Why Civility

     Michelle

Chapter 1

    The book opens up by stating that civility has become a thing of the past. It is something that this generation has not been properly instilled with. In turn incivility has become something to market and sell. It is even promoted in a lot of today's mass media. The book's purpose is to address problems with civility, focusing specific on college students and problems they may encounter on their college campuses.

The book defines civility as two things. The first comes from the origin of the word. "The modern English word civility comes from the Latin term civitas, meaning city in the sense of civic communities,"(page 6). This means we have a duty to be a useful citizen in our communities. This definition was intended to be broad and inclusive of the principles and laws of civility developed by Forni. The other definition can be summarized as the basic Golden rule, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" or in modern terms treat people the way you want to be treated. The book also explains what practicing civility looks like, and it is simply conducting yourself properly and respecting others.

The book explains that is chose college campuses because incivility is a growing crisis on college campuses. The book uses examples such as celebratory riots and the epidemic of rape and school shootings across the country, which are all results of uncivil behavior. The conflict with correcting this behavior arises because of the massive shift in American colleges organizational philosophy. The original "family away from home" and loco parentis, meaning "in the place of a parent", role of administrators of American colleges was changed drastically after the Civil War to German system. This new system focuses on individual research and personal development which gives colleges less of a chance to implement the morals many college students may need. This confuses the role of the administrators and the students, but the book argues their is still room for moral educations that American colleges must adapt.

The book goes on to describe what generation of people make up college students today. The book calls this generation Millennials, a generation that is more helpful than past generations, but has a tendency to be self absorbed and having lack of respect for others. This is a generation obsessed with incivility in all forms of popular media, interaction, causal sex and etc.

 The book plans on addressing the issues college students in today's generation deal with. By implementing civility laws early and designating administrators, we can reserve the trend on incivility.