UCLA CONFLICT MEDIATION PROGRAM
by Howard Gadlin, Ph. D, UCLA Ombudsperson

Like other public universities, UCLA has undergone dramatic changes in its ethnic composition over the last dozen years.  In 1980, for example two-thirds of the first year students were Caucasian; in 1992, two-thirds of the first year class were students of color; primarily Asian American, Latino, and African American.  Today 50% of UCLA undergraduates come from "minority" backgrounds; along with the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA is now the most ethnically diverse research university in the country.  It is in this context that  I would like to describe a program - the Conflict Mediation Program (CMP) - we began four years ago at UCLA  in an effort to bring together groups of students who reflect the wonderful diversity of our campus and city.  The initial idea of the program was to develop a corps of trained volunteer mediators with particular skills at working with diversity related conflicts. Our hope was that we would function like a community mediation program for the campus, with members of the campus community coming to us for help in resolving conflicts around race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.  The training was designed to prepare us to work with both individual conflicts and disputes between groups.  Unlike most community mediation programs, ours was to be focused on diversity related disputes and the training program was designed to address the particular history and dynamics of such disputes.

Since such conflicts occur among all members of the campus community, we thought it wise to include students, staff, and faculty among the trainees. This being a university, it was important to complement and integrate the skill training portion of the program with an academic component so we developed a new course, "Conflict, Diversity, and Conflict Resolution."  All participants in CMP receive between 50 and 60 hours of conflict resolution skill training over the course of the winter quarter.  The centerpiece of the training is a three day mini-course in "Effective Mediation of Cross Cultural and Community Disputes."  Other workshops address topics such as cultural differences in styles of communication, skills for facilitating group discussions, and related issues.  The academic course, required of all students, and open to those staff and faculty able to attend, is divided between two purposes.  First, it provides an interdisciplinary perspective on conflicts about race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality.  Second, it gives students a grounding in the principles and theory of conflict resolution, as well as an introduction to different cultural practices with respect to conflict resolution.  Since the skill training and the course occur concurrently, there is a fair amount of interplay between.  In both aspects of the training program we emphasize active learning and there is ample use of exercises, simulations and role plays in addition to more traditional didactic techniques.

After the winter quarter all participants in CMP become part of a pool of mediators, available to any members of the campus community.  People seeking mediation may contact CMP directly or through the Campus Ombuds Office which oversees the program.  In our original proposal we imagined the program would function as do most community mediation programs, managed by a small professional staff who bring in mediators according to availability and appropriateness for a particular conflict.  But from the end of the very first quarter of training CMP developed differently because the participants wanted more than to be a passive pool of mediators.

Led by the students, CMPers established a governance structure for the organization.  They established bi-monthly meetings, co-facilitated by members, with the facilitator role rotating among members.  In addition, they set-up committees to handle publicity, internal education (including session for practicing mediation with role plays), workshop presentations, and communications (a newsletter and an e-mail network.), recruitment and selection, and caseload and intake.  Currently a group of students and staff are working on a handbook to provide guidance to others interested in establishing similar programs.

As an educational project CMP has been enormously successful; the training program and academic course receive extremely high evaluations.  In 1996 there were 90 applications for SO students slots in CMP.  Most CMP participants describe the program as one of the most meaningful educational experiences of their lives.  When we put together training in programs, educational activities, or mediation teams there are always more volunteers than we need.

At the same time, our vision of becoming the center for conflict resolution on campus has not been realized.  It is taking much longer than we expected to have people come to CMP for mediation of their disputes.  In part this is because it takes a long time to get know on a campus of 55,000 people and in part because the Ombuds Office has long been known as a provider of conflict resolution services.  Many people seem to prefer going to the professionals in the Ombuds Office rather than the volunteers in CMP.  Nonetheless, each year has seen an increase in the use of CMP and there is hope that increased outreach programs along with positive word of mouth from those who have used the program will increase our mediation case load. In the meantime we are hearing numerous reports from CMPers about situation in which they have used their conflict resolution skills on campus - in the residence halls, classrooms, and offices.