"Equality becomes something imposed by management, as what would, if taken seriously, constrain life and labor. Whilst we might want to critique how equality is bureaucratized, we need to challenge how that very critique can be used to dismiss equality." Source
An excellent chunk. I had an interesting experience at the University of Washington, where the idea that the institution as a whole was student-centered, was also bureaucratized, and the trap of thinking that it exists across all departments, in all ways - even when it does not - is quite shocking.
Being student centered, one has to look at what a student is according to the system (matriculation), and when you see that you'll note it has everything to do with performance and not from any intentions the student has outside of said performance. We don't see the capacity and ability of young minds to learn as a good thing, therefore many people lose out on the opportunity to do so. Meaning, one grasps at straws to remain a student if they do not fit the mold, and have no control or power over the label once it has been stripped. Bad student, good student.
Life circumstances, differences in learning styles, all these things are never truly dealt with, because individuals are expunged from the system, never to return. Accommodations are made, students adapt, but an adaptation isn't a migration away from outmoded practices, but is a response to environmental stresses, which can in large ways inhibit learning if the root of their inconsistencies are not properly ascertained and subsequently remedied; the metaphor they used, "swept under the rug" is quite apt. Being 'student centered', in the operating parameters that this article demonstrates, becomes ineffectual there too, undoing itself in cruel irony.
I had a bout of mental illness brought on from unresolved stresses in my environment as someone with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the resultant shock of losing my matriculation status, coupled with my inability to help myself out of a bad situation of writing hardship withdrawal forms in a timely manner due to said disability, was promptly removed from student housing, which I had paid for in advance without a refund to my person. I wrote several pleas, but my disability was invisible, as was my condition.
My school took everything from me, literally and figuratively, and nearly made me homeless. It is interesting how fast one can go from being a good student to a bad student. Within a week of losing my matriculation status they were prompt in dismissing me from Housing, which could have provided me the time needed to address the loss in status, while addressing my own health as a student, without compromising my physical security and well-being. I had to drop everything and move. Così è la vita. The life of an outcast, goodness help them. It would have, me.
What I often wonder is what these general statements actually mean, and at what cost to the modus operandi of said institutions, based on forbearing attitudes towards these moral imperatives of good and bad. What does equality, student centeredness, and meritocracy really mean when we start adding differences of mind, culture, and perception into the mix, none of them lacking in capability, and every which way in properly managing differences. That sort of holistic thinking doesn't exist from my experience, it is only apologetic belying the former.
"The illiberal use of the liberal language", there is much of, inscrutably so, and am quite disturbed about it just from my own experience.
"So much abuse of power within universities is justified by the illiberal use of the liberal language of will and consent. Some might become willing when the costs of not being willing are made too high. Being unwilling might mean being expelled from a group that would allow you to access the resources necessary for your survival, let alone progression. Being unwilling might mean being called frigid... These names have costs. Becoming willing might be a way of avoiding these costs."
