The Program on Conflict Resolution of the Matsunaga Institute for Peace is launching a program to provide a more organized mediation service to resolve disputes involving faculty, staff and administration.
Mediation offers a win-win alternative to address the underlying interests of disputing parties.
It is the position of this paper that mediation, education and training is of vital importance to this university. Non-adversarial dispute resolution techniques such as mediation are essential for dealing with the myriad sensitive student issues a professor could be confronted with, in addition to problems with other faculty and staff. Mediation forces disputing parties to be responsible for their own issues, which keeps the administration bureaucracy out of the fray. UH Manoa should lead other colleges in terms of sensitivity to cultural and ethnic issues. So much so that the UH administration should consider integrating mediation training as a requirement for faculty and staff advancement, including tenure applications.