KEYNOTE ADDRESS TO LMU STUDENT LIFE DIVISION
SEPTEMBER 26, 2013
MOST REVEREND GORDON D. BENNETT, S.J.
________________________________________________________________________
Good morning.
I’m very grateful to Lane and Briana for asking me to share some reflections with you this morning on the topic of healthy relationships, and I hope that something I say will help each of you individually and the entire division to help our students to imagine themselves as women and men whose personal and social choices are grounded in personal stability and solidity.
This past summer, the Admissions department invited me to give a couple of welcome addresses to incoming freshmen and their parents at orientation. My vision of the message I wanted to deliver took me back to my graduate studies at Fordham University in educational administration and supervision and in curriculum design. I remembered learning that any school, on whatever level, necessarily breathes with two lungs, i.e., every school has two distinct yet complementary functions: to provide students with a content (the academic course of studies) and a context, i.e. a kind of real, if hidden curriculum, those aspects of all life and interaction outside the classroom which contribute in significant ways to the formation of the students.
Put very baldly, the content of education opens the student to “truth”, and the context of education exposes the student to “virtue”, i.e., the values, habits and choices which, because they have been intentionally chosen and, hopefully, modeled by the adults in the community, form students into healthy human beings. As I said, these functions, these two lungs, are distinct; but, obviously, the more they complement each other, the less unbalanced the educational experience of the students will be. This is exactly what we mean here at LMU when we say, in our mission statement and in all our promotional material, it is our aim to “educate the whole person.”
The “whole person” involves the body, mind, will, heart and soul.
The point I wanted to make to both the incoming freshmen and their parents was that, for the most part, universities will not differ significantly in the content they offer. Every school with a pre-med program will offer the same sequence of courses, for example, and the rationale for that sequence will be determined by what information students need to know in order to qualify for post-graduate degrees or for a particular career. The truth is that, given the increasing costs of higher education today, since the content in academic majors doesn’t differ drastically from university to university, these requirements could really be fulfilled by learning a discipline on the internet, a choice many families are indeed making, either that or attending another educational option which doesn’t have a campus.
To a great extent, what families are spending their money for nowadays, is the context of education: all of those areas that will complement the academic program: beautiful and comfortable and clean living conditions, palatable food, multiple social and athletic opportunities, a positive and safe environment on campus in which their daughters and sons can be exposed to and may absorb, particularly from the adults in the learning community, the values, habits and choices which will help them to contribute to the human enterprise when they graduate.
Under this schema, the Division of Student Life is almost totally responsible for the context lung of the university because it is you who are responsible for assuring that all life outside the classroom is conducive to the growth of the students. I hasten to say that you fulfill your mission very, very well indeed here at LMU. I know this because of the objective evidence from student satisfaction surveys, and I know it from my own vast experience of students who have been positively affected by your generous service, in sometimes difficult circumstances. You are well known and much appreciated for your competence, and for dispensing that special quality that we pride ourselves on in Jesuit universities: cura personalis, the personal care for the students.
But we don’t have in-service training to pat ourselves on the back, do we? We have in-service training so that we can continue to imagine and re-imagine our mission: to evaluate what we do in order to come closer and closer to the ideal we wish to reach. We should always be straining toward that horizon, even as that horizon continues to recede – as horizons always do.
And that brings us to today: healthy relationships. How can the Division of Student Life contribute more effectively to assisting our students to develop and pursue healthy relationships? I include in that topic healthy “encounters” because it seems to me that many of the problematic experiences students get themselves into revolve more around encounters than around relationships. Usually, in a relationship, one already knows things about the other person, as, for example, their name. That’s not always true with encounters.
To put our topic into context, I want to share that, this past summer, as I was preparing to address the group I told you about, I happened upon an article in the LA Times about a lawsuit which was being filed against another university in Southern California by several female students who claimed to have been the victims of rape or of sexual assault. The students complained that they were “blamed for their victimization and were forced to watch impotently as their cases were routinely misreported, misconstrued, mishandled or discounted entirely.”
The seriousness of those charges at that university has drawn the attention of the federal government which has opened its own investigation to determine possible violations of Title IX civil rights legislation.
Administrators at the college deny that any lack of proper supervision took place while, at the same time, they are scrambling to revise, update and clarify policies and procedures within their student life staff with respect to incidents of sexual assault. Healthy relationships.
