College Chaplain

johnfás

nozzferrahhtoo wrote: »

Change the record would you? I have explained my position at length in this post and the last one, and nothing about it is idealogical in nature. It is about finances, justifiable use of finances, and successful education of students. No more.

Your positions, though pronounced at length, are not explained to the satisfaction of those other posters on the thread who support the provision of such services. Such posters are not convinced that your differentiation between services such as STI clinics (or counsellors for that matter) from other services such as chaplaincy is legitimate, particularly given your ostensible acceptance of one and non acceptance of the other - in the absence of "evidence" in respect of either.

Furthermore, posters won't change the record. They won't change the record because they are entitled to question the veracity of your assurances that you are only concerned with finances in just the same way are you are entitled to question the veracity of Kooli's "anecdotes". You made reference to the term witness above in respect of trials. It is quite clear that Kooli considers herself a witness to the effectiveness of chaplaincy provisions. If one were engaging in a qualitative study of chaplaincy services, one would engage focus groups including service providers such as Kooli, who is an on campus counsellor. Their anecdotes combined would serve to form the basis of the "evidence" in any cost-benefit analysis.

Just because you say your arguments are not philosophical, Kooli does not have to accept it. She is perfectly entitled to make any conclusion based on the substance of your posts, rather than the headings which you ascribed to them. Just as you do not have to accept Kooli's contention that her own experience is evidence of the efficacy of chaplaincy provision.

In respect of financing - surely your argument would be best served by bringing it to its natural conclusion. We could remove all services and create a computer programme. Students could tick boxes about how they feel and it would direct them towards the appropriate off-campus service provider, whether that is a dentist, a chaplain or a dressmaker. However, we don't do this because students have particular needs which are best served on an individual basis. Myself and other posters believe that the provision of such services on campus, where there is a reasonable demand, is quite legitimate - including where that service is chaplaincy. You disagree. And frankly, the argument is as simple as that.

hivizman

hivizman wrote: »

I've been following this debate with great interest. Several years ago, I was working for a university-level institution in the UK, when the issue of whether to replace the college chaplain, who had moved on to another post, came up. I was a member of the working group set up to discuss the issue, and we did a sort of cost-benefit analysis.

This college had been established in the 1890s as an explicitly secular institution, but there had been a salaried college chaplain almost from the beginning (as far as we could tell, this was largely because having a chaplain was simply one of the things that universities of the time had, but it is interesting that having a chaplain was not seen as inconsistent with the secular ethos of the college).

The college put a lot of effort into the pastoral care of students, many of whom came from outside the UK. Students were encouraged to go to their personal tutors, to senior tutors in each department, to the Dean of Undergraduate Studies or the Dean of Graduate Studies, to the health service, and to counsellors for personal support. In addition, the chaplaincy offered personal support and counselling on top of providing religious services for those who wanted them. The chaplaincy consisted of one salaried chaplain (who had in practice always been Church of England), as well as a Roman Catholic priest who served in a local parish and was provided with an additional payment by the Roman Catholic Church to act as RC Chaplain in the college, two non-conformist ministers who were paid by their own churches, a local rabbi and a local imam. In addition to the salary costs of the one paid chaplain (whose salary was tied to the lowest point on the lecturer salary scale), there were accommodation and other overhead costs, which came to about 40% of the salary costs.

We considered the expense of appointing an additional counsellor, but the salary costs alone of this would have been well in excess of the cost of the chaplain's salary, and there would have been no significant saving in overheads.

The chaplaincy was able to demonstrate several cases each year where individual students had specifically sought out support from one of the chaplains, rather than from academic staff or the health or counselling services, for various personal reasons, and it was clear that this support had been of great help to certain individuals, the value of which to the college (in allowing the college to continue to receive fees from students who might otherwise have dropped out), let alone the personal value to the students, was well in excess of the cost of recruiting and paying a new full-time chaplain. We decided that having a chaplain helped to provide a distinctive student support service of value to the students and the college.

