Campus Alcohol Policy

Guest Blogger:  James Gallagher

A recent email from a colleague here at Lincoln University brought to the forefront of a problem that has certainly hit virtually all of our classrooms, and this blog serves as a perfect avenue to discuss this issue. The topic for this blog involves the alcohol policies on our campus and the automatic suspensions that are being levied against students for certain incidents, which happen in non-educational settings. A majority of these suspensions are due to violations to the campus alcohol policy. I submit that our current policy in this matter may be too strict, and more detrimental to our students’ lives than any possible perceived positive outcome.

As per the student handbook, “Anyone found in violation of the alcohol-free/dry campus policy is subject to (1) immediate interim suspension, (2) a subsequent judicial hearing, and/or (3) extended suspension, permanent suspension, or expulsion.” So far this semester, I personally have had no less than 4 of my current pupils with infractions to the alcohol policy on campus. Thus, as per policy, these students received immediate suspensions and at best can communicate with their professors and advisors via phone and email. It is unfortunate to report, not a single one of my students who received a suspension is receiving a passing mid terms grade, largely due to having missed 2 weeks or more of class.

These automatic suspensions are particularly tough on our student demographic, who struggle with classes and material even when they are in full attendance, let alone when forced to miss 6-9 classes in a semester after an infraction. After seeing how student life is run after serving on the juridical board, I applaud the efforts made at dealing with this complicated issue. It certainly is a difficult job, one of which I am not envious. The question I would like to pose for the week is whether these automatic suspensions are an appropriate way to deal with the problem of underage drinking on a dry campus, or if there are better approaches to incorporate fair and just punishment, while still allowing our students, to keep up to task with their studies. Furthermore, many of these students are not only subjected to our campus policies on the issue, but these cases also get sent to local authorities for more penal violations. All of this punishment for an alcohol violation seems to be simply piling on problems for our students if they decide to make the wrong choice, and could have major implications for their future. Our policies seem to be stricter than many of our competitors, and whether we like it or not, will cause students to not select The Lincoln University as their university of choice. Other universities, such as our HBCU competitor Cheyney University, have hearings in which the student is only suspended if the violation is considered severe. Further, the suspension is then only levied after there is a hearing on the matter, not prior. This policy will prevent students from partaking in better non-alcohol related activities.

Unfortunately, student life has doubled down on this approach by instituting a new policy has also just recently been put in place in which attendance to an on campus activity could automatically subject you to a breathalyzer test. More than likely than not, this policy will serve to discourage students from pursuing more clean activities, instead encouraging students to participate in more dangerous substance consumption activities like binge drinking in the dormitories.

I also want to make clear; I also do not believe we should just ignore the systemic problem of alcohol on our campus. Alcohol abuse is a problem which affects society as a whole and I agree that we should take a leading role as educators to help solve the problem.  However, zero tolerance policies as we have implemented have been shown to have no effect on the actual deterrent value nor increases in quality of atmosphere (1). Further, studies comparing countries that are more permissive in their alcohol consumption have found decreases in amount of alcohol consumed (2). These type of studies only highlight that we are potentially damaging our students’ lives but gaining nothing in return. Perhaps if we were to provide more avenues for clean student recreation, such as increased access to the gym, pool, and bowling alley, we could have a much greater effect on alcohol consumption by our student populace. Other approaches which have been shown to be successful are to promote educational programs about personal responsibility and social normal behavior (3), a direction that would be a perfect fit for our campus, and might even slide nicely into our FYE curriculum. These approaches, on top of disciplinary hearings, would seem to be a better fit our students in that they would still aid in discourage alcohol consumption while avoiding the zero tolerance policies that include automatic suspensions that will undoubtedly cause our students to not succeed.

1. Skiba, R. J., & Knesting, K. (2001). Zero tolerance, zero evidence: An analysis of school disciplinary practice. In R.J. Skiba & G.G. Noam (Eds.), New directions for youth development (no. 92: Zero tolerance: Can suspension and expulsion keep schools safe?) (pp. 17-43). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass./p>

2. Kuo M, Adlaf EM, Lee H, Gliksman L, Demers A, Wechsler H., Addiction. 2002 Dec;97(12):1583-92. "More Canadian students drink but American students drink more: comparing college alcohol use in two countries."

3. Haines, M. and G. Barker. "The NIU Experiment: A Case Study of the Social Norms Approach," (2003) in The Social Norms Approach To Preventing School And College Age Substance Abuse: A Handbook For Educators, Counselors, And Clinicians, Ed. H. Wesley Perkins. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Our Mission to Teach

by Linda Stine

This has been a particularly difficult week.  The week’s writing assignment in my online class, I discovered, had not been explained well enough, as evidenced by the essays students were submitting that didn’t address the assignment (at least the assignment as I had it in my mind), so I was spending a lot of extra time  posting explanations and feeling guilty for making my hard-working students essentially do double work.

