Interpreting And Taking Action On Requests To "Feel X"

Feelings are endogenous; that seems to be the upshot of the many and varied exhortations that we stop telling people how they should feel. No one can make you feel a particular way; at best they can create an environment conducive to a certain feeling. So if some group of people requests to feel a certain way, how is that request to be interpreted and acted upon?

Take, as a covenient and (presumably) non-contentious example, recent requests by La Salle Univerity for improved physical safety. Per the article, students are feeling a "sense of fear", and have asked administrators to implement "better security". How should the administration respond?

One way to proceed is to take steps to ensure that students actually are safe. You identify relevant measures of safety, whatever they may be, and then do whatever is needed to improve them (if necessary). At some point, presuming you execute well, students will be safe in the relevant sense. Now, setting aside the specific facts regarding La Salle (since we're not here to argue that case), suppose that the students come back and say that they still don't feel safe and that the administration needs to do more?

Let's stop and note that there are a couple of assumptions lurking in the background of the administration's initial response:

• The administrators and students share an understanding of what it means to "be safe".
• There's a correlation between "feeling safe" and "being safe".

What's interesting here is that there's both a normative/semantic component (shared definition) and an empiric component (correlation between feeling and being). Disagreements can arise when either assumption fails.

Were I in the administration's shoes I would tackle the empiric assumption on the hopes that its more tractable. A conversation of the form "Here's why we think you're safe."/"Here's why we still feel unsafe." might break in a few ways:

• Students are persuaded they're safe.
• Administrators are persuaded that more genuinely needs to be done.
• Discussion reveals a shared understanding of the notion of "safety", but students and administrators cannot reach a consensus on the empirical question.
• Discussion reveals a lack of shared understand of the notion of "safety".

Its easier to deal with empirical disagreements than normative disagreements. I'm possibly naive, but its seems like if you have a defensible case then making an executive decision is justified (and probably a foregone conclusion). Students gonna student and all that jazz; your life won't be easy, but thats what administrators are paid to do.

Lack of shared understanding seems like it could be a minefield, especially if the topic is more contentious than simply physical safety. I know I wouldn't want to be responsible for asking people to elaborate their beliefs in the era of "It's not my job to educate you". If asking questions is precluded then the alternative seems to pretty much be deference, at which point you're going to have a bunch of people razzing you for caving in.

Nothing discussed above is unique to educational settings; the same sort of dynamic is in play whenever there's a request that one group ensure that another group feels a certain way. And let's stop right there, I think I just had a minor epiphany. Rather than bury the lede I'll take that up in my next post.