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from The Boston Globe, Aug 7, 1995, page 30
The Bickering Stops Here
Kingston
– Charles Doran was all set a few days ago to sit down with two bickering
neighbors and mediate their long-standing differences.
“It was a pretty typical situation,” Doran said – the woman on
the second floor had cats that annoyed the man on the first floor who, in
turn, thought the woman was too curious about his personal life.
But when the day came for the two disputing neighbors to meet with
Doran in the small backroom office of Mediation Works Incorporated (MWI) here,
the woman called to say she thought that they were going to be able to work
their problems out by themselves. For
Doran, that outcome ironically proved the value of the mediation programs that
now serve more than 30 communities in Massachusetts.
Formal mediation keeps an increasing number of disputes – between
neighbors, between landlords and tenants, and between small businessmen and
customers – out of the courts, Doran said.
And often, “as soon as the parties hear that each is interested in
settling the dispute through mediation, it takes the ego out of the situation
and leads to a resolution without a formal mediation session.”
While it is difficult to determine the number of
disputes that are taken to mediation rather than into court (because many are
settled without a formal mediation session), surveys by the Massachusetts
Association of Mediation Programs and Practitioners suggest that as many as 85
percent of the agreements reached through mediation stick.
“People feel better – both sides –because it’s their
agreement,” said Melissa Brodrick, executive director of the state
association. “After taking
someone to court, its hard to feel good even if you win.
If it’s a neighbor, you still have to live next door, and now
you’ve taken him to court.”
In Massachusetts, mediation dates back some 20 years
to a program started in Dorchester District Court using community people to
resolve neighborhood disputes. “It’s
gone through ups and downs,” said Kathleen Grant, who was one of the
original Dorchester mediators and now directs mediation services in the
attorney general’s office. While
strongly committed to the idea of resolving disputes trough mediation,
mediators like Doran, Brodrick and Grant are concerned that the process is not
better known. “Most of us are
frustrated that we don’t get to mediate more than once a month,” said
Grant. While most mediators are
volunteers, a chronic hand-to-mouth style of funding has meant that mediation
programs are unable to do much in the way of outreach – let alone
advertising – and must rely on referrals from other agencies, including the
courts. At present, there is no
state funding for community mediation programs – a $1.2 million request was
cut from the fiscal 1996 budget – and they rely mainly on donations,
foundation grants and fees for training mediators.
Most mediation services are provided fee.
More than half of next year’s $48,000 budget for Mediation Works
Incorporated is labeled “to be
raised or funded.”
Doran, a 29-year-old native of Rochester, N.Y.,
was headed for law school when he got interested in community mediation two
years ago. He took the negotiation program offered at Harvard Law
School. Now in addition to being
the one full time staff member at MWI, Doran is a case coordinator for the law
school’s Harvard Mediation Program. On
the day that the two neighbors decided they could resolve their problems by
themselves, Doran also checked back on the status of a case he had mediated
this past winter, one of his favorites, he said.
That one involved two neighbors who had lived across the street from
each other for more than 15 years. Years
ago, he said, one neighbor’s two young sons used to play with the other’s
two daughters, who were about the same age. But relations soured and complaints and counter-complaints
arose about noise and parking. “They’d
go to court,” Doran said, “and be told to work it out – but they
couldn’t because they’d been bickering too long and neither had faith in
the other.” A police officer
referred them to Doran. He
recalled that when the neighbors, including the children, came in for
mediation, “there was a lot of stress in the room, a lot of stories from
each about being harassed by the other. But
gradually they got to talking about what would work for each other and to
envision a more tolerant neighborhood.”
The turning point came, Doran said, when the children – onetime
playmates who had internalized their parents’ antagonisms – turned on
their parents. “This is ridiculous. You’ve
been doing this too long. We used
to like each other.” In fairly
short order, the two neighbors worked out an agreement.
When Doran checked back, the agreement was worked out with no further
problems. And, he said,
“the kids are socializing again.”
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