Non-teaching duties kept piling up as well, with meetings to attend and reports coming due and all of the administrative details that nibble away at every spare minute.  I was immediately interested, therefore, when I happened upon an article on teaching* that started out, “Have you ever become so frustrated with students and overwhelmed by your workload that you start questioning what you are doing?” 

“I sure have,” I muttered, as I read further.

The authors, Candice Dowd Barnes, Ed.D. and Patricia Kohler-Evans, Ed.D, remind us that we need to “remember and affirm our purpose, acknowledge the contributions we make in students' lives and professional pursuits, and respect the call or passion that brought each of us to the teaching profession.”  Two of the most important of these contributions, they suggest, are helping students to think deeply and helping them to build relationships. 

How can we, they ask us to consider, bring about those occasions of cognitive dissonance that force students to question their previous ideas and ways of thinking so that they can enrich, deepen or change them?  How can we, additionally, build the kinds of relationships with students that set a model for them later in life as they build personal and professional relationships with others?

I would love to hear how you have answered any of those questions for yourself.  Why do you teach?  What kind of activities have you created that help students think more deeply and critically about the subject you’re teaching?  How do you structure your relationships with students so that you might provide a good template for their relationship-building in life after Lincoln? Any thoughts?

 *The full article can be found at http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/philosophy-of-teaching/remembering-our-mission-to-teach/

Students’ SOS!!!

Guest Blogger:  Deeawn Roundtree

In undergraduate school, my priority was to graduate as soon as possible; in graduate school my priority was to become an expert in my chosen field.  While pursuing my doctoral degree, my priority was to fully understand what was being taught in order to become a proficient professor.  Like many college students, I needed to take quantitative courses such as math, science, statistics, quantitative analysis and disciplinary inquiry, just to name a few.  Realizing that my strengths lie on the qualitative vs. quantitative side of academia, I desperately sought tutoring since classroom instruction was not sufficient for me.  The reasons I needed to seek additional help were as follows:

1. Classroom instruction did not provide the one-on-one attention that I needed.

2. Classmates were at differing levels of learning and understanding.

3. My college professors did not speak English clearly.

4. I wanted a deeper understanding of the course material.

5. I wanted to pass the course.

Now that I have been teaching college students for more than 10 years, 9 years as an adjunct professor and 1.5 years as a full time professor, my passion is to ensure that my students fully understand what I am teaching.  Over the years, I have listened to students complain particularly about their inability to understand their professors who teach quantitative courses, primarily because of the professors’ foreign accent and/or their teaching style.  What can we do as professors to ensure that our students, who are paying thousands of dollars for an education, graduate with greater knowledge and understanding of the course material being taught in the classroom?

According to Felder (2002), there are differences in learning styles and differences in teaching styles and when there are mismatches, students become bored, discouraged and some even drop out of school.  I have witnessed students being distraught, outraged and frustrated from their inability to understand the course material, not being engaged and not having the support they needed to help them to learn. 

In addition to the various teaching styles of professors and learning styles of students, the language barrier between the professor and student can also be a hindrance for student learning outcomes and their increased dissatisfaction in the classroom.  According to a study by Kavas (2008), 70% of students stated that a professor’s foreign accent and pronunciation affects their ability to learn the course material.  I have listened to many students complain about their inability to understand what a professor is saying.  This consequently results in the students’ inability to understand the course work and to pass the class. From the students’ perspectives, these complaints are not acknowledged.  Some suggestions to help students and teachers to overcome these barriers are as follows by Felder (2002) and Kavas (2008):

* Evaluate professors’ teaching and learning styles to ensure that they are connecting with the students.

* Bring in a student or outside translator to help students understand a professor with a foreign accent.

* Teach students with English as their first language how to listen and understand a professor who has a foreign accent.

* Evaluate the communication barriers that exist in the classroom.

References

Felder, Richard M. (2002).  Learning and teaching styles in engineering education. Engineer Education, 78(7), 674-681.

Kavas, A., & Kavas, A. (2008). An exploratory study of undergraduate college students’ perceptions and attitudes toward foreign accented faculty. College Student Journal, 42(3), 879-890.

Knowledge and Action: The Anatomies of Political Change

Guest Blogger: Chieke E. Ihejirika

"When you know you act”

Conservatism simply means sticking to the past, the norm or the status quo. It is an aversion or reluctance to change. For conservatives change is seen as a risk, which must be, at best, avoided or, at worst, managed. Violent or rapid change, that is, revolution, must be avoided at all cost. Conservatism betrays a sense of false or real contentment with the present. More often than not it is a minority position, because the majority of the people in any given society are always in tenuous conditions that need improvement and advancement. Yet those conditions rarely change mainly due to ignorance of what to do and how to do it. This is followed by apathy, pessimism, alienation, resignation and so forth.

