The Campus Civility Conversation: An Appreciative Approach to a Collaborative Conversation

Campus leaders nationwide have indicated the importance and need for institutions to focus on civility, both in definition and action, highlighting its role in the day-to-day functions and interactions on college campuses (Gomez, 2008). Given the importance of civility, it is imperative that higher education institutions employ a strong theoretical infrastructure for campus dialogues on this topic. This need for discussions about civility to have a theoretical infrastructure was first brought to my attention when I served as the student body president of my undergraduate institution. In 2011, I had the opportunity to work with a select group of student affairs professionals to create a workshop regarding campus civility, specifically for our President’s Advisory Leadership Council. The council consisted of several administrators, diverse members of the faculty, student leaders, and key community partners. The two goals of our workshop were to facilitate a conversation that defined “civility ” on our campus and to identify council members who would act as leaders in a campus-wide civility effort. While there was plenty of dialogue sparked at this workshop, because there was no theoretical grounding to our work, the structure and follow-up discourse regarding our campus civility conversations were not as robus