Tell Your Story

It is important to me to seen as reasonable, logical and effective.
As an Area Coordinator in the Department of Housing and Residence Life, I am responsible for the First Year Program – that is, I am consistently viewing the experience of newly-initiated adults into what they understand to be “the real world”. I have quickly recognized that the perceptions of young adults about what college is and the goals of a collegiate community do not align with the standards and procedures the real world follows. In many ways, it is my job to show them the inconsistencies between college and the real world – college policies are indeed more restrictive than laws – and I find it necessary to elaborate on why there is such a stark difference.

For example, students are not allowed to smoke on campus. Federal law states those over the age of 18 can smoke legally. Why would a university restrict the rights they have as Americans?
I can relate to such reasoning. In my past (and still) I have been (infamously) deemed an activist, a rebel rouser, and a muckraker. I strongly believe in the individual rights of people and the right to live one’s life freely without interference from others. I often rely on appeals to emotion, namely in the form of this statement: “If _____ doesn’t affect your life, why should you care if I do it?”
As I reflect upon my personal thought of individualism, a response calls within the back of my mind. Is my general statement valid? Perhaps I want to believe that anyone should be allowed to do what they want to do because I want to do whatever I want to do. For example, I want to speed for I can get to my destination. I do not think my speeding affects anyone else. Does anything we do only affect us? I fail to consider how others may feel unsafe on the road because of my speeding. There may be new drivers who are nervous and fearful of my careening around them. Even on a macro level, I refuse to notice how speeding increases exhaust, which adds contaminants to the air that my community breathes in. Speeding decreases my miles per gallon, increasing (ever so slightly) our nation’s dependence on oil Slippery slope? Perhaps. There are also solutions. I should leave earlier. I should shower at night. Perhaps there are legitimate purposes for why I should stop driving fast, and they are why there are driving laws. Someone is trying to protect me from myself, and protect society from people like me. The same goes for our university ruling on smoking. But what is the purpose of our policy?
We care because it does affect us as a university and our reputation could go up in smoke if we are not preparing our students for their reality. I was thoroughly educated on reasoning for this policy; it is clear that the University has analyzed the benefits to enforcing this rule. Our school is unique in such pointed specialization of studies. In the aerospace, engineering and aviation industry, many top companies are smoke free. Union Pacific, DuPont, Dow, Boeing, Texas Instruments and Sharper Image and others have tobacco-free policies. Why would we allow our students to blindly enter fields carrying blunt detrimental habits [pun intended]? I defend our stance with facts, devoid of my personal opinion. It would make sense for STEM-focused careers to take such a stance: smoking has been proven hazardous to both active smokers and non-smokers through secondhand smoke. On both college campuses and in the workplace, smoke is a common allergen and just particle of ash on clothing and nearby material can irritate others. Cigarettes smell foul and can be offensive to others who may need to share facilities with smokers.

Thinking about the specifics of how my explanation will resonate with the students in important to gaining understanding. As Nosich states in his appeal to being precise, I flex from general to specific reasoning for an institutions actions for making policy. College and work environments save money as smoke-free facilities. Maintenance costs go down when companies do not have to worry about cigarette butts, matches and ash on their premises. When a long-term smoking employee or housing resident leaves, their office may smell of tobacco, and companies need to spend more time and money cleaning (and possibly replacing) this furniture. They also do not have to provide separate receptacles for smokers to dispose of their butts. Where the likelihood of an accidental fire and spread is high, a policy prohibiting smoking avoids costly damage to the community as a whole. Life and health insurance usually ask if employees are smokers. Smokers have higher policy rates than non-smokers. In both the classroom, residence hall, meeting room and bathroom, those who smoke may be stereotyped as unhealthy, unclean or unsympathetic to those who they expose their irritants.
We protect our students and staff from health problems, protect the facilities from unnecessary wear and damage, and lower operation costs, which directly benefits students. No one wants tuition to rise.This conjecture of thought appeals to the average student's (an consumer's) non-critical thinking standards - appealing to personal benefit. I also appeal to the circumstances that are attention getting. Imagine the millions of dollars in planes alone that could go up in smoke by someone failing to put out a smoldering tobacco product! This example is particularly relevant to the Prescott campus, as only a little more than a year ago, a forest fire occurred across the street from campus, killing 19 firefighters.
My job is to teach outside of the classroom, the decorum needed to function as a member of society, as a leader and as an employee. Being reasonable to complaints about why policy is as it stands allows me to see where the complaints the students make originate from while also seeing the usefulness of such policies. Being logical allows me to convince them that they policies that may land them in my office today may allow them to keep their dream job (and good health) in the future. Exercising effectiveness notes that I will be clear in my purpose; I will not waste a student’s time with telling them information that is not relevant to them and their future. Though students may not always want to hear what I have to say, my job is to successfully represent the purpose and mission of the university, which is to retain our students until they complete a degree program, and disperse competent STEM leaders out into their chosen career field.

References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2010). Implementing a  Tobacco-Free Campus Initiative   in Your  Workplace. Reviewed at      www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/hwi/toolkits/tobacco/index.htm

Suskie, L. (2004). Assessing student learning: A common sense  guide. Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Company, Inc. 

