R ESULTADOS DEL M ODELO

Campus Theory is the general concept used to represent the study of Organism – Environmental Interactions. The study of human population groups in relation to environment has become known as human ecology.The ecological trend in students affairs is gaining momentum and perhaps the concept of “Campus Ecology” denoting interest in college or university students and their interactions with their campus environment can be used to describe the movement.

The relationship between students and the campus environment, involves; a. Influence of environment on students and students on environment.

b. Is not solely on students characteristics but on the transactional relationship bettween students and their environment.

c. Campus ecology represents a perspective for students affairs that shares the professions longstanding concern for individual students, but incorporated in

a more systematic manner the importance of environment and student environment transactions.

Lewin (1936) has indicated that the setting, environment, or situations as important as the person and both must be analysed in order to understand behaviour. Lewin differs a bit with Barker’s (1968) Behaviour Setting Theory, which insists that the inhabitants are involved in more actions, stronger actions and more varied actions in order to maintain the behaviour setting. The people tend to be busier, more vigorous, more versatile, and more involved in the setting (Baker, 1968 and Walsh,1973).

The Theory of Campus Ecology was popularised by Banning (1978) to describe the interactions between the college students and the campus environment. It devoted to promoting maximum personal growth (Banning, 1980). It does not rule out or even de-emphasise the concern for the ndividual student, but it does bring to focus the concept of campus environment.

The development of campus ecology as a frame of reference to examine behaviour emerged during the mid seventies (Brown, 1992). Campus ecology has been defined by Banning and McKinley (1988) as the relations between organisms and their environment to understand the behaviour of the organism. That is the study of interaction between the environment and the members of the environment (Brown, 1992).

Lewin (1936) had explained as follows; B = F (P+ e) where (B) is a function(f) of the interaction (x) of person(p) and environment (e). A Major contribution of the

campus ecological perspective to the analysis of students unrest is a systematic and comprehensive consideration of the campus environment (Bannin and McKinley 1988) in applying Moo’ system of environment analysis that identified the following six dimensions:

i. Geographical, meteriological, architectural and physical design element; ii. Institutional and organisational structures;

iii. Combined personal and behavioural characteristics of community members. iv. Settings within the environment that shape behaviour.

v. The relationship between the psychological characteristics of faculty, staff, and student; and,

vi. A functional analysis of the environment;

A quick look at the factors in campus unrest at the University of Arusha include the changing value system of students, parental influences, faculty influences and national issues.

At institutional level, Sampson (1967) and Aluede (1995) opined that the institutional environment often provides the triggering mechanisms for activism. The institutions which have fine academic reputation, academic freedom and emphasises high academic standard often saved as magnet for potential students activists. Secondly the campuses provide an environment, which encourages intellectual curiosity and idealism and the opportunity for interaction among the students. Futhermore, the nature of the teaching environment, which include the use of teaching assistants, provide natural leaders for activists. In addition the presence of

younger faculty just Ph. D instructors and Assistant Professors (with a marginal sprinkling tenured staff as well) who rose from the ranks of the more recent protesters naturally come to continue the battle.These are the faculty that are usually seen huddled heads to heads with students activists at every planning stage. (Sampson, 1967).

Finally, the organisational structures of the institution, which include variables as size, formal power structure, communication patterns, and system of control, serve as catalyst for activism. More students want to participate in the governance for their university. More students participationin goverment is seen as a healthy one in recent years, as their participation in decision making may reduce protest over local campus issue(Sampson, 1967, Yalokwu, 1992).

A number of criticisms have been levelled against the theory of campus ecology, the first is that the theoretical postulations are not very explicit and they generally lack adequate operational definitions. For example there is still lack of adequate operational definitions of environment and the definitions of persons is often makeshift. Studies in campus ecology are especially defficient in defining the physical environment and relating it toperceived or psychological environment (Huebner, 1989).

Another shortcoming of the theory is the concept of interaction is seldom explicitly or fully spelt out. Often it is limited to operational definitions as a liberal match between group members responses to a set of items (such as goods and perceptions

of real or ideal environments) or as a match between individual and the group of some dimensions ( Banning, 1980, Banning, 1989). In many cases there are no attempts to define the process or nature of the interaction but only to observe how people react when placed in environment with certain features. In addition,explanations of the model have presented superficial interactional picture. While some relationships are hypothesized to exist between certain personal and environmental variables, the model has tended to be static, addressing single points of going mutually adaptive nature of the change experienced by persons and environment (Banning, 1980; Banning& McKinley,1988; Huebner, 1989).

The theory of campus ecology as a matter of fact, addresses issues related to teacher influence, academic stress, contemporary national issues and non participation in decision making, but neglects other factors like changing value system of students, parental influence and welfare problems, which are among the factors influencing students unrest in the universities and university of Arusha in particular. Therefore like the two theories discussed (Cognitive Dissonance and Relative Deprivation), the theory of campus ecology does not completely account for causal factors in students unrest at the University of Arusha in Tanzania.