The president of yet another university in Southern California, experiencing similar public scrutiny, responded that the college would have a “structured sexual-assault program at this fall’s orientation that reflects revised policies and procedures.” Healthy relationships.
It goes without saying that the publicity surrounding the allegations and the investigations of them would incline prospective students and parents to question the viability of the context lung of that university.
No doubt: the territory of healthy relationships is fraught and laden with values and expectations; but there can be no doubt either that the phenomenon of unhealthy relationships continues to rise and become more evident, and you find yourselves obligated to address it, not just to ward off lawsuits, hopefully, but because we see ourselves responsible for the safe and peaceful context of the university. It’s also, it seems to me, a matter of justice, both to our students and to their parents, who are paying us good money and have legitimate expectations that we are providing the “education for the whole person” we say distinguishes us from other educational settings.
There are things we can do to help foster healthy relationships: we can try to finally decide when no means no, when yes means yes, when yes means no, and when no means yes, and we can print brochures and have workshops and in-service training and try to make sure that our policies are consistent with federal and university guidelines in order to avoid a lawsuit.
But there are things as well that we will never be able to do: since we are never witnesses to these incidents, it is extraordinarily difficult to ascertain the truth: when did yes become no? Who was the aggressor? Was the incident itself or the capacity to give competent consent influenced by alcohol or drugs? Is it a fact that competing allegations have been made, for example, on the social media after the incident, as happens often in these days, and is that story a declaration of truth or an attempt at attention or revenge? Without a confession or without discernible evidence, no guidelines, policies or procedures, no matter how comprehensive, will ever prevent or settle completely who is ultimately responsible for the choices which cast a shadow over peaceful and safe campus life.
So I believe that unhealthy relationships are symptoms of a larger, broader issue; they are not the real disease. The real disease is the difficulty, and even inability, of an increasingly larger percentage of students to make good decisions within their personal lives.
Let me cite an astute observation Pope Benedict XVI made when he addressed American Catholic educators about the two lungs of education: “While we have sought diligently to engage the intellect of our young people, perhaps we have neglected the will. Subsequently, we observe, with distress, the notion of freedom being distorted.” So, if we limited our focus today only to healthy relationships, we would run the risk of trying to put band aids on gaping head wounds.
When a relationship is unhealthy, it is so because usually either one or both of the persons in it is unhealthy. If one of the persons in a relationship is dysfunctional, the relationship will be dysfunctional.
Dysfunction knows no gender, no age, no race, no sexual orientation, and no religion. Dysfunction is an equal opportunity disease.
So I think we need to look more deeply at the obligation we have of training our students in overall decision-making, and this for two reasons: 1: doing so falls within the purview and the competence of the context of education, and, thus, with you; and 2: doing so challenges every person in this room today to try to be the most effective persons we can be and to render the most effective service we can render.
With respect to this particular generation of students, without stooping to categorize them all, psychologists point out three disturbing characteristics: they lack a vocabulary with which they can describe their inner feelings accurately, they lack the ability to empathize with others, and they lack the ability to make courageous decisions based on a set of values.
Each of these is, of course, a keynote address in itself. I mention them here only to highlight our need to be aware of the culture which sends us our students, a culture marked by entitlement, narcissism and moral relativism and ambiguity. We can’t call an entire generation to become aware of how they have been wounded and dehumanized, but I think it is possible for us to engage individual students in conversation about their best hopes for themselves.
I actually found a model for what I’m talking about in an article I read this past summer written about, of all things, the football team at the University of Alabama and their coach, Nick Saban. They devised a mandatory program, approved by the university but designed and implemented by the athletic department and, specifically, by the football staff. They created a program entitled “Avoiding Distractions and Dangerous Decisions.” The program includes both peer intervention components and adult initiated components. Interestingly enough, healthy relationships were only the 4th priority in the hierarchy of needs the program hoped to address – after Drugs and alcohol, dealing with sports agents, gambling . After healthy relationships, the priority list included getting into fights, respecting others, and, lastly, academics.
Coach Saban’s stated purpose was, in his words: “to try to create a structure to help guys understand the consequences of good and bad behavior. When they understand the consequences, it gives them a better chance to choose the right thing.”
