Mediator Interview Topic - How did you measure long term impacts?

How did you measure long term impacts?

Ozell Sutton

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

Not only are you interested in resolving that particular crisis, you are interested in setting forth mechanisms to keep that crisis from re- occurring. And the next thing you are interested in establishing among people who before then had no power, you are interested in establishing in them a sense of power is the wrong word, but a sense of ways that they can protect themselves. In other words, you are empowering them. That's what I'm trying to say. And every time you ought to leave them empowered.

Martin Walsh

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

There were some significant things that were on the table that they agreed to. The change of the makeup of the number of students, including the faculty, the role of students of color. One of the changes was in recruiting new faculty. The students became part of the process of hiring new faculty and administrators and how they were recruited. There were a number of very significant things that took place there and I thought the relationship between the parties was great at the end. I really felt very satisfied with that. Even when the university said, last year or two years ago, "We cannot keep our goals, our quotas," -- they thought they were going to be brought in under a court suit -- they said, "We can't keep that, but we're going to continue to reach out to the minority student population." There was a sense of real commitment there which I thought was good and that we like to see in all the communities we're involved in.

Martin Walsh

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

The Latino community became a critical part of a lot of the community building that we were also involved in subsequently in Chelsea.

Bob Hughes

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

What other gauges do you use to measure whether or not you were successful?

Answer:
I'd say the length of time that the agreement holds up. That's one thing, and secondly, whether the group that I worked with carries on and addresses other similar questions and expands the scope that I think is important, beyond the negotiating table.

Dick Salem

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

About two years later, I sat on the panel with one St. Cloud resident and two administrators at an international corrections association meeting in Minneapolis. We did a panel on the mediation and that's where I found out that they'd reorganized the institution. "Yes, the mediation helped, but we really think it was our reorganization."

Dick Salem

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

Question:
Reading between the lines, it sounds as if you would deem this mediation a success.

Answer:
Oh sure. I said it, if you read between the lines and you come back to 15 years later and you go down there and they are negotiating torn sheets in the laundry...

Dick Salem

[Full Interview] [Topic Top]

Question:
But once you go into a city and establish some sort of structure, such as the one you were talking about yesterday, does that tend to improve things over the long term?

Answer:
I don’t know for sure. I am sure it does in some places. That’s why I suggest we try to get a grant to look at some of that. I mean I could think of some good things that have happened, where you have a police-community conflict, where you get a significant level of response from the establishment, from the mayor’s office basically, and police commissioner, depending on the structure, and the aggrieved community. Then you come together and you set up some mechanisms to address the issues. People exchange phone numbers so that anybody can contact anybody in an emergency, so when there’s a problem you can get to the leadership on the streets. Whether it’s the police leadership or the community leadership. You have monthly meetings of the leadership to discuss issues. You have improved training, you review the police firearms policy and you make changes in it. You do human rights training, human relations for whatever that’s worth sometimes it’s worth a lot, sometimes less. You build this into the orientation for new police officers. You address personnel complaints about assignments, hiring, and promotions. So these things would be written in. You come up with an agreement with half a dozen components to it, whether it was formal or informal mediation. You’ve involved the business leadership, perhaps, or other socially concerned business leaders, civic leaders, the black community, the white community, whoever the parties are. I don’t know how enduring those have been in places over the years. It takes some enlightenment.

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