How to have conversations on campus that matter.

Students come to college hungry to make meaning of their lives. Instead they confront a culture where questions of meaning and value are taboo. A misconstruction of tolerance prevents the constructive clash of ideas, Dr. Mary Jane Guy said at the Women in Educational Leadership conference sponsored by the University of Nebraska in Lincoln in September 2004.

The department's "token woman" for the past 12 years, Guy is an associate professor in educational leadership at Winona State University MN. Most of her current research is about the separation of church and state as it applies to school law.

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Teaching high school years ago, she told students she didn't care if they were liberal or conservative, but they must back up their arguments. Campus culture has moved away from that approach toward the intellectual laziness of conflict avoidance, she said.

"Young people have to make meaning out of their lives. Because of our ideological fences, they're not allowed to go there," she told WIHE.

Twisted tolerance

She once asked faculty members whether they gave their students academic freedom. Yes, most replied. She got a different response from students. We don't challenge our professors; we give them what they want to hear. We don't want to jeopardize our grades, the students said.