Nosich, G. (2012). Learning to Think Things Through.  Boston,  MA:  Pearson Education, Inc.

US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease  Control and Prevention (2005).     CDC Tobacco-free Campus  Policy. Reviewed at      
 www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpao/hwi/downloads/CDC_tobacco_polic  y.pdf

Intellectual Perseverance

Intellectual Perseverance: Having a consciousness of the need to use intellectual insights and truths in spite of difficulties, obstacles, and frustrations; firm adherence to rational principles despite the irrational opposition of others; a sense of the need to struggle with confusion and unsettled questions over an extended period of time to achieve deeper understanding or insight.

This definition of intellectual perseverance leaves me with many questions. Am I capable of separating fact from belief? I would assume that as a person with a background in journalism, the answer should be clear. I have been formally trained to keep a discerning eye and to realize the objective and subjective portions of conversation and thought. But is this true of even the most prevalent and professional media? Are FOX, MSNBC, CNN, BBC and Al Jazeera all highlighting the same stories? Are they all deemed fair and balanced? Do they report without bias, without a modus operandi? I struggle to say that I view each outlet as equal to the others. I watch each with a different set of glasses. I regard BBC as the least bias on American issues. I am quite critical of FOX News, as I find their reports quite slanted toward the conservative, 1950s heyday American. I appreciate Al Jazeera’s focus on G8 influence in the Middle East, as I believe “truth is on the side of the oppressed,” as Civil Right-era leader Malcolm X noted.

The declaration to “firm adherence to rational principles” against an apparent ignorant and irrational public seems unattainable. Perhaps I need to ask myself: What is a rational principle? The Free Dictionary states rational as “Having or exercising the ability to reason,” or to be “Of sound mind; sane.” I wonder, if the example given, “man is a rational being” is true statement.  Our macro actions, then, should show that we are rational. Is war rational? In this country alone, I see us split. According to a 2006 CNN poll, sixty percent of Americans opposed the U.S. war in Iraq. Perhaps if we described the action in detail without using such a general word, we would sway opinion on its legitimacy. Is the act of slaughtering foreign (and at times, domestic) strangers to solve issues that no one fighting caused, which drains tax dollars from education and social security, a concrete route to peace and a stable economy?

What about abortion? A 2014 Gallup poll states Americans are split on this issue: 47% are pro-choice, 46% are pro-life. Is it better to be a defender of a woman, or a potential life? Or is it all semantics for murder? Is pro-life the same as anti-woman? How does the wording of an issue affect where we stand on it? How does one find the rational answer of what is right and wrong on an issue with so many passionate arguers?

According to Sir Karl Popper, an Austrian-British philosopher and professor at the London School of Economics (regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century) his 'principle of rationality' empirically bare and untrue in the social arena, but even so, useful. Popper was applying his theory to natural science, but then segments social science into how scientists or social scientists (which I would argue, all leaders are) understand and solve issues. Popper states “there is only one way of learning to understand a problem… and that is to try to solve it and fail.”

Then intellectual perseverance must be the ability to seek the facts, build a grand defense for one’s argument, presenting not only the information which supports your reasoning, but the reasoning against your stance. It also involves expressing your biases before your conversational adversary does, and accounting for why your research is devoid influence from your personal biases. This complex process directly ties back to a leading researcher in critical thinking, Richard Paul, who stated that “critical thinking is thinking about your thinking while you're thinking in order to make your thinking better.” How does one think about their think while in conversation? I suppose I have always attempted to filter my replies and defenses with listening to the entire complaint or argument or the other(s), questioning how my defense of opinion may be perceived due to a plethora of traits. I often question how passionate or invested I should be into conversation which directly affects my being. I am passionate about women’s, minority and religious issues because I am a multicultural woman from a non-Christian background in America. I feel far more comfortable in discussion about minority groups I do not represent, because I feel that others will see me as less-invested in issues involving other minority groups because I think they assume I am only interested in defending “my groups;” however, I see all minority groups (as equally-yoked in defensibility.

So again I ask myself: What is Intellectual Perseverance? Perhaps it is the ability to be vigilant of the inherent biases in ourselves and in others, and the realization that one’s truth may not align with reality, while also noting that our reality may not be identical to others.

References

CNN.com (2006). Poll: 60 percent of Americans oppose Iraq war. Retrieved from            http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/09/iraq.poll/ 

Foundation for Critical Thinking (September 2014). Valuable Intellectual Virtues. Retrieved  from www.criticalthinking.org

Houghton Mifflin Company (2009). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English  Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/rational

Nosich, Gerald (2011). Learning to Think Things Through: A Guide to Critical Thinking  Across the Curriculum (pp. 1-2)

Popper, Karl (1994). The myth of framework (pp. 154-158). London: Routledge.

Saad, Lydia (2014). U.S. Still Split on Abortion: 47% Pro-Choice, 46% Pro-Life. Retrieved  from http://www.gallup.com/poll/170249/split-abortion-pro-choice-pro-life.aspx