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Irene Berkel, Universität Innsbruck
Step One: Negative Press; Step Two: Faculty Ombudspersons; Step Three: Peaceful
Coexistence
Introduction
As for me, this was the first time I took part in the annual ENOHE conference, and I was grateful about the opportunity to share ideas and experiences. I am actually not a native of Tyrol, but moved here from Berlin in 2013 to take the position of Dean of Studies at the Faculty of Education at the University of Innsbruck. Ranked by the number of students, this faculty is the third largest of 16 faculties at the university.
The story of the crisis
Only 4 months into my new job as dean, I experienced my first serious crisis: a dispute between students and faculty members. The story goes like this. A female student, who was also a mother, gave birth to her second child during the semester. Because of her motherly duties, she was not able to participate regularly in a course she was enrolled in. And at the end of the semester the course instructor refused to give the student a grade because she had not fulfilled the attendance requirements. Now, the instructor is known to be good, reliable, and uncompromising: the instructor justified the decision to not award a grade by arguing that becoming a mother could not be accepted as an excuse for missing classes that were an integral part of the learning process. As Dean of Studies, I am not only responsible for the students, but also for the faculty members, interns and externs. And in this case I stood fully behind the instructor and her decision. This situation agitated a group of students, and with the support of a sympathetic faculty member (who asked not to be named), they went to the press with their grievance. The press jumped on the story and it immediately made the headlines. In the wake of the news in the print media, private television channels called my office and asked for statements or comments. The Green Party wanted to bring it in as an issue to be discussed in the Austrian Parliament. For me, the situation had become Austrian opera at its best. To make a long story short, the pressure continued to grow over few weeks and eventually the rectorate gave in and the student got what she wanted, namely a grade and the credits for the course.
Focusing the presentation
During this crisis I had many conversations with Josef Leidenfrost.It was not the first turmoil and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Therefore I would like to give my presentation a little twist. In the main part of my talk now I would like, as a first step, to analyze, from a psychoanalytical perspective, our conflictive institutional setting and why the students have been using the press as an outlet for their anger and as a leveraging tool to force actions. In a second step I would like to give you some insights into my strategic response to overcome the conflictive setting, which was to implement two ombudspersons, one male and one female. And in a third step I would like to convey my hopes for how the ombudspersons might play a role in developing a better relation between students and faculty members at ourfaculty.
Conflictive setting and negative press
The conflictive setting
The Faculty of Education has a troubled history. Its main institut wasfirst split in two institutes and the two institutes then merged by institutional demands and forces rather than by free choice. Thus, the faculty felt split and disjointed, not only physically, but also mentally for years. In my work as dean of studies, I have had to deal extensively with long lasting conflicts and continuing differences between certain members of the staff. These conflicts were so obtrusive, omnipresent and to some extent they still are, that I am inclined to think they are at least partly mirrored in the fragile disposition, the restlessness, and the discontentment of the students.
In order to understand the situation better, one should take into account cultural and sociopoliticalconditions of Tyrol.Manyfemale students try to combinetheir studies with starting a family and havingchildren. But unfortunately there are too little facilities, which would support the students and theireffort to bring both together. So they are sometimes lost.
Second: A relatively largenumber of students, called the Di-Mi-Do-Fraktion (Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday students), visit Innsbruck three days a week and after classes on Thursdaythey return to their hometown. In this way theycan hardlydevelop a student identity.For these reasons my colleagues and I have been confronted with numerous requests for exceptions. To tell you the truth: The exceptionshave becomethe rule.
Third: The faculty maintained a liberal critical tradition which went along with a laissez faire style. Metaphorically speaking, there were many signs for students and each of them led in a different direction.
But back to the case: universities and faculties are scared by the students’new behaviour changing internal faculty affairs in external ones, and in doing so causing negative press articles, which damage the faculty as well as the university. Naturally the decision to give the student the grade for the course changed the atmosphere within the faculty. After the case was closed mistrust and suspicion still remained and gained the upperhand. Lecturers felt insecure about how to deal with problematic cases; they wondered if under these circumstances they could stick to the rules any longer and this all the more because some faculty members supported the student’s initiative. After all it became quite obviously that other students, who were discontented and dissatisfied with one or the another decision, threatened the facultyby using the same means – of course they didn’t say it frankly but between the lines one could read the message.