Now, this is an English case rather than directly relating to Irish universities and colleges, but it may be of some help in considering the cost-benefit issue of having a chaplaincy service.

I have quoted post #208 in full, because I simply do not recognise how this is consistent with the claim in post #348:

nozzferrattoo wrote:

Which is nothing at all but your assumption. You simply say in post #208 “allowing the college to continue to receive fees from students who might otherwise have dropped out“.

That is a big massively huge whopping wholly assumed “might” on your part.

Have you any evidence whatsoever to suggest a lack of a chaplaincy would have resulted in any such thing?

Student support services such as a chaplaincy service quite correctly do not give details of individual students whom they have seen, on confidentiality grounds. However, I was in a working group with the Academic Registrar, Dean of Undergraduate Studies, Vice-President of the Student Union and other people, many of whom I had worked with for several years. These people were colleagues whose statements I trusted. The working group was assured by these people as well as by the chaplaincy service that a particular number of students who were considering dropping out stayed on and completed their degree following consultations with and support from the chaplaincy service. The college officials were aware of this not because the chaplaincy breached confidentiality, but simply because students would tell them.

I'm off on holiday tomorrow, and I will have better things to do than follow the progress of this thread. By its very nature, because we are dealing with real people with issues and problems, and professionals such as college chaplains do not consider it appropriate to reveal personal details about people that they help, it will be difficult to obtain evidence in the public domain that will satisfy anti-clerical sceptics. However, given that virtually every tertiary level university and college in Ireland and the UK has a chaplaincy service, it should be possible (certainly in the UK) to use Freedom of Information laws to discover whether, and if so how, universities and colleges have assessed the usefulness of chaplaincy services.

nozzferrahhtoo

Kooli wrote: »

Firstly, you can't really be making both points. Either it DOES matter whether the services are helpful or not, or it DOESN'T. You can't just say 'yeah, both of those things'

Yes I can, if you read what I wrote I even explained how.

The point you are likely missing, which is the one that allows me to say both, I shall repeat:

There is an important difference between “helpful” and “helpful in a way that is relevant to the ends of the organisation”.

I have no doubt at all that a chaplain will be “helpful” to some students. So would an on-site auto-mechanic. This alone however does not justify maintaining either.

If you realise that subtle difference, then the rest of my post will become clearer to you.

Kooli wrote: »

If a study was done that showed that use of the chaplaincy prevents dropout (let's say for a number of students per year whose fees outweigh what the college spends on the chaplaincy), would you still be arguing that it should be abolished?

Such a study were you to present it would be massively informative on my opinion yes and would most likely not leave it unchanged. More than that I can not say as I would merely be guessing at what a hypothetical study may or may not contain and I do not want to thread to descend into fantasy discussion over fantasy studies.

Such a study would have to clearly normalise for the question of whether said chaplaincy is required to be maintained on site in order to achieve what it does however. We can not simply assume that because the students in such a study required A chaplain, that said chaplain had to be on site.

nozzferrahhtoo

johnfás wrote: »

Your positions, though pronounced at length, are not explained to the satisfaction of those other posters on the thread who support the provision of such services.

Maybe not, but I am happy to keep explaining and elaborating on the points that I am actually making.

None of which are ideological in nature, so it serves only to lie and obfuscate to claim they are. Some people do enjoy their smoke and mirrors.

If you want my positions explained, then allow me to do so without having to defend myself from strawman lies that are nothing to do with what I am saying.

Claims that my disagreements are ideological in nature are done in an attempt to obfuscate what I am saying, not to further understand it.... and are likely done by people who find it easier to cope with what I am not saying, rather than what I am.

johnfás wrote: »

Just because you say your arguments are not philosophical, Kooli does not have to accept it.

Yea and just because you might say you are not purple with pink pokka dots does not mean I HAVE to accept it either. This does not change the fact that me saying you are would be me saying it without a single reason to think it is true.

So just because I say my arguments are not based on my idealogical issues with religion, does not mean that Kooli has to accept that either. This does not change the fact that her claims that they are, are entirely baseless.

