Restorative Practices at Haverford College
About
Punishment is not part of our process. If we successfully train ourselves not to receive the process as punitive but rather as an opportunity to learn and do better in areas of communication that are fraught, we will all be better off..
Restorative Practices @ Haverford College will be:
- non-punitive
- fully voluntary
- confidential
- focused on building relationships
- adaptable to the situations of those involved
- separate from the provost’s office, human resources, honor council, and personnel files
Restorative Practices @ Haverford College will:
- address harms and misunderstandings in a meaningful way
- determine what happened, why it happened, what needs that reveals, and how to address those needs
- facilitate agreements
- agreements reached in these processes are mutually co-created by the parties involved
- agreements are not made public unless parties wish them to be
Reflections
We offer here two reflections on the possibilities these practices may open up, from scholars working in the academy and as practitioners of restorative practice:
Dean Spade, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis
Most people have never been to a meeting where there was not a boss or authority figure with decision-making power. Most people work or go to school inside hierarchies where disobedience leads to punishment or exclusion. We bring our learned practices of hierarchy with us even when no paycheck or punishment enforces our participation, so even in volunteer groups we often find ourselves in conflicts stemming from learned dominance behaviors. But collective spaces, like mutual aid organizing, can give us opportunities to unlearn conditioning and build new skills and capacities. By participating in groups in new ways and practicing new ways of being together, we are both building the world we want and becoming the kind of people who could live in such a world together. (16-17)
adrienne maree brown, We Will Not Cancel Us
I can see it—in the short term we generate small pockets of movement so irresistibly accountable that people who don’t even know what a movement is come running towards us, expecting that they will be welcomed, flawed and whole, by a community committed to growth; knowing that there is a place in this violent, punitive world that is already committed to, and practicing, a healing and transformative iteration of justice….
In the longest term vision I can see, when we, made of the same miraculous material and temporary limitations as the systems we are born into, inevitably disagree, or cause harm, we will respond not with rejection, exile, or public shaming, but with clear naming of harm, education around intention, impact, and pattern breaking; satisfying apologies and consequences; new agreements and trustworthy boundaries; and lifelong healing resources for all involved. (10-11)