Student Control
posted by Thomas Crocker
In a world of increased occasions for forms of social control, the university is extending its reach. In an AP story today we learn that universities are broadening the scope of their campus behavior codes to apply to student conduct off campus, in an effort to cultivate humanity, to borrow from Martha Nussbaum. One purpose is to make students better citizens within the community. From the article:
We have a responsibility to educate our students about being responsible citizens,” said Elizabeth A. Higgins, Washington’s director of community standards and student conduct, whose office has ‘educated’ 19 students since the extended code of conduct took effect in January.
The scope of these codes can be quite broad, as the article reports that the University of Colorado code “regulates any conduct that ”affects the health, safety or security of any member of the university community or the mission of the university.” The article further reports that Seattle University “has put its students on notice that cyber-patrolling will continue this year.”
Universities have a unique institutional role with regard to their students, and the impact of student conduct on surrounding communities can be significant (with both positive and negative externalities). Extending the scope of behavior monitoring to off-campus sites and to the internet does, however, reduce the realm of personal privacy and provides another occasion in which institutional control over behavior applies beyond the institution’s own parameters. Even if the purpose of this sort of cultivated humanity is to produce good citizens, it is unclear to me that more extensive monitoring is the way to achieve that goal. Without spaces to develop a sense of serendipitous self-determination, cultivating humanity may be more like growing corn – we get more homogenization and a good food supply, but we may also get more corn than we bargained for. Besides providing another occasion when one can mention Foucault’s work on forms of social control, it may be that universities are merely catching up with other institutions such as private companies who expect certain kinds of behavior from off-duty employees. Is it likely that law schools will increase the monitoring of their students off-campus or on-line any time soon as well?
August 22, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Posted in: Education, Privacy
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Responses (21)
Hale Adams - August 24, 2008 at 1:27 pm
I thought a person stopped being subject to the doctrine of “in loco parentis” when he turned 18.
And the do-gooders wonder why we are raising a generation that acts like children well into their 30s?
A message to the manangement of private companies and universities: How about treating adults as adults? Think that might work?
Occam's Beard - August 24, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Where is this concern with turning out good citizens when hiring and tenuring extremists advocating or praising anti-American violence (e.g., Ward Churchill)?
pashley - August 24, 2008 at 1:50 pm
There is some scope for this. I’m thinking of Christian-professing universities regulating the social behavior of their students. On the other hand, the almost certain proponents will be state universities, and the almost certain beneficiaries will be the grievance industry. So, for example, state-sponsored teaching courses have imposed participation in collectivist political action to pass required classes. Shades of Marxist-Lennism.
Prague - August 24, 2008 at 2:39 pm
Well, it can’t help when the community itself doesn’t cooperate. I’m thinking in particular of the town where I went to college, when the local porn store’s sign advertised a ten percent discount to local college students….
Prague - August 24, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Well, it can’t help when the community itself doesn’t cooperate. I’m thinking in particular of the town where I went to college, when the local porn store’s sign advertised a ten percent discount to local college students….
koblog - August 24, 2008 at 2:54 pm
There was a time when going to college or–sniff–university meant becoming more refined than the rude world one left back at the farm.
It meant learning how to comport oneself in even simple things like eating, dressing, speaking…and the now-foreign concept of self-discipline.
Most importantly, one was to learn something of history, letters, language, law, economics, theology and civilization.
Sadly, today, amid oceans of “studies” courses that lead nowhere, those former noble goals seem only to fall to better Christian schools and the military schools like West Point and the Naval and Air Force Academies.
University for a great many is a time of extended adolescence, binge drinking and sexual experimentation.
Academically, college is little more than what high school once was as evidenced by the number of “bonehead” classes that are offered just to get incoming freshmen up to speed on the basics, followed by dropping out.
The Christian and military schools endeavor to teach their students that they have a duty to a higher calling.
What concerns me about social monitoring at state schools is their utter lack of moral compass and their stated goal to destroy (“deconstruct”) Western Civilization using political correctness.
Johnnie - August 24, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Clearly this code is directed at non-approved political opinions, but is the left going to support this when the university starts discouraging drug use, promiscuity, abortion, and the especially unhealthy and dangerous homosexual behavior. What could be a greater threat to the Univerity community than an uncureable fatal disease?
Jonathan - August 24, 2008 at 4:40 pm
How about treating adults as adults?
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Where do you think that the dean of student life and his various minions will find employment then?
Of course, it’s not entirely their rent-seeking that infantilizes students. Anything happens to a student, either on campus or off, and the university faces a big fat lawsuit.
Jonathan - August 24, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Compelling them, of course, to regulate every facet of student interaction.
Tactical Buddhist - August 24, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I say let the students make the mistakes while they are young and still have the parentals to watch out for them. If you want them to be good citizens they need to be good taxpayers first. The university should provide students the skills to succeed in the real world; any other skills they develop are just icing on the cake.
MMan - August 24, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Time for the students to start spying on the faculty and staff and posting evidence of any questionable behavior on the internet. Preferably youtube.
Mike M. - August 24, 2008 at 7:31 pm
What of the older students? Not every college student is a drunken teenager…and if I were a veteran in my mid-20s, the idea of some collegiate bureaucrat trying to monitor my private life would be extremely offensive.
