Campus Mediation Services

Interested faculty, staff, and graduate students founded Campus Mediation Services (CMS) during the fall 1979 semester in response to a perceived increase in tensions at the University of Maryland, College Park. Spurred on by innovative leadership at the Counseling Center, CMS organizers conducted several surveys of university groups and departments in order to gauge their understanding of the need for conflict resolution service on campus; moreover, CMS volunteers targeted these surveys to groups reported by the Diamondback as experiencing high levels of conflict and tension. In establishing CMS, its founders hoped to address the many interpersonal problems described in these surveys and articles. In support of this purpose, a secondary aim for the organization was to create a pool of certified mediators as a resource for the campus.

From its inception, CMS worked as an independent program, reporting to no campus administrative unit and run entirely by volunteers. The program did, however, receive support and some limited resources from the Counseling Center, where many of the volunteers also worked. Chief contributors Franklin Westbrook (Director), Rebecca Williams (Coordinator of Services), and Arnold Medvene (Mediator) formed the core of CMS, providing it with their leadership, organizational skills, and mediation experience. At its peak in the early to mid-1980s, as many as eight fully certified mediators and eight apprentice mediators staffed CMS. The Friends Suburban Project of Philadelphia provided early training for CMS mediators, while a number of newer mediators received certification in fall 1981 at a training event hosted by the National Center for Collaborative Planning and Community Services of Boston. From the time a description of CMS appeared in a 1983 edition of the University of Massachusetts's Mediation Bulletin, many interested colleagues from other universities corresponded with CMS volunteers to learn more about the program's aims, structure, services, and procedures.

...