Something like this seems to me to be possible across the Division of Student Life. Housing, Resident Life, Campus Ministry, Greek Life, Athletics, Service Orgs, leadership, service and action, etc. – all of these could, singly or together, develop learning programs which inculcate in the students an awareness of the consequences which accrue when expected appropriate behavior is either displayed or is not forthcoming.
I think it’s possible that each office, or all the offices working together, could create a “curriculum for the will” which would help students accurately evaluate where they stand on the continuum of the most critical indicators of a healthy adult life: nourishing relationships, a fulfilling job, a living situation that is safe and comfortable, has no serious addictions, has enough affectivity in their lives including physical affection from loved ones, is living with integrity, honesty and good conscience, and has a spirituality or religion that feeds the soul.
I think it’s possible that you could develop effective curricular activities for individuals or groups that could enable them to better cope with the significant tensions they experience as late adolescents and young adults, namely: how to receive love and handle disappointment; how to choose ideals they can live by in order to have some criterion for self-respect; how to articulate appropriate ambitions that can become their life goals; how to put off immediate gratification of impulses, rather than feeling compelled to fulfill every urge in ways that can be harmful to themselves or, importantly, to others; how to integrate sexuality and their sexual orientation into their lives; how to maintain healthy boundaries in relationships with others; how to take care of themselves when others are unavailable or don’t come through, how to move on after a breakup with one’s self-image intact; and how to cultivate and become comfortable with self-reflection, silence and creative solitude.
The law of daily choosing never varies: our choices become our actions, our actions become our habits, our habits become our values, our values become our character, and our character becomes our destiny. Every single choice we make or avoid has consequences, consequences which reveal who we are and, if repeated, will determine who we will eventually become.
This critical learning is not likely to take place in the academic classroom unless the academic learning is intentionally geared to influence the affective domain of education in addition to the cognitive domain, i.e., values along with knowledge. Very dysfunctional people are able to recite Shakespearian sonnets, derive the quadratic equation, or perfectly execute a double pirouette and a time step. Here is where the two lungs every school that is worth its salt has need to breathe together to help our students take in the air of truth and virtue; and both the academic and student life personnel need to collaborate with each other so that, at graduation, we are more confident that we are sending into the world missionaries rather than sociopaths.
Given the fact that Student Life interfaces with all the students and does so in various venues, it may be up to you to initiate the dialogue with your colleagues in the academic departments about how the two lungs of this university can breathe in balance for the health of our students and for the education of the whole person.
Coach Saban said in the article that: “Problem students are ‘blinking lights’; they stand out from everyone else like malfunctioning lights on a Christmas tree.” Ultimately, like constant irritants, problem students reduce the efficiency, seriousness, and peace of the university community.
Maybe you will recognize these brief portraits of “blinking lights.” Maybe this woman or man is in your dorm, on your floor, on your team, in your org, in your fraternity or sorority.
Those whose issue is honesty: these will present themselves as persons in search of an identity. Because they may be uncomfortable with who they really are, they continue to try on personas as one interchanges masks. Mostly, they will want to present their best, most adult face, while our reading of them may be that they are trying too hard and feel them to be hiding something. You will need to be patient with this one, encouraging them to live in their truth, and making them feel like they don’t have to hide from you, that the person they are is just fine.
Those whose issue is dignity: these will present as persons whose self-image is weak or negative. They are very eager to please and will often abandon their individuality and values in order to be accepted by others. This may influence them to engage in dangerous behaviors out of the need to feel they are part of the in-crowd. These are also the ones who may equate popularity and importance with being overly involved in organizations and activities, and then get sick or neglect their studies and so incur physical and academic repercussions. I see this a lot in LMU students. These need to be affirmed in their authentic self, affirmed as they are, without any need for the extras they think will make them popular or acceptable. They need to learn that there is a difference between reputation and character.
Those whose issue is disdain for community: it is here that you are most likely to see the most dangerous of the blinking lights, for here is the true narcissist, the entitled, undisciplined one, the one who doesn’t believe the rules apply to them, the one who resists contributing to the common good and gets enraged when brought to account. These are the rebellious ones, arrogant, cynical, selfish and antagonistic. They live with a kind of veil over their identity, retaining an aloneness that keeps other people at arm’s length, a shadow that allows them to maintain a kind of “interior secrecy” in which commitment to another or to the group never has to be made or kept. They can appear to be missing a conscience or any guide to appropriate moral behavior. This is the one you must confront directly and make them aware of the consequences their behavior has set in motion. They need to know that they are not the center of the universe and are not entitled to anything they haven’t worked for.
