51社区黑料

This blog is written by Keisha Maloney, a Postdoctoral Fellow at UBC. Keisha's research explores how urban planning education can support youth futurity and advance transformative societal outcomes. In this blog post, she connects themes from her research to panel discussions held during the symposium on reimagining the public university.

As universities are facing an uncertain future, so too are the young adult learners who populate our classrooms. In the opening keynote for Reimagining the Public University in a Time of Polycrisis, one speaker shared, when she works with colleagues to transform universities, there is a great deal of hope for the future.

This didn鈥檛 quite resonate with me. The youth I work with do not feel hopeful for the future. They have grown up alongside the exponential curve of the climate emergency, every election in their lifetime has been framed as mission critical, the sinister roots of inequitable systems and their consequences are increasingly revealed but go unresolved, they bear witnesses to extreme violence turned to spectacle, and ached for community during their formative years in Covid-induced isolation. These tendrils of the polycrisis fundamentally inform how young adults view the future.

In my research with undergraduate students, some youth tell me that feeling hopeful today requires blind optimism, a foolish orientation to turn away from reality and hold onto faith that someday, someone will change things. In many ways, the future seems like a murky circumstance they will incidentally arrive at, not something that they have agency over.

Many don鈥檛 see themselves as that someone. Their agency feels limited because their votes seldom elect their chosen candidate. Their extra-institutional activism hasn鈥檛 led to change; their ideas have been dismissed on the grounds of youthful naivete. This exclusion fuels the fear that by the time they will have the power to change things, it will be too late. But nearly every young person I鈥檝e spoken with came to university searching for the tools to become the agent of change they need. They carry their anxieties about the future with them into the classroom, motivating their desire to attain the knowledge and skills that might allow them to craft alternative conditions.

But I often hear students express frustration that their education has taught them how the world works and where systems are failing, not the skills to change those conditions. Much of their education has focused on imparting institutional literacy, and less so on how to destabilize systems that maintain the status quo. This approach has meant that when students are invited to imagine a world otherwise, they feel stuck because they know the rules, but not how to move with or around them.

While sitting in the audience during the symposium, I wondered, what if the university was redesigned as a training ground for Robin Hoods? A Robin Hood uses their knowledge of, and access in decision-making spaces for the greater good; working inside, with and in support of those on the outside. They learn the rules of the game to find and create porosity. They challenge the idea that processes, systems, structures are set in stone.

Could we impart knowledge on how contemporary systems work, in ways that also build the skills to change them? Can the university be a space to rehearse applying knowledge in action to resist the status quo?

As the idea percolated, a Dean in the audience raised their hand and said, 鈥淚 thought when I became Dean, I鈥檇 have the power to do radical stuff. Advance reconciliation, make the university more sustainable, but I鈥檓 bogged down by the institution.鈥� Their comment reminded me that age and status don鈥檛 change the fact that agency is always negotiated with institutional structures.

In a room of higher education administrators, professors, and community partners collectively committed to redesigning the university for the public good, it struck me that many of us use our systems literacy to make small changes every day. When bogged down by the institution, we use our knowledge to widen the boundaries, poke holes, and every so slowly create positive change.

Throughout the symposium, I observed that this work often starts with planting a subtle seed. Saying, 鈥渢his process doesn鈥檛 work for our colleagues of colour.鈥� Asking, 鈥渨ho is this service really for?鈥� Using the stage to raise the question, 鈥淪hould we change the name of this university?鈥� Once planted, you find your allies and work arm in arm to seek out or create a possible stepping stone that moves us toward that ideal. You charge ahead when you can. And when you can鈥檛, you foster the conditions that might enable the next rush. And you repeat the process again, and again, and again.

If educators are doing this work in our institutions, I think we can model that process for our students. Maybe the hopefulness the opening keynote referred to comes from the fact that those they work with are adept at negotiating their agency within their institution. If we showed students how we make these advances, could we seed hope among youth that they have the power to be Robin Hood too?