Robert’s Rules of (Campus) Order

College and university campuses were roiled this past spring by student protests largely related to Israel’s war with Hamas. The student protests echoed those of the 1960s, but student protesters seem to have done little to improve their effectiveness. Rather, the most significant innovation is that many of today’s students protested anonymously, opening themselves up to criticism for avoiding accountability or allegedly being driven by outside agitators. Furthermore, although protests can be a catalyst for change, many of today’s student protesters failed to allow sufficient space for fellow students who also want “to talk and be heard.”

Unsurprisingly, college leaders—despite their best efforts to balance values and interests such as academic freedom, campus safety, freedom of speech and assembly, and freedom to learn—came under siege from all sides, either for being too tolerant of antisemitic rhetoric and responding with “indecision or milquetoast statements,” or for cracking down too harshly and quickly on student protests. Moreover, there are always those who blame so-called woke faculty and administrators for “indoctrinating” students.

The New York Times editorial board correctly recognized that “schools ought to be teaching their students that there is as much courage in listening as there is in speaking up” by building “a culture of openness and free expression” that “includes clear guardrails on conduct.” But college faculty and administrators need more than aspirational goals—they need a clear road map for how to instill students with values of mutual respect, tolerance and civility.

Yet colleges do not need radical innovation to instill values that lead students to parley constructively. Faculty and administrators merely need to help students learn and develop skills in applying proven tools for democratic decision-making. Specifically, students should have more opportunities to learn about and practice applying broadly accepted rules of order (i.e., parliamentary procedure), which have roots going back to at least 1876, when Henry Robert published his Pocket Manual of Rules of Order for Deliberative Assemblies.

Robert’s endeavor was itself rooted in the spirit of advancing the science of association, which Alexis de Tocqueville characterized as the “mother of science” in democratic countries. As de Tocqueville posited, if we “are to remain civilized or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.”

I studied parliamentary procedure for years, and I am recognized as a professional registered parliamentarian through the National Association of Parliamentarians (NAP) and as a certified parliamentarian-teacher through the American Institute of Parliamentarians (AIP). I judged parliamentary procedure competitions for the Future Business Leaders of America for several years. And I serve as parliamentarian for multiple organizations. I have seen young people deliberate with finesse and observed adult professionals build parliamentary procedure skills after years spent struggling through even the basics of deliberation and voting. Both cases evince potential for a renaissance of grassroots democracy.

Had this renaissance already happened, many of today’s student protesters would have sought to promote peace in the Middle East using tools for exercising freedoms of speech and peaceful assembly that can be more effective than disorganized protests alone. For example, student leaders could have called for mass meetings of students interested in promoting peace in the Middle East. Such meetings are rare today, but they were prominent features of the labor movement, the women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement.

Through properly run mass meetings, student leaders could have empowered a diverse body of students to share different ideas and perspectives with decorum and civility. Talking and listening, rather than shouting down other views, would have been the norm. Such meetings would have enabled students, through the power of good faith deliberation, to discover meaningful compromises and, through the power of voting, to speak as one. This contrasts with student protests, which can promote groupthink driven by the loudest voices while dividing larger communities into factions, all while enabling critics to direct focus to the most uncivil, vile rhetoric and actions of what may be just a handful of protesters (even if they are not students).

Unfortunately, it may be too late for today’s student leaders to explore this enlightened path. Campus protests and counterprotests have inflamed passions and hardened positions built on simplistic narratives that dismiss the multitude of legitimate interests of Middle East stakeholders. But colleges can prepare future student leaders to elevate their game—to temper passion with meaningful dialogue—when future crises threaten to spark more conflagrations.

First, faculty and administrators should commit to developing skill in and correctly applying parliamentary procedure for deliberative group decision-making so they can lead by example. Even faculty, whom many assume would know parliamentary procedure best, typically are amateurs. But a crude application of parliamentary procedure based on a superficial understanding of underlying principles is not enough to inspire students to adopt tools of democracy. Fortunately, organizations such as the NAP and AIP can help connect institutions with parliamentarians who, through dedicated study and experience, have become expert stewards of the tools of democracy.

Second, parliamentary procedure should be taught more widely at colleges and universities. Today it is a niche subject, taught at a dwindling number of colleges. Yet being able to make decisions collectively is a fundamental skill, not just for effective civic engagement, but also for functioning effectively in business, government or academia. Earning a tertiary degree without studying parliamentary procedure should be as unusual as graduating without studying writing.

Third, colleges should provide opportunities for all students, not just a subset of select student leaders, to put parliamentary procedure into practice. Existing opportunities to practice parliamentary procedure like student body governments and student clubs often reach only a minority of student leaders. Thus, administrators should regularly sponsor mass meetings where students deliberate and vote to memorialize their collective thoughts on matters of import to their college as a whole—even on basic issues such as whether to raise fees for optional services—and thus shatter the belief that “protest is … the only way students have any voice at all in university matters.”

Colleges should also provide meeting space and procedural advice to student leaders seeking to sponsor similar mass meetings on matters unrelated to the institution, thus empowering students to deliberate and weigh in on controversial issues. Even colleges that have adopted or endorsed the Chicago statement (rejecting the notion that educational institutions should take positions on matters unrelated to the institution) could host student-driven deliberative sessions. Cultivating deliberative skills does not amount to faculty and administrators passing judgment on politics in their official roles.

Mass meetings and other techniques for deliberation grounded in parliamentary procedure would give students tools superior to protests—which can burn out without communicating a clear, persuasive message, be nullified by blowback or be misinterpreted or misrepresented—for being heard and effecting change.

Student leaders, by continuing to rely primarily on protests, demonstrate how much our society has devolved when it comes to democratic, deliberative decision-making skills. To ensure that colleges are better equipped when future controversies fire up the passions of their students—and to further democracy in society at large—colleges should help future student leaders develop skills in parliamentary procedure. With proper guidance, students can move beyond disorganized protest.