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If you were a UC Davis student and turned over your student identification card, you would see three things. At the very bottom you would find the 24-hour customer service number for U.S. Bank. Above that, you would be informed to call 911 in case of an emergency. But at the very top of the card, you would find an excerpt from the UC Davis Principles of Community. You would read the words, “We affirm the inherent dignity in all of us…will strive to build a true community of spirit and purpose based on mutual respect and caring.”
The ID card does not implore students to go to class, does not remind them that Tuesday and Thursday classes are seventy minutes while Monday, Wednesday, and Friday classes are fifty, does not feature a tiny periodic table. Rather, the ID card emphasized the importance of civil community. While of course a university campus aspires for rigorous scholarship and high academic rankings, it recognizes how vital civility is to student’s academic performance and personal well-being. A university is more than a collection of lecture halls and labs; it is a community of students, faculty, and staff of diverse backgrounds, experiences, and view points. Reference to the Principles of Community on the backside of the student ID card is meant to remind students that civility is achieved through everyday acts of respect, tolerance, and empathy. It is an acknowledgment of the fact that civil communities are not inevitable; they are formed through constant and deliberate action. Working towards a civil community requires both long-term strategies and everyday efforts.
Davis is not the only campus to have a set of Principles of Community. Each UC has its own Principles of Community, each developed separately. For example, UC Davis drafted its Principles of Community in 1990; UC Santa Cruz published its Principles in 2001; and UC Santa Barbara developed its Principles in 2011. Each document is unique to each particular campus, but all seek to promote tolerance, civility, dignity, and respect. The Principles of Community are not binding documents but they are meant to govern everyday interactions on campus. Civil community is a difficult goal to achieve on campuses with student populations ranging from 4,138 at UC Merced to 26,162 at UCLA. Achieving civility is a continuing process that requires effort from every level of the university, from the administration to the undergraduate population.
In addition to the Principles of Community, there is a UC-wide Diversity Statement. Adopted in 2006, the diversity statement declares that “diversity should be integral to the University’s achievement of excellence.” The diversity statement explains that the University of California strives to meet the needs of California and reflect the diversity of the state. At times, campuses fall short of this goal. For example, African American students make up less than 2% of the student body at UCLA, but they are 7% of the state of California. What, if anything, is the system’s or the campus’s responsibility toward more closely aligning those numbers? And what happens if that goal is achieved—is the campus a more civil space because it is more diversely populated? The official UC position with regard to diversity is that it is a good thing, that it is to be protected, encouraged, prioritized. But when diversity and civility are talked about together, officially or otherwise, the positioning of the terms often suggests that diversity, while good, is inherently threatening to civility and that it is a thing to be managed in order to protect civility.
The UC Undergraduate Experience Survey gauges the undergraduate experience on campus. The survey collects self-reported information on students’ attitudes, political beliefs, sexual orientation, race, and more. The survey asked students to report on how well they thought their race, religion, and sexual orientation was respected on campus.
Among the racial groups represented in the survey, African American students feel least respected on campus. Only 61 percent of African American students feel their race is respected, compared with 91 percent of white students. Of the religious designations included, Jewish and Muslim students feel least respected on campus and Jewish students report feeling less respected in 2010 than 2008. Regarding sexuality included in the survey, students who identify as lesbian, gay, queer, questioning/unsure, or transgender report feeling much less respected on campus than heterosexual students.