This campus must be a Beautiful Object

Overlooked binary oppositions in a university protest

Despite some hesitation, I want to write about the encampment protests seen on college campuses since April. If you weren’t aware, the phenomenon of college students occupying campus spaces as an act of protest against Israel’s actions in Palestine began at Columbia University in April. The heavy police response against student protesters there led groups on other campuses around the country to replicate the effort as an act of solidarity.

Indiana University had a similar encampment which also saw police intervention and disruption. While many campuses saw disruption, I’d like to reflect on what happened here specifically.

The negative reaction to police arresting IU students and staff led the administration to leave the encampment alone for several months. Once the academic year ended, a small group maintained and occupied tents on a Dunn Meadow, adjacent to the student union building.

At least they did until August 1.

The Indiana University Board of Trustees passed a new “expressive action” policy that made encampments like the one on Dunn Meadow impermissible without approval. Then, almost immediately after that policy’s passage, they removed the remaining tents and fenced off the area.

Along the perimeter, the university also posted signs to explain the fencing:

Oftentimes when conflicts like this are described, we use the language of binary opposition. For example “liberal vs. conservative” or “pro-Israel vs. Pro-Palestine.”

It’s true that you wouldn’t have a conflict without a disagreement, essentially boiling down to “this not that.” The issue is not that binary oppositions exist; they’re inevitable. The issue is how easy it is to ascribe oppositions that mischaracterize parties involved.

So, if we look at the encampment movement and reaction, it’s easy to make a mistake. If encampments are labeled as “pro-Palestinian,” then any reaction against them must be “anti-Palestinian.”

Right?

Or perhaps it’s possible that the sides involved in these conflicts participate in more binary oppositions than first meet the eye.

Rebels with a cause

I want to start by thinking about the ways that students identify with their institution. In the higher ed classic, Campus Life, Helen Horowitz examines the history of how students relate to their colleges. In very broad strokes, she looks at students who align themselves with the institution (insiders), students who define themselves by their opposition to the institution (rebels), and students who see their relationship with the institution as merely transactional (outsiders).

Using this framework can allow for more generalized descriptions of inter-party conflict on campus, instead of being beholden to the particulars of every scenario.

So, if we start by looking at the protesters in our case, we would classify them as rebels. Horowitz would even go further to classify them as “revolutionary” because they hope to combine concerns from the world outside campus (Palestine) and use that to inform their opposition to campus policies.

It’s worth noting that however revolutionary they are, these students still have an emotional stake in the state of their university. They believe that the institution has value, or at least that their values should be reflected by the institution. They expect to have a relationship with the university, even if that relationship is oppositional.

Celebrating the Past

Maybe a more useful binary opposition, then, is “insider vs. rebel.” If stakeholders with a “rebel” inclination will be predisposed to call for institutional transformation, then those with an “insider” inclination will default to defending the status quo. In fact, they are more likely to see the very act of politicized demands for institutional change as being suspect.

Let’s assume, for the moment, that a university’s administration is largely made up of insiders. Due to a vested interest in the university being perceived positively, they are more likely to see it as being “essentially good” and worthy of celebration for what it already is.

So when we see a sign on a fence saying that the university is restoring Dunn Meadow to its “original condition,” there’s an assumption that the status quo ante was good and that a deviation from that, even if it’s just some patches of dead grass, is bad and requires intervention. The encampment’s effort toward institutional transformation must be reversed so that the insider can once again recognize the past in the present.

Change is Ugly

The language of “restoration” also carries an assumption that the campus must be beautiful.

An all-campus email about the fenced-off area warned students and staff that “our beloved campus” was being “repaired” now that the “temporary structures” were removed. If something is “temporary,” it isn’t “permanent.” The institutional insiders see themselves as permanent, operating out of a desire for continuity with the past so that stakeholders will continue to recognize their “beloved campus” from one era to the next.

