Is collaboration always the best choice?

I sat in a meeting earlier this week and listened to a description of how collaboration can be viewed as a strength, a “big idea,” and an impediment.  One of my colleagues in the room expressed surprise at the last notion, that collaboration could be a negative prospect. I found the conversation fascinating, and I thought a lot about how collaboration can in fact be an impediment.

I think that culturally we are at a moment when it’s only acceptable to be open to collaboration. The concept and the word have become “buzzy,” and as a result we have to embrace them.

The facilitator of the meeting explained that collaboration could be viewed as an impediment because it can potentially dilute the strength of the individual entities that are trying to collaborate. This makes a lot of sense to me.

As a result, collaboration between entities requires that those entities be strong and confident in their own individual areas of expertise.  If this is not the case, the collaboration could weaken the entities and therefore weaken the end product of the collaboration.  Collaboration requires openness, and that openness can only come out of a place of strength and confidence from the individual parties involved.  Additionally, collaboration cannot be forced. Collaborators need to meet each other in a moment and work together to move forward out of that moment. If the collaborators lack shared experience, knowledge, and/or vocabulary, the collaboration is likely to fail.

I’m adding “collaboration” to my list of things to ponder right now, along with subjectivity in educational assessment and gaming theory as a pedagogical stance.  Does subjectivity have a place in assessment, and if so, where and how much?  How does gaming theory affect how we teach this generation of young people?

You should watch this “It Gets Better” video if you know an athlete

I wanted to share this video that was created, directed, and produced by the out, gay captain of the men’s volleyball team at NYU, Jay Hayes.

NYU has a reputation for being very “queer friendly,” but that doesn’t mean that its students are immune to hate speech or homophobia.  The world of professional sports gets a lot of bad press around homophobia, and rightly so.  It’s inspiring and encouraging to see these athletes and their coaches, of all sexual orientations, helping young people to know that it’s more than OK to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or queer and an athlete.

This video makes me proud to be a member of the NYU community.  Please share it with others.  It deserves to be seen, just like these young athletes.

Oh, Kirk...

I didn’t watch this entire interview conducted by Piers Morgan, just the clip below.   In this particular segment, Kirk Cameron manages to talk his way out of Piers’ attack on his belief system regarding homosexuality.  He stays calm, and he doesn’t get aggressive.  His position on homosexuality makes me crazy and I worry for his children’s well-being, but he does appear to have thought his position through, unlike many other people who subscribe to this kind of rhetoric.

Bottomline: There are a lot of beliefs and practices that are “ultimately destructive to the foundations of civilization.”  I’d like to see us focus on trying to resolve the ones that don’t involve people loving and caring for one another or for caring about their own well-being.  I think that list would keep everyone busy for quite awhile.

If Kirk needs help making that list, he should just drop us a line.

Cultural Sensitivity: We are what we tweet

My colleague, Chris Stipeck, who I’ve worked with for 5+ years, sent me an article by Ian Parker that appears in the February 6, 2012 edition of The New Yorker entitled “The Story of a Suicide.”  The article outlines in great detail the incidents leading up to the death of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi in September 2010.  Clementi’s roommate Dharun Ravi is currently on trial for a slew of charges pending from an incident where he videotaped Clementi having a sexual encounter with another man. After Clementi discovered this invasion of his privacy and the supposed broadcasting of his encounter into cyberworld, Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge, killing himself, and igniting a firestorm of national attention around bullying, or what some have come to call social combat, a term that I prefer because of its weight and scope.

Chris and I have been talking about this incident off and on for the past 15 months.  We share many things in common, most notably that we live and work among 1000 first-year college students at New York University.  It’s a unique experience living with this cohort, one that I’ve enjoyed for seven years now, and I’m constantly reminded of what it’s like to be 17 or 18 years old and a student.  I do academic and social programs with the students, as does Chris, but he also manages all aspects of the building, including 30+ professional and para-professional staff members.  He and I meet every other week to discuss our work and the events within the building, and our conversations often veer into social, cultural, and political topics.  He’s an intelligent and thoughtful guy, and our conversations consistently provide me with insights that affect how I work and interact with students, both in residence and in the classroom.

Clementi’s story has been an ongoing topic for Chris and I for a variety of reasons, and the contents of this article have already made the“agenda” of our next breakfast meeting.  However, in advance of our conversation, some thoughts already crystalized that I can’t help but share out on this blog, as I’ve spent many an entry over the last year emphasizing the importance of paying attention when it comes to the complicated phenomenon of social combat amongst young people.

The details within Parker’s article provide valuable insight into the complexities of the Clementi case, mostly in the form of text messages, tweets, chats entries, and Facebook posts that Parker has somehow obtained.  This avalanche of cyber evidence is disconcerting for two reasons.  First, I realized just how public our social media information is, meaning that once it’s out there, it’s out there.  There’s no taking it back, even if we think we deleted it.  We really are what we tweet.

