ACTIVIDAD CONCRETA REALIZADA PROPUESTA MEDIDA
14. PROPUESTAS DE ACCIÓN
The twofold purpose of this dissertation has been to motivate a sociospatial perspective and to evaluate contemporary campus issues involving student groups and their host institutions from this perspective. I have drawn on a wide range of scholarly insights in order to elucidate the complexity of these campus issues. Some of these insights have stressed the importance and dynamics of voluntary association. Other insights have shed light on how public liberties and public spaces intersect. Still others have uncovered how spatial tactics effectuate social and political control. My intuition has been that blending these insights equips us to address the campus challenges at the center of this dissertation in a more satisfactory, rounded manner.
Several key moves have given this dissertation a sharper focus and a more distinctive character. First, I merged considerations about voluntary associations and concrete social spaces, proposing that the activities of these associations have a necessary spatial component. I then suggested that the practice of meaningful association hinges upon amenable, accessible spaces. Second, I zeroed in on university campuses, which are socially and spatially complex places that have received insufficient attention from political theorists. To narrow the scope of analysis even further, I focused on associational issues that unfold beyond the university classroom.
Third, I stressed the importance of meaningful association (as something distinct from speech) for student groups in order to countervail common tendencies to either subsume the associative interests of student groups under speech interests, misconstrue associative interests as speech interests, or ignore these associative interests altogether. At least in the U.S., the speech
interests of students and student groups receive ample and ongoing attention while their
associative interests often receive little or none. Relatedly, I offered a conception of meaningful association that is not informed or constrained by common First Amendment doctrines such as expressive association doctrine. While expression is often integral to meaningful association, meaningful association encompasses more than expression. Students have important reasons for practicing meaningful association (e.g., finding belonging and purpose) that are distinct from their desire to express a viewpoint.
Fourth, I explained how RSO policies in particular function as sociospatial regulations. I argued that these policies can impose unfair burdens on meaningful association for a diversity of student groups. These burdens become more visible—and less defensible—once we grasp the importance and dynamics of meaningful campus association. I focused on RSO policies not only because of their pervasiveness and detrimental effects but also because their normative
underpinnings need revision. I also envisaged capacious pluralism as a campus-specific conception of pluralism that should guide universities in their treatment of student groups.
As a final move, I proposed a few neighborly practices that could help student groups as they learn to live together in the midst of inter-group tensions and differences. In discussing neighborliness, I shifted the focus from the internal characteristics of student groups to their interactions with each other and the campus environment more generally. I argued that student groups seeking a place on campus should practice neighborliness irrespective of their internal characteristics. I also suggested that universities should encourage neighborliness among student groups without unduly encroaching upon their internal affairs.
I conclude this dissertation by offering six prescriptions that encapsulate some of the central ideas presented in chapters two through four. Some of these prescriptions are followed by
acknowledgments and clarifying examples. I then recommend two already-existing practices that could make campuses more pluralistic, public, and democratic places.
Concluding Prescriptions and Acknowledgments
Prescription One: In order to enable meaningful campus association, universities should respect the coherence interests of student groups, recognizing that student groups need to maintain cohesion between their respective purposes, values, and membership/leadership. Identificatory student groups in particular should have substantial autonomy in maintaining their coherence interests. Outsiders who find the purposes, values, and membership/leadership standards of a particular identificatory student group to be abhorrent or wrong-headed rarely have compelling reasons for joining or leading such a group. In contrast, identificatory student groups often have compelling reasons for preventing such outsiders from joining or leading their groups.
A few examples should clarify this prescription and its implications.As a first example, consider Black Campus Ministries at San Diego State University. The group provides “a space for black students to explore the relevance of God as they pursue justice and reconciliation both within and outside of the black community on the campus of San Diego State University (SDSU) by creating an environment that is supportive, but challenging for students of African descent on the campus of San Diego State University, organizing programs that enhance an individual’s spiritual growth, social support, and personal confidence, and exposing the students of African descent to role models that exemplify and glorify Christ in their everyday lives.”294 Given its core purpose, the group should be able to restrict its membership and/or leadership to students of
294“Recognized Student Organizations | San Diego State University,” accessed February 24, 2019, https://stuapp.sdsu.edu/rso/search/list.
African descent. The group might decide to open its membership and/or leadership to students who are not of African descent, but this decision should be made internally.
As a second example, consider student chapters of Christian Legal Society. The stated purpose of these chapters is “to develop and maintain a vibrant Christian law student presence on campus, enabling its members, individually and as a group, to love the Lord with their whole beings--hearts, souls, and minds--and to love their neighbors as themselves.”295 Consonant with this purpose, officers are required to subscribe to the CLS Statement of Faith and to affirm the CLS Community Life Statement.296 Given the cohesion between their core purpose and their belief/conduct requirements, student chapters of CLS should be able to restrict leadership to students who adhere to the stipulated belief/conduct requirements. Students who reject these requirements do not have compelling reasons to lead the group and can simply join or form other student groups.
