Mediation on Campus

By Joan Fumia

I have often reviewed web sites that deal different forms of conflict resolution in the school setting. I am always on the lookout for such sites for two reasons. First, I feel that learning conflict resolution skills early, in elementary school or even preschool, can enhance children's overall development as well as be a preventative for violence in the schools. Secondly, I believe that adolescents and young adults, as students learning about themselves and the world around them, are particularly amenable to acquiring the interpersonal skills and underlying values associated with conflict resolution. Thanks to two very helpful readers of this column, I have several sites to highlight this month that are related either directly or indirectly to the use of mediation in an academic setting.

  
The first site I will review is, in fact, called Campus Mediation Resources. It can be found at http://www.mtds.wayne.edu/campus.htm I have actually mentioned this site in an earlier article, but it is even more comprehensive now and deserves current recognition. The site is developed and maintained by Dr. Bill Warters, a professor in the College of Urban, Labor, and Metropolitan Affairs at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI. Although the site is quite "busy," with every page filled with lists of links to other sites, I think it is safe to say it is the predominant site for any topic related to campus mediation. The site is completely searchable and provides links to articles and programs on the topic of campus mediation, sample campus mediation documents, conflict resolution policies at different institutions, as well as links to general conflict resolution sites.

The following sites all provide information about a new form of conflict resolution called narrative mediation:

http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za/two/8_1/p36_skills.html

http://www.mediate.com/articles/cloke.cfm/

http://www.mediate.com/tan/articles/monk.cfm/

As I understand the procedure from reading the three articles, through the process of telling and retelling of a conflict in different ways, by the questioning of underlying values and attitudes as well as the factual components of a dispute, and through active listening on the part of all involved in a mediation, i.e. the parties and the mediator/facilitator, the parties can be encouraged to shed preset roles and expectations that can obstruct resolution and engage in real transformative processes.

Narrative mediation is a technique that was first used in therapeutic contexts and has been adjusted for use in conflict resolution, with apparently good results with young adults. From the descriptions of the approach, I would expect that college students, who are already in the mode of searching and learning, would be especially good candidates for this form of mediation.