Second, and more importantly, these captured messages and comments reveal an astounding lack of cultural sensitivity from the cast of characters in the Clementi story.  The article gently points out that even Clementi, who is clearly the victim is this incident, displayed some of his own cultural biases in his cyber messages.  Suddenly, a case that has been mostly black and white for me has many more shades of grey, not because I think that Tyler Clementi is guilty of anything, but more because the blurry and often imperceptible worlds of social combat and non-conscious bias have come into sharper focus.

Plain and simple, the cyber messages illustrate that we’re failing to effectively educate young people about cultural sensitivity before they arrive to college.

I mean failing.  Miserably.

Even with the proliferation of “bullying” curricula in schools nowadays, the average young person comes to college with very little understanding of difference outside of her or his own closed family or community.  The formal education doesn’t appear to be sticking.  Sociologists report that the Milllennial Generation, of which all of these Clementi characters are a part of, are allegedly the most open to our multicultural and globalized world, however their cybermessaging tells a very different story.

For many, this is not news.  I have a friend who I’ve known for 35 years, since kindergarten, who fights a daily battle for the safety of her son at school.  He’s different, knows he’s different, and has no qualms about showing it.  I’ve met him and he’s a great kid.  Unfortunately, his classmates, give him a hard time.  Interestingly enough, his school has been cited as an excellent example of how to prevent social combat, but his mom has a different story to tell.  Having grown up in this town, I understand what she’s up against.  The school may be doing its job to some extent, or maybe those educators and administrators aren’t doing enough.  It’s hard to say for sure.  But even if my friend wins her battle with the school, she still has a larger problem to tackle.  Social combat has very deep roots in the messages that young people receive from family members about what is “normal” and “acceptable.”

What we define as “normal” depends on our own personal experiences and perspectives, and our definitions come from our interactions with family members and friends.  The cyber messages from the Clementi case illustrate a lack of sensitivity around race and ethnicity, but even more so around issues of sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.  That last one, SES for short, runs deep in this country, deeper than many like to admit, and we need to spend more time and energy thinking about how class plays out in social combat scenarios.

So if we are what we tweet, and I use “tweet” as a contemporary euphemism for what we say, then we have a lot of work to do.  We can’t practice cultural sensitivity only when we speak aloud; sensitivity needs to be applied to all of our communication, even the communication that we think is private.  And to be clear, I’m not advocating for some kind of politically correct policing of language.  I’m asking for people to pay attention to what they say and how they say it.  We all move through life on a spectrum of sensitivity.  What one finds offensive, another may find funny or simply mundane.  Because of these multiple perspectives, we have a responsibility to tread carefully and mind our tweets.  And to teach young people to do the same, before they venture out alone into the often-unforgiving, multicultural, globalized fray that is our 21st century existence.

“Open” field day on Newt Gingrich

Today ABC News began releasing excerpts of an interview with Newt Gingrich’s second wife, Marianne, who alleges that Newt asked her to allow him to have a mistress while they stayed married.  When the interviewer asked her what she thought Newt was trying to say to her, Marianne, replied, “Oh, he was asking to have an open marriage, and I refused.” 

Now, I am no fan of Newt Gingrich.  In fact, I think he’s a triple hot mess.  However, I’m kind of disappointed in ABC News and the sensationalism that this whole story is prompting.  If we pay close attention to the way the story has been presented throughout the day, we’re supposed to believe that everyone is living in these chaste, monogamous relationships.  Yes, Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a woman who has subsequently become his third wife.  Not the best track record with the ladies, this guy Newt.  But must we take him down with this claim?  Aren’t there far better ways of taking him down?  I’m not sure this personal relationship stuff is really any of our business.

Last week an L.A bishop stepped down because he admitted to fathering two children.  Otherwise, when I read his bio online, he seemed to have accomplished some pretty amazing things.  Yes, he broke the rules.  I get that.  I just wonder about all the judging that we do.  Hypocritical?  Yes.  Creepy?  Yes.  Damaging to all of humanity?  Probably not.

Newt Gingrich’s quest for an open marriage is far less threatening than some of the other ideas that have come flying out of this mouth.  Let’s keep some perspective on what matters in this presidential race.  I guess the public has a right to know, but the public better be thinking about what this kind of information actually tells us about how a person might lead a country.  Integrity comes in all shapes and sizes, shades and colors, as does intelligence and passion.  Engaging in an open relationship does not automatically make someone have questionable integrity.  It’s lying and deception that calls integrity into question.

Please don’t vote for Newt Gingrich, but please think about what matters as we move forward with this interminable process of electing the President.