When you know you act and action brings change, and every change is political, just like every human action done in concert or directed towards the other. Edmund Burke, the British conservative, argued that man is endowed with two essential traits, namely: reason and passion. The rich have reason and the poor passion. Hence the rich should rule, according to Burke, because unlike them, the poor in their passion are incapable of logical analysis which is necessary for decision making. For Burke, the rich are more rational. This seems to be the justification for perennial elite’sclaim to leadership.

Although this claim seems to make sense prima facie, it is based on serious misconceptions and false assumptions. First, people are not always born poor or rich. Most people achieve wealth later in life. More often than not, wealth comes out of sheer luck, such as when fortunes smiles at someone as the saying goes. So at what point does one acquire reason if the one suddenly becomes rich? It is true that some people also fall from grace to grass, due to certain accidents or unforeseen circumstances. Do such people suddenly lose their rationality as soon as they become poor? What about all those who simply inherit wealth from their parents? Do they also automatically inherit rationality in similar proportions? All this is doubtful!

Instead, what is indubitable is that knowledge is the key to life. Knowledge and ignorance make all the differences in life. Knowledge is power; it is the canon of empowerment. Ignorance some say is bliss, but others more accurately say it is a disease. The Ethiopian Eunuch asked Philip, “How would I know if no one taught me?” The apostle Phillip taught him and he changed.

Knowledge is awareness of something or a situation. It inspires control and confidence. It emboldens, leading to action and ultimately to change or at least improvement. To know something is to know of its benefits and deficits, its advantages and disadvantages. To know generally is to be aware of one’s imperfection and to accommodate other views and perspectives. It leads to an intellectual humility that compels reflexivity, that is, self-examination of the accuracy of one’s own assumptions and propositions. It requires constant introspection and self-evaluation seeking inter-subjective disposition. It requires a curiosity.Knowledge leads to articulation, and explication of the extant wisdoms and conventions.

 The link between knowledge and change is action, and actions are manifest in mobilization or what E.E. Schattsneider referred to as the ‘socialization of conflict’ or making it collective or public. Morgenthau defines politics is the struggle for power, which is conflict par excellence. But in a social contract context, the struggle for power is defined as the relationship between the government and the governed. It is a system of rights and obligations. The parties must meet and satisfy mutual expectations. Support of the ruler or a political party in power, for instance, must come with commensurate compensations or rewards. The values to be distributed must reflect the patronage system of support and rewards. Those who know this will derive maximum benefits from the state.

So what is the problem with a situation whereby a people supports a government and gets nothing from that support? The answer is simply a lack of concerted action. Power is a stubborn phenomenon. It is arrogant. It is self-directed, and it only responds to only one thing, namely power. When power meets power it seeks compromise. Otherwise, it can run away. Lord Aston said that: “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What is corruption? Cicero defines corruption as using public good for private purpose.

Power is clearly in the business of corruption; that is why it must be checked all the time. Power belongs to the public because the Leviathan is the creature of the people. The people are sovereign. Rousseau says the sovereign is the “general will.” If the general will is sovereign, then the leader is simply the custodian of public power. The leader is only the servant and never the master. Leadership is a privilege not a right. The privilege to leadership only comes under specific conditions according to John Locke, namely the protection of the people’s right to life liberty and property.

So what caused our politicians to shut down our government with impunity? They have taken the people for granted. We can open our government in less than twenty-four hours if we really want to do so. All we need is to show outrage. No one is speaking of violence; we are too civilized for that. But we can make the country ungovernable, and demand that they reopen our government or quit. It is ironic that the most paid and wealthiest officials of our government can act in absolute disregard for the most vulnerable in our society. 

This is no longer a democracy; it is an oligarchy. We may have made a collective mistake by electing and reelecting President Obama for his affordable health care program. But guess what? It is the people’s prerogative to do so. Elections do have consequences. As a matter of fact, only self-discipline prevents one from categorically calling this a hate crime against the president, but if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it must be a duck.

Only yesterday, we lived through the most egregious abuse of public trust for which this country is yet to recover, namely: the reckless and unprecedented squandering of American resources in unwarranted war to the tone of one trillion dollars. Yet we tolerated President George W. Bush until it was time to install an alternative. Two elections and Supreme Court approval notwithstanding, some bigots are holding the nation and President Obama hostage and unleashing all manners of terrorism, the kind we would not even tolerate from enemies of America. What a shame, indeed! Why can’t they let the healthcare policy rise and fall on its own merits or weaknesses? That is the way of democracy.

Colleagues, as we teach The Lincoln University students for tomorrow’s leadership, we must make sure they are empowered enough to know that change comes only with true knowledge followed by positive actions. There is no other way. Inaction leads to dereliction by those we are paying to do things for us.  We must always put our elected officials on a short leash. Otherwise, we will always live in self-inflicted frustration.