The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 36, No. 2 - 58

Jane Fried

INTRODUCTION
The last era of community emphasis in the United States occurred during the Vietnam War, from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s. The nation was embroiled in a war that affected almost everyone and bound an entire generation together either by serving in the military or constantly looking for ways to avoid service (Strauss & Howe, 1997). That era was another period when learning communities were widely discussed in higher education. Burns B. Crookston, who had been both a dean of students and a professor of higher education, created a design for an Intentional Democratic Community (IDC) (1974) that had the potential to create an exceptionally powerful learning experience to teach students how to live in democratic communities by giving them the skills of public speaking, group decision-making, and managing tasks that served the group. Crookston experimented with his design in 1972 at the University of Connecticut by creating a two-week residential graduate seminar for college and university housing professionals. Many of the participants in that seminar returned to their home campuses and implemented variations of the design as residential learning communities for undergraduates. The longest lasting IDC existed at the University of Connecticut from 1975 to 1984. Since the first iteration of the IDC model, knowledge about learning has changed dramatically. Crookston was very concerned about educating citizens to become effective participants in democratic communities. He knew that effective citizenship involves more than voting. It also requires development of a complex series of learned behaviors, emotional self-mastery, and critical-thinking abilities. He
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described “the paradox of American democracy” (1974, p. 56) as one in which we live in a political democracy but most of our social and economic institutions are authoritarian in nature and bureaucratic in structure. This paradox deprives Americans of first-hand experience in learning the skills necessary to build

Crookston described “the paradox of American democracy” as one in which we live in a political democracy but most of our social and economic institutions are authoritarian in nature and bureaucratic in structure. This paradox deprives Americans of first-hand experience in learning the skills necessary to build democratic communities .

democratic communities. He asserted that young people have few opportunities to learn how to function in democratic systems and that colleges and universities could contribute to the learning process by training students in the skills of democracy, including knowledge of group dynamics, conflict resolution, active listening, and group decision-making. He was also very concerned that students learn about the bigger political picture and understand

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 36, No. 2

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