members. From an organizational modeling standpoint, the politics of
these two groups should already be in harmony.
An attempt to define a “typical” organization among the Greek houses quickly
proves ineffective as well. For example, during the time of the U2K crises, there were
67
more radical, rogue chapters operating out of small houses on Seward place and Alpha
chapters operating out of stately mansions, a few with thousands held in trust in the bank
by some dedicated alumni alongside quality weekly programming and organization.
There were also chapters that operated effectively out of the basements of Fox and
Davidson, some were dry, and some were wet up to their ears. There are multicultural,
coeducational, and nonresidential Greek organizations, although small in number, that
function healthily on campus. These organizations were never designed to be completely
uniform and there were many who did not stand alongside each other in opposition to
reform.
This period of time in Union’s history shows exactly why the nature relationships
as the system of governance over academic and extracurricular life is a fundamental cause
of conflict. For so long, the academic community at Union attempted to educate in the
absence of consensus, or even arguments about consensus. Ultimately, this analysis
concludes that the most effective political model for Union is vested in a combination of
three systems or models: the nature of the individual, the nature of the department or
organization, and the nature relationships governed by the institution’s value system;
eventually reveals that the most universally consistent model for explaining the source of
crises on our campus the acute lack a universally accepted system of values to incentives
consensus on campus issues.
68
This is not to say that the nature of individual quality among campus members
and their organizations or interest groups are rejected outright in this theory. All three
models interact with one another. Therefore, while the nature of the individuals and the
nature of the organizations on campus may be the immediate cause of crises on campus,
the structure of the campus community centering on the overall mission and value system
is the underlying origin of conflict on this campus. All sides failed to accurately relate to
the other.
The affects of this lesson on policy formation are summed up in The Abandoned
Generation: “An institution’s purpose changes in subtle, unstated ways. Change is often
necessary for an institution to survive in a changed world, but that change ought to be
intentional and openly discussed…The absence of an explicit, functioning educational
philosophy implies a certain lack of discipline on the part of the faculty and senior
administration, a lack of commitment to a specific set of principles. This lack of
commitment soon becomes obvious to new faculty members, students, and nonacademic
employees. Such an institution is easily manipulated by competitors, students, and
alumni (William & Naylor, 62).”
In evaluating their actions to reform the school, the administration’s strategy of
appealing to the Union students in societies to reform themselves while allowing the
current social arrangement to continue had not worked due to a more immediate
69
perceived payoff from partying that outweighs reform. There might be those who, in
hindsight, would claim that the administration and faculty, in their attempt to reduce the
dominance of the fraternity system, had in fact failed to remove the dominance of their
‘party politics’ because they attempted a legislative solution rather than a relational
solution in a cocurricular sense.
While the U2K committee’s open forums, publications, and participation leading
up to the recommendation before the Board of Trustees were procedurally correct the
faculty and college officials did not have an adequate understanding of the circumstance
of the higher education system that the current Greekmember student and his cohorts
saw themselves in. The average student coming Union’s campus at that time and their
understanding of their role in the institutional mission or lack thereof was the direct result
of the disconnected nature of individuals and their organizations here. Nothing better
illustrates the “compartmentalization” that has occurred in college and universities than
the separation that exists between undergraduate and student life (food, housing, and
social life) and undergraduate academic life. Student life and academic life will never be
integrated unless the administration is seriously committed to making it happen (Naylor,
76).
Without a guaranteed sense of their role in the campus community at large,
students, faculty, and administrators will all look to their own defenses as they hash out
their purpose of existence on this campus. Again, the problem lies not in human nature or
70
the nature of the “states” or on campus within departments, societies, and clubs, but in
the strength of the relationships that exists between all the stakeholders on campus
Through the evolution of higher education in America, the largest university and
the smallest liberal arts college has existed mainly for fostering the sacred exchange
between teacher and student. This analysis shows that in the future, those that wish to
govern well here must continually evaluate all future policy by how well it can contribute
to this educational interaction. We must remind ourselves that this is the reason we are
here.
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