Adaora Onaga
If you walk across any university campus and strike up a conversation with a group of students, it won’t take long for the topic of “freedom” to surface. Usually, it sounds like a complaint. Why are there strict dress codes? Why do I have to register my courses by an exact deadline? Why are hostel regulations so rigid?
To many students, it feels like the university is an institution designed to clip their wings.
But as we have established in our previous conversations on ethical universities, a true ethical campus is an environment designed to help individuals flourish, which results in the deep, structural growth of the intellect, character, and action of individuals.
Creating an environment where genuine freedom works is, in fact, a burden, or rather a challenge, for the schools or organisations. One of the reasons why it is a challenge is that when we think of freedom today, we often fall into a modern myth, the myth of unrestricted autonomy. We tend to think freedom means, “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, without anyone telling me otherwise.” In the real world, absolute autonomy is not realistic, and if it is attempted, it quickly decays into chaos, breaking up the community spirit and destroying the very environment required for freedom to be exercised.
In the Aristotelian tradition, true freedom isn’t the absence of boundaries; it is the presence of agency. Agency is ownership of one’s decisions and actions. It is found in the choices and judgments we consciously make and take responsibility for. To be truly free means we are the authors of our actions, not slaves to our immediate impulses, fleeting emotions, or unexamined habits.
This is where the idea of freedom as a “burden” comes in. I don’t mean this in the heavy, paralysing way the existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre meant it, where human freedom feels like a condemnation. Rather, in the Christian view of the human person, freedom is a power. It is agency. It gives us the wings to actively choose who we want to become and work towards shaping our character.
To understand why an ethical university couples freedom with rules, we have to look at how boundaries preserve our capacity to choose. Think of a campus code of conduct as the protective fence at the summit of a mountain. Without the fence, anyone enjoying the breathtaking view would need to remain constantly vigilant, fearful of stepping too close to the edge. That fear would limit freedom. The fence does not diminish freedom; it enhances it. By providing clear boundaries that protect against harm, it creates a safe space within which people can move, explore, learn, and enjoy the experience with others. In the same way, a code of conduct establishes the conditions that allow a university community to flourish in freedom, safety, and mutual respect.
When a university enforces strict timelines as Pan-Atlantic University does, it is teaching a profound lesson about freedom and responsibility. Rules concerning attendance, academic participation, and respectful engagement with staff serve a formative purpose as they develop self-discipline, personal responsibility, and the capacity to contribute positively to the common good.
University leadership and management carry a burden of initiating and promoting this enabling environment. There is no single, copy-and-paste formula for creating an ethical campus. The institutional burden is discovering how to craft the conditions that provide enough structure to guide individuals, yet enough open space for persons to exercise their free will, make mistakes, and learn to own their choices.
Conversations around freedom usually generate some debate because of the different understandings, but at PAU, we trust students and staff to exercise their personal freedom through the culture that is created. We help them understand the consequences of their choices through rules, policies, and sanctions. How else can universities help to build personal agency while providing clear guidelines?