Implementation of two ombudspersons, gendered, one female and one male
More recently, a second case arose; it was much less dramatic, but it was still annoying: students sent photographs of overfilled garbagecans in a classroom to the newspaper, which was more than happy to coverthe story. It was then that I decided to appoint two very likeable, friendly faculty members to take on the function as Ombudsman and Ombudswoman, where students could submit their complaints anonymously and confidentially. Now we even have a hotline although it works only for an hour a week, but students are able to contact the Ombudspersons by e-mail day and night.
I implemented this function as a pedagogical instrument, to make it more difficult for students to rush in case of a conflict in a mindless and bad mood right to the top, to the office of the Vice Rectorfor Teaching and Students or to the press. Besides that, I talked a lot with the student representatives and other students about what we (the faculty) and society associate with students and academics: we expect reflection instead of reaction or thoughtlessaction.
Reasons for the behavior
What are the reasons for this new behaviour? As part of the sociocultural developments and the Bologna Process the relation between students and lecturers is undergoing a significant and lasting change. For the last few years on the one hand students have been called clients and treated like customers with growing rights and demands. To study means to consume a Bachelor or a Master degree course as quick as possible to gather the next one. On the other hand more and more of the lecturers were treated badly and were put into a growing precarious situation. As we all know universities lay the main focus on efficiency in research while teaching is becoming more and more a stepchild. In such a demanded discipline like education the teacher-student-ratio is almost unbearable owingto our chronically underfinanced situation. Based on theseconditions students and teachers are constantly swamped. Under these circumstances we are facing the disappearance of the pedagogical eros or from a psychoanalytical perspective the transference between students and teachers is changing. How can a teacher with an unstable precarious job in a time where the social importance and reputation of the liberal arts are waning still be seen as a positive rolemodel by students? Both sides are too exhausted to socialize and make bonds. I am quite sure that in some ways the overreactions of students must be seen as an unconscious attempt to get in touch with the faculty staff, as a cry for communication as a try to overcome the anonymous institution. In a massinstitution under conditions I explained in the first chapter they are to a certain extent lost. The permanent rivalry amongst the faculty staff spoils the solidarity and the social ties too. Under the current discrepancy between the huge number of students and the small group of teachers, establishing the Ombudsservice has been the right decision and very best solution. I am convinced that yetit’s mere existence brought relief to all of us. Even though until now there are not that many cases to report, the knowing and certainty, that there is a place, a third space, provided some remedy. As the famous British psychoanalyst Wilfred Bion would put it, each Ombudsperson serves as a container, where students can project their socalled alpha-elements like raw feelings, undigested anger, hate against rules and authority, despair, unrealistic expectations into the container, and the function of the ombudsperson is to digest the “alpha-elements”and to transform theminto “beta elements”, in thoughts with calming effects, and to help them to acceptrules and limits, to develop a tolerance for conflicts.
Peaceful Coexistence
As I explained in the chapter before the Ombudservice is very helpful. It represents and opens another way of handling conflicts than the hysterical actions students were used to before (when I am talking about these students I always have a comparatively small group in mind). It stands for what students should learn and at the end of their studies be: reasonable, responsible, mature persons, who can reflect on their behaviour and find appropriate solutions. To implement the Ombudspersons was part of initiating a cultural change, of improving the communication at the faculty as a whole. At the time we are in a more or less peaceful coexistence, but I don’t think that this willbe enough. It’s a learning process that needs more time, to learn that every member of the faculty if student or teacher is responsible for the whole. If the rush to the press to attack the faculty, they belittle themselves too, because as long as they are a student and member of the faculty, they are a part of and responsible for it. What this all means is that I am now working very hard on changing the state of mind, creating a benign atmosphere and mobilizing students as well as teachers to become a constructive and fair part of the faculty.