Those whose issue is responsibility: those who are afraid to take risks at all because they are terrified of making a mistake and looking foolish in front of their peers or they take many and dangerous risks but blame others for their own foolishness. These need to be encouraged to find the necessary balance between testing one’s wings and killing one’s soul.
And, lastly, those whose issue is the need for recognition and attention: those who are secretly jealous of the popularity of others and who, deliberately and systematically, attempt to undermine others through gossip and innuendo and bullying. So many people today are afraid of living an ordinary, simple life. They are afraid they will never get their fifteen minutes or be surrounded by adoring fans and paparazzi. They are afraid they will never be noticed, never shine. In their own minds, they are living the fantasy of the celebrities they worship, but in reality, they are becoming mere clichés, predictable, sad, and dangerous to themselves. You can help them believe that life doesn’t need all that drama, and it certainly doesn’t need any more paranoia.
Again, these brief portraits are by no means exclusive nor are they absolute. They serve only to help you become aware of that young woman or man who stands in front of you, either because they have chosen to share their distress with you, or because it is you who have to make them accountable for their behavior. And it is you who have to make the professional judgment about what solution will satisfy the delicate balance between what is best for the student and what is best for the common good of the university.
We don’t want to have the blinking light. We don’t want students to be a blinking light – so we have to do our part to keep them from blinking.
I’ve been reflecting on the “curriculum of the will” since I arrived here at LMU; and, this past summer, I asked my friend, Melvin Robert, who has been designing activities like this for young people as his career to do some research about the possibility of creating a “curriculum for the will” and to make some concrete suggestions about how to elicit a rationale for programs like this and to make concrete suggestions for learning activities. Melvin’s work was really wonderful and I recommend that you use his creativity and expertise to help you design something that both fits and benefits the students under your care.
For further readings on the subject, I recommend these books: “The Act of Will” by Roberto Assagioli, M.D. and “Generation Me” by Jean Twenge, PhD.
Now, if it isn’t clear, let make it perfectly clear that if students at LMU are going to have healthy relationships, they will first have to be healthy people. And if they are going to be healthy people, it will be because they will have encountered you, because they will have learned from you how necessary it is to make good choices in all aspects of their lives, not just in their relationships. When they encounter you, hear well that they are saying to you: “Don’t just tell me, show me.”
Your job is not to be clerks or hacks, your job is not to be “working for the weekend.” Your job is to make sure that the education of these students flies, actually soars, on wings powered by the two strong lungs: truth and virtue. You give our entire curriculum, the content and the context, integrity and credibility.
I would like to conclude by connecting what I have offered this morning to the vision of St. Ignatius especially as it applies to education.
You know that Ignatian spirituality invites us to change our paradigm of looking at the world, moving from “I’ll believe it when I see it” to “I’ll see it when I believe it.” In other words, Ignatius valued above all the use of the imagination, the capacity dreaming of the possible instead of being limited by the inevitable.
Imagination is not the same things as fantasy. Fantasy involves dreaming of ourselves as the best in the world; imagination involves dreaming of ourselves as the best for the world. Imagination, because it is our best dreaming, proposes some outlandish things; and just when we are tempted to dismiss our dreams as impossible to achieve, Ignatius cautions us: “If you don’t believe it, you’ll never see it.”
This quality of imagination is what differentiates us from other universities. This is what parents are paying for. When it comes to healthy relationships, other universities are going to create more policies, more procedures, have more meetings, and insist on more and clearer rules in order to prevent lawsuits. I think we can do better at LMU. We’re going to try to create an attitude on campus, an attitude which will bring health to the whole person and not just to relationships and encounters, an attitude that is shared among all members of the community, students and professors and staff.
As the professionals in the community, imagine the impact we could have on our students if they truly encountered us as persons totally committed to their growth and eager to model healthy choices for them. In the classroom, on the court or field, on the stage, in the office, in the dorm, at leisure: imagine how powerful it would be if they met people who were not clerks and hacks, people who, even in their own human incompleteness, were truly countercultural, and, at the same time, on fire with possibility, positivity and love.
I cannot imagine that you would want anything else; I cannot imagine better people doing it.
If you don’t believe it, you’ll never see it.
Thank you.