The Women of Color Initiative at the University of California Hastings College of the Law provides a third example. The group defines itself as “a safe and confidential space for self- identified women of color at UC Hastings College of Law” with the mission to “create a support system for self-identified women of color law students so that each woman of color thrives while at law school and thereafter.”297 Given that the group is “for self-identified women of color law students,” it should be able to restrict its membership and/or leadership to self-identified women
295See documents at https://www.clsnet.org/document.doc?id=380.
296“Community Life Statement - Christian Legal Society,” accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.clsnet.org/page.aspx?pid=494.
of color law students. The group might decide to open its membership and/or leadership to law student who are not self-identified women of color, but this decision should be made internally.
Several acknowledgements are in order. First, as seen in the above examples, there should be a correspondence between the purposes, values, and membership/leadership criteria of a student group. A group’s membership/leadership criteria might warrant scrutiny when it does not align with the group’s core purposes and values. Given their respective purposes, Black Campus Ministries would not have a compelling reason for restricting its membership or leadership to men, but the Women of Color Initiative would have a compelling reason for
restricting its membership or leadership to (self-identified) women. A lack of cohesion between a group’s purposes and its membership/leadership criteria could be evidence of insidious
discrimination.298 But a student group’s selection of members and leaders who align with its core purposes should not be taken as proof of such discrimination.
Second, the most alarming feature of a student group might be its purposes and values rather than its membership/leadership criteria. Consider a “white student union” like the one founded (unofficially) at Georgia State University. The group’s purpose is to “provide a place for like-minded White students to come together and not only celebrate their common
European/Euro-American cultures, but to discuss issues that affect white people in the world today.”299 The presence of such a student group on campus should elicit concern. But the main cause of concern should not be the group’s membership/leadership criteria but its core purpose and values. The group would be no less disturbing if it were to open its membership and
298Cécile Laborde defines “insidious discrimination” as “discrimination undertaken for pretextual reasons that have nothing to do with the association’s commitments.” Laborde, Liberalism’s Religion, 188.
299Hunter Stuart, “Unofficial White Student Union Forms at Georgia State University,” Huffington Post, August 1, 2013, sec. College, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/01/white-student-union-georgia-state-
leadership to all students regardless of race. It may, in fact, have formally open membership and leadership.
It should be noted that university policies aimed at making student groups more inclusive do not resolve or even address concerns about white supremacist student groups or other student groups with malignant ideologies. Perhaps one reason for this is that, under current First
Amendment free speech doctrine, public colleges and universities in the U.S. are not allowed to discriminate against a student group based on the group’s viewpoint. This means that a student group committed to white supremacy could probably secure official recognition at a public college or university so long as it complied with the formal stipulations attached to recognition, including membership/leadership stipulations. My purpose here, however, is not to consider whether public colleges and universities should be allowed to discriminate based on viewpoint. This issue has been discussed extensively by other scholars and has not been a focal point of this dissertation.300
Third, I suggest that public and private universities alike should respect the coherence interests of student groups absent clear, compelling reasons or commitments to the contrary. The coherence interests of student groups are no less important at private universities than at public ones. Admittedly, I have not delved into questions about whether universities should be legally obligated to respect the coherence interests of student groups. But it does seem that student groups need legal protection in order to safeguard their integrity from undue university encroachment.
300See, e.g., Chemerinsky and Gillman, Free Speech on Campus; Whittington, Speak Freely: Why Universities Must Defend Free Speech.
Prescription Two: Universities should make their campuses generally accessible to student groups, recognizing that campus space is essential to meaningful association. As much as possible, campus spaces should enable both the private and public activities of student groups. This means that student groups should have easy, affordable access to meeting rooms and other on-campus spaces. But this does not mean that universities need to create designated, brick-and- mortar safe spaces for particular student groups. Access to campus spaces integral to
meaningful association should not be construed as a privilege, benefit, or amenity.
Prescription Three: Universities should draw sharp, clear distinctions between student groups and their own institutional structures, programs, and operations, recognizing that student groups are not only distinct from universities but also markedly different types of entities than universities. Universities should not confuse student groups with university forums or resources. Universities that characterize student groups as official units of their institutions risk
compromising the integrity of student groups as well as their own institutional integrity.
Prescription Four: Universities should revise their practices of sociospatial campus governance—and the assumptions that inform these practices—in light of the above
considerations. In particular, universities should revise their registered student organization programs. They should then apply the policies related to these programs in a fair, even-handed manner rather than targeting certain student groups through the selective application of their policies. They should also avoid using their registered student organization programs to co-opt or instrumentalize student groups.
