Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Civility takes a back seat
College initiative aims to reclaim courtesy
America is getting meaner. In pursuit of social media popularity, we are hurling insults with impunity, making increasingly outrageous declarations and spewing venom anonymously. The vitriol intensified during the presidential election, echoing the divisions in our fractured nation.
Now there is a move in South Florida to tone it down. Universities, government officials, religious leaders and civic groups are working to alter the conversational tone.
“The United States has a long tradition of civil debate,” said Robert Watson, a Lynn University professor who is leading a college civility initiative, Project Civitas. “The Framers committed to civility. We need to reclaim that.”
Students at Lynn, a small college campus in Boca Raton, this year started a Civility Club, and Watson plans to speak about public decorum during his commencement address.
Jeniffer De Souza, 20, said most of Lynn’s students follow each other online.
“We say things on social media that are super-dramatic because we crave attention and likes,” De Souza said. “People can get so vulgar. Then we have to look each other in the eye.”
College students are not the only Americans noticing a rising level of rudeness. Civic groups and public officials have experienced the coarseness firsthand and are rousing a new effort to combat the cruelty.
In Boca Raton, 18 rabbis and Jewish leaders signed a “Statement on Civility in
Public Discourse,” committing to energetic but courteous public discussions while rejecting hostility and intolerance.
And the city of Boca Raton has declared March “Civility Month,” working closely with Watson’s Project Civitas.
Boca Raton Mayor Susan Haynie said she and fellow council members have seen residents at their worst in recent months, especially during controversies over a synagogue to be built on Palmetto Park Road and a satanic pentagram displayed in a park’s free-speech zone. Residents yelled, cursed and berated the council members.
“People get angry and insulting,” Haynie said. “They get unfiltered information from social media. They criticize us, and they have a lack of accurate information.”
Paul Spector, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, agrees. He said technology has changed human interaction, not always for the better.
“People are much more likely to be nasty in e-mail or social media when they don’t have to actually see the person,” Spector said.
Spector said researchers have been exploring civility for the past couple of decades, spurred by a growing awareness of bullying in schools.
But surveys show Americans see the rising meanness as not just a problem for youth but a national challenge: A 2016 report by communications firm Weber Shandwick and two other firms showed about three-quarters of Americans say civility has plummeted over the past few years, while 70 percent say it has reached a “crisis” level, up from 65 percent three years ago.
Fort Lauderdale attorney Jamie Cole, who is working on civility efforts for the Broward County Bar Association, has seen the nastiness not only among attorneys but at public meetings. He is the city attorney for Weston and Miramar.
He trains city officials not to yell and scream from the dais, where their sessions are not only taped for public view but posted live on social media.
He said the bar association is working with judges and law firms to preach basic consideration, such as not setting hearings when the opposing attorney is on vacation.
“Civility has been taking a back seat since the presidential election,” Cole said. “This has become the frame of reference.”
Matt Levin, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of South Palm Beach County, said he also observed a rising level of vitriol during the election.
Levin, who helped organize his community’s civility efforts four years ago, said he has found one strategy that has worked: quarterly meetings among Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, who discuss pressing community problems, have made their congregations more accepting and tolerant.
Levin said there always will be outliers who encourage agitation and disrespect social conventions.
“There are those that will fall outside that wall, that don’t want to be bound by a civility statement,” Levin said. “We need to push back on that bad behavior. We need to remind them that words matter.”