query: community-university

[colist-admin at comm-org.utoledo.edu]

[ed:  Larry offers a message forwarded from Jo Patton to continue our 
discussion on university-community relationships.  Some thoughts from me 
below.]

From: Larry Yates <lyates at chej.org>

This is sent with Jo Patton's permission. I had passed on Stephen
Nicholl's query to her as a longtime organizer who I thought might know
some of University of Illinois/Chicago's neighborhood impact. I think it
adds something to the point I raised about university/neighborhood
relationships.

-------- Original Message --------
  Subject: university/community partnership
     Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000 11:16:02 -0600
     From: "Jo Patton" <jpatton at bpichicago.org>
Reply-To: "Jo Patton" <jpatton at bpichicago.org>
       To: "Stephen Nicholl" <stephen at nicholl48.freeserve.co.uk>
       CC: "Larry Yates" <lyates at chej.org>

  Larry forwarded to me your e-mail regarding university/community
partnerships.  I would be very nervous if the University of Illinois is
providing guidance on university/community partnerships.  The
University's actions have been hostile or indifferent to communities
from the very beginning, when the site chosen for the new Chicago campus
destroyed a wonderful Italian neighborhood despite persistent and very
well organized community opposition.  That was in the early 1970s.  In
the 80s the University began aggressive expansion plans and eventually
won a long battle to destroy/displace Maxwell Street, which had been a
Jewish neighborhood with a strong commercial center and had gradually
evolved to include Latino and African Americans.   It was the site of a
street market every Sunday that had good bargains and some of the best
Chicago Blues musicians playing in the streets.  Many of us still mourn
the loss.  The market was relocated to a sterile environment unconnected
to any neighborhood and musicians don't perform there.   The University
also agreed to maintain some of the facades of the old Maxwell Street
buildings, but this Disneyland notion of preserving neighborhood is
almost worse than just bulldozing the entire area.  Through all this the
University engaged in a fairly successful public relations campaign that
painted them as the ones wanting to improve these blighted areas and as
in Larry's case in Virginia, they had various academics discussing the
lack of historical interest in Maxwell Street and the benefits of an
expanded University.  I fear the University of Illinois is not being
called into to provide an honest assessment of the community/university
relationship but for their expertise in diffusing, dividing and
defeating community residents.  If there is anything I can do to help,
let me know. Jo

*************************

[ed:  this is one of those issues that I think has at least three answers.

Answer #1 is that universities as institutions are monsters that gobble up 
everything in their path.  Their goal is to survive and expand at anyone's 
expense as long as they can handle the public relations costs.  And they 
get many academics to sign on to those efforts.

Answer #2 is that universities as institutions use the "partnership" 
language as a cover for their expansion.  The federal Community Outreach 
Partnership Center (COPC) center program has been complicit in that, not 
only funding universities in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to do 
research in poor communities without careful requirements for consent from 
the poor communities, but actually restricting the bulk of the funding to 
universities and colleges rather than to community groups.

Answer #3 is that some individuals, departments, and units of universities 
are actually doing what I think is very interesting and important work in 
collaboration with community groups.  In the best cases these projects are 
controlled on the community side, not the university side. The Policy 
Research Action Group in Chicago, which is a partnership of Chicago 
community organizations and units from Chicago State University, Loyola 
University, DePaul University, and even UIC, I think is one of those 
groups  and has actually helped channel resources to community 
groups.  There are many other examples.  The field of what many of us call 
community-based research, participatory action research, action research, 
participatory research, etc. is building from that.

There are many thorny issues involved in even these collaborations:  who 
gets the grant, who does the work, who makes the decisions, who controls 
the information, who owns the process, etc.  I have been an academic 
partner, evaluator, and facilitator in a number of programs and projects 
attempting to move toward the #3 answer.  I am convinced they exist and are 
important in helping community groups gain access to research and education 
resources that corporations and government have routinely been provided.  I 
also think community groups need to be continually skeptical and critical 
and wary of us academics trying to be the #3 answer, and keep reminding us 
of how the institutions who give us our paychecks work against their 
interests.  And I think it is worth continuing to discuss in hope it will 
help us all get it right.]