I offer two acknowledgments related to this prescription. First, a student group’s exercise of meaningful association on campus should not intrude upon the meaningful association of other groups, inflict physical harm, or disrupt normal campus operations. On this point, Healy v. James offers useful guidance: “Associational activities need not be tolerated where they infringe reasonable campus rules, interrupt classes, or substantially interfere with the opportunity of other students to obtain an education.”301
Second, I recognize that universities may have compelling reasons for employing time, place, and manner regulations in order to ensure campus safety, protect property, and enable normal campus operations.302 These regulations should always be used carefully and
transparently. They should not be used to chill expressive activities, target particular student groups, or shut down unpopular or dissenting viewpoints.
Prescription Five: Universities should respect student groups as major sources of the plurality constitutive of campus pluralism, recognizing that the distinctive viewpoints, values, frames of reference, and practices of these groups are the basic ingredients of genuine pluralism. An institutional commitment to campus pluralism should enable meaningful association for a diversity of student groups on campus. Such a commitment should restrict—rather than rationalize—institutional interference with the internal purposes, structures, and practices of student groups.
301Healy v. James, 408 U.S. 169 (U.S. 1972) at 189.
302A time, place, or manner restriction is a “restriction on the time, place, or manner of expression that is justified when it is neutral as to content and serves a significant government interest and leaves open ample alternative channels of communication [an injunction excluding demonstrators from the front of the building was held to be a reasonable time, place, or manner restriction] called also time, place, and manner restriction.” “Time, Place, Or Manner Restriction,” Findlaw, accessed December 2, 2018, https://dictionary.findlaw.com/definition/time-place-or- manner-restriction.html.
Two acknowledgements are in order. First, a university might commit to capacious campus pluralism but take issue with particular student groups whose purposes or viewpoints are at odds with its core institutional values. Its institutional values might therefore color its
enactment of capacious campus pluralism. In general, however, I suggest that universities should adopt a tolerant posture even toward dissenting or nonconforming student groups. The presence of such groups on campus could place healthy limits on the university’s institutional power, prevent the university from overdetermining the campus environment, and ensure that the university models its own institutional values. Student groups at odds with university values are often most vulnerable and most in need of protection from the university.
Second, I have not argued that all universities must commit to capacious campus
pluralism but that they should commit to it. Capacious campus pluralism is a prescription, not a mandate. Universities should not be compelled to enact capacious campus pluralism, but they should be encouraged to do so. Overall, I suggest that public and private universities alike should foster capacious campus pluralism absent transparent, compelling reasons or commitments to the contrary.
Prescription Six: Universities should foster neighborliness among student groups by
commending neighborly norms and practices and maintaining the sociospatial complexity of the campus setting. In their assessment of student groups, universities should assign more weight to a group’s actual and ongoing commitment to neighborliness and less weight to its formal organizational characteristics (e.g., membership criteria).
Final Considerations
I conclude by recommending two constructive possibilities—“placemaking” and “common life” politics—that are compatible with the arguments presented in the previous chapters. Though distinct, placemaking and common life politics are similar in that they are place-based, sensitive to local cultures, amenable to plurality, nonpartisan, and practice-driven. My purpose here is not to detail the philosophical or practical features of either placemaking or common life politics. Rather, my purpose is to suggest that placemaking and common life politics can make campuses more vibrant, meaningful places while also fostering a sense of community among the people and groups attached to these places.
Project for Public Spaces (PPS), which has been a leading proponent of placemaking for decades, offers the following overview of placemaking:
Placemaking inspires people to collectively reimagine and reinvent public spaces as the heart of every community. Strengthening the connection between people and the places they share, placemaking refers to a collaborative process by which we can shape our public realm in order to maximize shared value. More than just promoting better urban design, placemaking facilitates creative patterns of use, paying particular attention to the physical, cultural, and social identities that define a place and support its ongoing
evolution.303
Understood in this sense, a key feature of placemaking is that it is a place-led, community-based process. According to PPS, this process “turns proximity into purpose, and the planning and management of shared public spaces into a group activity that builds social capital and shared values. Local participants in this process feel invested in the resulting public space, and are more likely to serve as its stewards.”304 Community stakeholders do not merely give input to experts such as designers and architects. Rather, they lead the entire process of placemaking, and the
303“What Is Placemaking,” Project for Public Spaces, accessed December 2, 2018, https://www.pps.org/category/placemaking.
success of placemaking hinges on their ongoing engagement. This community-led process corresponds with an important observation made by Stephen Carr: that “meaningful connections between people and places are promoted by user participation in design and management.”305
Project for Public Spaces has inspired placemaking efforts within thousands of
communities, including some of Detroit’s neighborhoods. For instance, the citizen group People for Palmers Park recently collaborated with the Detroit Recreation Department to “transform an historic but long-neglected green space into a bustling neighborhood center.”306 The vitalization of Palmers Park hinged on the sustained efforts of neighborhood volunteers; these volunteers did the actual work of transforming Palmers Park into a meaningful place. The park’s transformation was also attuned to specific concerns raised by people living in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Universities including Harvard University and Wayne State University have also fostered placemaking on their campuses. In collaboration with Project for Public Spaces, Harvard