Which is why I asked the poster to SHOW one part of my argument that actually IS ideological in nature. The poster failed spectacularly to do so, but just went back to playing the record anyway.

Just saying over and over my posts are ideological when they are not, does not suddenly make it so. Especially when the people saying it can not find a single aspect of the arguments that I am presenting that fit that description.

As usual I am back to informing you, people can say what they want, and I can reply by pointing out how massively unsupported and untrue what they are saying appears to be.

What these people are attempting to do is avoid the arguments I AM making, by attacking ones I am not. If doing this makes them feel intelligent, that’s great for them. Just do not sit there and act like I am the one with the problem for not pandering to it.

nozzferrahhtoo

hivizman wrote: »

I have quoted post #208 in full, because I simply do not recognise how this is consistent with the claim in post #348:

Saying the same thing again does not somehow change it. The post you quoted makes the CLAIM that students would have dropped out if they had not had access to a chaplaincy. However the world is full of "claims". We have to evaluate which claims are likely to be true.

However things do not become true simply because you claim they are true. Where is the evidence that this claim is true? Where is the evidence that students would have dropped out without a chaplaincy, in significant enough numbers to warrant the expense of a chaplain, except the fact you say so?

hivizman wrote: »

Student support services such as a chaplaincy service quite correctly do not give details of individual students whom they have seen, on confidentiality grounds.

Nor am I asking for individual anecdote of this form that break the privacy barrier.

I am asking for evidence or a study that shows your claim that "Students would have dropped out" to be true, or to hold any credence whatsoever even. Studies can be done, and most often are, confidentially, without breaking the confidentiality of a single person.

hivizman wrote: »

These people were colleagues whose statements I trusted.

So now the quality of your anecdotes have dropped from bad personal anecdote to "Friend of a friend who I trust.... honest" anecdotes. We can all invent anecdotes that fit our position and if people do not accept them we can all invent people who appear to agree with us.

hivizman wrote: »

The working group was assured by these people as well as by the chaplaincy service that a particular number of students who were considering dropping out stayed on and completed their degree following consultations with and support from the chaplaincy service.

I am looking for hard facts, not personal assurances by people I do not know, may never know, and given the nature of posting on forums... might not even exist.

For example I have met and read personal assurances by literally 1000s of people into the effectiveness of homeopathy, despite the lack of ANY studies showing that homeopathy performs better than placebo. Am I to take the personal assurances of people concerned regardless? Merely because they choose to make them? Come off it! You would not reduce yourself to acting in that way either, so have some decorum before asking me to do so.

If these alleged people are allegedly so convinced by the alleged voracity of the service in question, then they should be as keen as I am to see experts engage in a comprehensive study of it.

hivizman wrote: »

because we are dealing with real people with issues and problems, and professionals such as college chaplains do not consider it appropriate to reveal personal details about people that they help, it will be difficult to obtain evidence in the public domain that will satisfy anti-clerical sceptics.

This simply is not acceptable or even likely to be true. It is more of a cop out. Why do I say this. Allow me to explain....

MANY mental issues, for example, are intensely private in nature. The professionals working in these areas are bound to client confidentially by law in fact.

This does not stop the mental health industry from making and producing many many confidential but useful studies in those areas.

The world is literally full of medical and mental issues that people want kept private, and the professionals are forced to do so by law, yet studies can be done that maintain that privacy while still providing useful and effective results that help us make decisions on how to deal with those issues.

Why is this one ANY different? Why is the privacy issues here suddenly, and magically, made into a brick wall that some how prevents further study when in the other realms of discourse they are not?

I am left with only one answer, which is that people do not WANT such a study done in this case, lest it show that the service is not useful enough to warrant its existence.

wonton

I my college maynooth, i had to join the choir this year and actually had to sing in a religious service.

it was at christmas and knew we would be sing christmas songs but didnt think there wouldnt actually be readings by priets and the such.

i couldnt believe it as i was marked on attendence and the fact that at this day an age they just expect people to go along with it is ridiculous.