James Hertsch - August 24, 2008 at 8:05 pm
There’s a vague Orwellian tinge here, but it’s not quite enough to set off alarm bells, I think. The article says that students are pretty much getting in trouble when they break laws, including noise ordinances, local alcohol regulations, and other misdemeanors. In the outside world, wouldn’t an employer react similarly if an employee were found violating local laws?
Taxi1 - August 24, 2008 at 9:06 pm
I don’t see an Orwellian tinge at all. No one is spying, they’re just reacting to what occurs in the plain light of day. You can visit the website of any University town newspaper and see in the courts section which 19-20 year old has been arrested for what crimes. Reminds me of the bumper sticker, “If you don’t like my driving, stay off the sidewalk.”
I see a University that recognizes there is more to the education process than 120 credits laid out in a predetermined 3 credit per class schedule and taught by profs that only interact with students in their classes and are otherwise uninvolved. Students at universities often remind me of 2 year olds going for the cookie jar who haven’t yet figured out the sound travels around corners, or that the police blotter in the local rag gets read by many and that their behavior has consequences to others beyond themselves. Better they learn it in school. If they prize anonymity for drunken debauchery save it for spring break at Panama City
Mike at PSU
RM - August 24, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Employees aren’t paying their employers for the honor of getting to work.
The student/college relationship is nothing like the employee/employer relationship.
If the college starts paying students $4000/month to attend, then maybe they would have the same right to react as an employer would.
RM - August 24, 2008 at 10:01 pm
>>>>I see a University that recognizes there is more to the education process than 120 credits laid out in a predetermined 3 credit per class schedule.
Re-education, perhaps. But definitely not education. You are paid to teach facts, not to impose your morality.
Taxi1 - August 24, 2008 at 11:37 pm
>>>> If the college starts paying students $4000/month to attend, then maybe they would have the same right to react as an employer would.
>>>> Re-education, perhaps. But definitely not education. You are paid to teach facts, not to impose your morality.
Let’s see just what the students are paying for. On Penn State’s website is this easily accessible doc covering student conduct policy:
http://www.sa.psu.edu/ja/pdf/PoliciesRules.PDF
Which includes these words…When students are found responsible for behavior off-campus that both
meets the definition of affecting a Substantial University Interest, and violates the Code of Conduct, sanctions
will be applied…
The Pennsylvania State University is dedicated to maintaining a scholarly community that promotes intellectual
inquiry and encourages the expression of diverse views and opinions. When students accept admission to Penn
State, they accept the rights and responsibilities of membership in the academic and social environments of that
community. Students are expected to support its essential values and to maintain a high standard of conduct that
may exceed federal, state, or local requirements.
incongruities - August 25, 2008 at 6:35 pm
I don’t have a problem with it as long as the same monitoring on and off campus is applied equally to the faculty and staff?
No one is perfect and thus damn few people in the world can stand constant scrutiny of their actions.
Taxi1 - August 25, 2008 at 8:00 pm
>>>> No one is perfect and thus damn few people in the world can stand constant scrutiny of their actions.
>>>> Posted by: incongruities
Just how often are you getting yourself arrested? I’ve managed to “withstand that scrutiny” for 48 years so far.
A.J. Sutter - August 25, 2008 at 9:44 pm
The AP story has another interesting nugget:”Some universities take their discipline policies a step further. At Duke University, the campus code requires students to report misbehavior by their fellow students to campus officials, no matter where the students find themselves.”
Is this really teaching the right values? If, as this story suggests, this is an affirmative duty to report (as distinguished from a duty not to commit perjury, for example), do the folks at Duke really think a Stasi society is the right direction for America?
Consider this too in the light of the Penn State language Taxi1 reports, where students are deemed to accept the code of conduct when they accept admission. How many people who get accepted to a good school are going to base their acceptance decision on the code of conduct, especially when weighing that against the pressure to get a degree from the most prestigious institution possible in order to get a job? When the institution makes this sort of claim about the student’s “acceptance” of the code, does it turn the code of conduct into a contract of adhesion?
On other topics: (i) Pace koblog, law and economics — and probably some of the other items on his list — were not part of traditional general education requirements at university. Latin, Greek, often theology (pre-20th Century), maybe eventually history or letters. Or can koblog cite some counterexamples? (ii) as for James Hirtsch’s sensing “a vague Orwellian tinge here, but it’s not quite enough to set off alarm bells”: some people might disagree about whether the universities’ activity is “Orwellian” or not, but to sense that it is, and yet not be bothered by that, seems like a sort of complacency that would warm Big Brother’s heart.
Micha Elyi - August 26, 2008 at 5:52 pm
I’m with the Bearded One’s wisdom (01:40 PM) on this issue. The droids of so-called higher education are making themselves into public spectacles of low-life hypocrisy. Again.
Obviously the USA is spending way, way too many tax-taken dollars on schemes to subsidize college schooling. I suggest that if these subsidies evaporated those campus administrators would be finding real jobs to do.
By the way, aren’t these the same herd of campus big-wigs who now bleat that we must again lower the legal boozing age to 18 because they can’t control illegal recreational drug* use on their own campuses? By the way, I remember when campus administrators thought that lowering the legal boozing age to 18 was a *bad* idea. How times change — and not always for the better.
* Alcohol is the USA’s most popular recreational drug.
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