Tuesday, October 27, 2015

We approach the 1st anniversary of #Nanaimo City Council, a Council more broadly representative of our community…

Submitted to @NanaimoBulletin as a guest column — (declined).
We approach the first anniversary of our new City Council, a Council more broadly representative of our community than previous ones. Our aboriginal community, the non-profit sector, a small business entrepreneur, a neighbourhood and anti-poverty activist. There’s been tensions, there’s been missteps. Interesting times, and you know what they say about interesting times.
It’s reminding me of the inner city high school where nothing much ever happened. It had been a stable, even boring place. Students attended, played on sports teams, graduated much as their parents had before them. It took pride in its uniformity and conformity. But then the neighbourhood changed. The high school found itself attended by students from different backgrounds, with different attitudes and styles. It was dynamic, anything but boring. To the school’s Principal and administrators it was also dangerous. It was unruly and rebellion was in the air.
The Principal, who previously had only to somewhat regally walk the well-behaved halls, appear at ceremonies and to cheer on the football team, found it suddenly hard to cope. In a panic a crisis meeting was called in a kind of war room. It was decided that order must be restored. Dress and behaviour codes were quickly put in place with warnings of harsh punishments for non-compliance. All student creativity and any excess of youthful energy were to defer without question to the authority of the classroom teachers..
And as you can imagine things quickly got much worse. The poor Principal and most of the administrative staff went into a kind of bunker mentality, many left for work in less challenging environments.
The story ends happily though. Wise replacements at the highest levels understood that the new dynamic presented great opportunity. Rules that benefited all were established with general buy-in by the students. Old rules that mostly existed to bolster the institution itself were loosened or jettisoned. The school became a place students looked forward to going to and staff were proud to work at.
Wouldn’t it be interesting if Nanaimo’s current upheaval had a similar outcome.

Frank Murphy



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