To be “beloved,” you must also be “pleasant.” Let’s look at a recent picture of Dunn Meadow once more:

As far as serving its purpose of “being a solid object you can walk on,” the meadow is fine. You could still host a club fair here. You could play frisbee here.

But you wouldn’t look at it and say “Wow!” It is not beautiful.

You might rightly ask how much of the damage came from the encampment and how much came from the heavy equipment driven there to remove the encampment, but nonetheless, the meadow was damaged, and now it is not beautiful.

Continuity is Beautiful

This is the part where I make my own contention:

I think that college insiders are much more likely to conceive of their campus as a “beautiful object.”

What I mean is that they perceive the campus as valuable in itself. Its value is not primarily oriented toward an ideological or economic end; the campus is valuable because it is valuable. It functions like treasure. Why is gold valuable? Because of its value.

Gold is also valuable because it is rare. And beautiful.

To confirm the value of the campus for all to see, it must be made to shine. It must have unique buildings, charming walkways, state of the art technology, and striking art.

The insider administration makes a beautiful campus because they believe the university has an essential worth that justifies that polishing. In turn, generations of students see themselves as insiders who belong to a beautiful campus and treasure it for its beauty.

And it’s not just students or leadership. Staff and local residents can feel an ownership over the beautiful campus, even if they never attended as students, because they spend time maintaining or enjoying it. The campus is local just as they are local, and they can reflect the beauty of this beautiful object.

So, when students want to put tents on the green grassy meadow and spray paint the sidewalks, there’s going to be opposition from insiders. I’m not sure the subject of the protest matters as much as the fact that it makes the campus less “beautiful.” That can create an opposition, though its impetus may be hard to discern in the moment.

To whom are you speaking?

The final binary opposition I want to consider is “localism vs. cosmopolitanism.”

I’ve already written about the insider valuing the campus in itself. While the insider may not originally be a local, they essentially see themselves as belonging locally through the association with the campus. They are also likely to see this campus as being more valuable, or at least holding a more special place in their heart, than other campuses elsewhere.

So, insiders who hope to defend the Beautiful Object speak to other people with local commitments, wherever they may be, to justify their actions of “preservation and restoration.”

By contrast, the rebelliously-inclined folks on campus are more likely to see themselves as “cosmopolitan.” This means that they think of themselves as belonging to some broader body of persons. They may be currently located on this campus, but they don’t see any specific university as deserving an exceptional loyalty.

Instead, they can be loyal to a discipline or a social movement or an identity group. You can see this with some faculty who will be more connected to their academic peers on other campuses than to faculty in other fields on their same campus. Students, too, may be more concerned with how their student peers are treated at Columbia than they are with local events.

This is a cosmopolitanism in which people will associate themselves with broadly-dispersed intellectual endeavors rather than with locally-concentrated institutions.

So, let’s say the insider is mostly talking to locally-aligned persons about a physical environment. And the rebel is talking to broadly-dispersed persons about a social enterprise.

If that’s the case, both parties are talking past each other. They can’t compromise because they are not speaking the same language. Their concerns are mutually unintelligible.

Despite everything, most folks just go to class

As a final note, it’s important to retain some perspective. If the insider and rebel are binarily opposed, they ignore Horowitz’s third category: the outsider.

The thing the insider and rebel share is that they care. Most students’ relationship to the campus is not one of deep emotional investment. Most students spend some time here, hope it’s pleasant, and expect to earn some credentials in exchange for payment. While they’d prefer an attractive campus to an ugly one, that’s not the biggest reason they are here.

They are here because IU has a good business school. Or because they got a scholarship. Or because it made sense to capitalize on the in-state tuition rate.

So much of the public discourse around higher education, especially where it concerns free speech on campus, fixates on insider/rebel conflicts. This can create an unrepresentative image of what actually goes on at this beautiful object of an institution.

Mostly people just show up and do their work and go home.

For most, their emotional energy is directed elsewhere.

For most, the university is just another place. Not a place to be transformed or preserved.

Just a place.

-Matt