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BRO SHERPA: GUIDING (MALE) STUDENTS THROUGH COLLEGE

10/9/2014

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“What’s up bro?” may not be one of the most seemingly professional things for a hall director to be saying to his male staff members or residents. However, this is typically how I open conversations with many of the male students I work with.Though it may seem like a symptom of hyper-masculine, collegiate socialization, it is in fact, an intentional use of language on my part. This intentional use of language coupled with my overall demeanor around students, particularly males, often times allows me an entrance into student’s lives that only their peers may have the privilege to enter. I call this the “inside-out” approach to student development.

Inside-Out

Being a young, male, professional in student affairs I have very recent experience with navigating the demands of college and all the scrutiny and expectation that comes with being a “real man” in a hyper-masculine setting such as college. Young college men are under the proverbial microscope in nearly every group or interaction they are a part of. Many of the social expectations of masculinity in college (and often society as a whole) typically result in a slew of self-destructive activities.A seemingly “real man” in college is a hypersexual, alcoholic who establishes him dominance by unapologetically proving his competence in both of these areas. These social expectations are then juxtaposed with the academic experience they are having which, as enlightening as it may be, is alienating them from the college community at-large and ultimately the stereotype of the “college guy” becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The “inside-out” approach relies on the belief that we, as student affairs professionals, must meet students where they are at developmentally if we hope to make any headway on challenging and changing cultures. Then how do we do it? Here is a step-by-step breakdown of inside-out:

1-      Own your personal experiences: College is a time of turbulent transition for most students. They are being ripped away from all that they have ever known and are thrust into a new life where they have to essentially start over. That’s not easy. Many times students just want to make friends, that’s why they are going out to parties and overdrinking or engaging in other reckless behaviors.When a student feels as though they have made a mistake from the night before based on a poor decision they made, I want them to feel comfortable coming to me to figure it out. I know that when I was in undergrad I wouldn’t have conversations about my personal life with some guy I didn’t know, so we must make the effort to connect with students and sometimes the only truly effective way to do so is by self-disclosing. Everyone has different comfort levels with self-disclosure, which is fine, however I believe that any relationship involving trust requires some level of self-disclosure. This means that you as a professional must be comfortable, at some level, discussing the experiences, good and bad you had as a student. I don’t mean you necessarily have to tell the story about how you could do a keg stand longer than anyone else, but you do need to empathize in some capacity with students to form that connection.

2-      Be real: Stuff happens. In life. In college. Things happen and we make mistakes. Building off of our personal experiences as mentioned above, we have to enter conversations with students without judgment. You may disagree with the decision a student has made but that disagreement won’t change the feelings they are feeling. Holding onto that disdain is more time and energy spent not being spent on serving the student to the best of your ability. Unless the concern involves a police report I don’t typically harp on how the student got themselves into a situation, I tend to focus on how we can move forward with where we are at the moment. Right here, right now.

3-      Make the time: We are all busy in student affairs. If we’re grad students we have class, an assistantship, and meetings. As a professional there’s committees, boards, task forces etc. That’s not taking into account all of our personal activities and obligations as well. Often times we find ourselves overextended and overcommitted. Unfortunately, our lack of time doesn’t make our students issues go away. A lot of people in the field tell students who procrastinate “Your failure to plan does not constitute an emergency on my part.” Well, our packed schedule is no excuse to drown out the concerns of the people we literally work for: students. Most of the time we need to initiate conversations with students and to do this we need to have developed a connection with them, both of which require our precious time. I believe that weekly or bi-weekly check-ins of 15 to 20 minutes with students is enough to gauge what is happening in their lives and to ultimately avoid a major crisis which would result in the use of even more of our time. The time invested in our students initially will pay dividends in the future when we know exactly when to step in.

4-      Challenge is a privilege: If you have followed the aforementioned steps to this point you may have earned the right to challenge your students. But it’s imperative to understand that without earning this right challenges are high risk and low reward. No one wants to be told they are wrong by someone they barely know. People are naturally more responsive to the feedback of people who genuinely care for them; you need to become one of those people for this to work. You don’t need to become their best pal, but they need to trust and respect you before you start challenging them otherwise they may clam up and never come out again.

Just One of the Guys

My style in interacting with students as a residence hall director is to try and become their friend.Many people are critical of this idea and think it doesn’t work, but in my time working with students it’s seemed to have worked quite well. Just recently here at SUNY Plattsburgh it was move-in day. Yay! The most stressful day of the year for residence life professionals, but hey, we made it! The building I supervise is very diverse in terms of student standing. We have first-year students, transfers, international students, sophomores, juniors, seniors; the whole shebang. With this dynamic comes positives and negatives of course, and one of the negatives is having primarily older students who are already engaged in our community, then reconciling that with the first-year students we have who are yet to find their niche.

During move-in day I like to make myself very visible and accessible to students. Later in the day when we were winding down check-in for students, one of our residents, a first-year student, came to me and asked if we could talk. I pulled him aside to my office and asked what was up. He went into his concerns about meeting people and said he was invited to a party but didn’t really want to go, and he wanted to know my feedback. I told him to give college a shot. It was only about four hours into his experience and I told him I would help him meet people outside of parties as well, a sentiment he truly seemed to appreciate. We went on to discuss why he chose Plattsburgh, and he said I was his tour guide for his campus tour and I made Plattsburgh sound fun and different from other schools! Unfortunately, I had forgotten him but he remembered me putting the extra effort into a brief hour long tour of campus. That is something I won’t soon forget! Now, the student and I meet regularly and talk about any concerns he has about the anxieties of college, particularly being a man in college and what that means to him. Now he and his friends call me “just one of the guys.”

The Little Things

I always do my best to live in the moment and enjoy the little things. The conversations I have with students happen so often that to me they have to seem little. I have maybe 300-500 conversations, big or small with student per week. But, I have to always reframe the conversation to what they are experiencing. Maybe my 200th conversation of the week with a student is their first ever with a campus professional. Maintaining this perspective has helped me to stay focused and excited in interacting with residents, because although I may have done many of these things before, many of them are figuring all of this out for the first time. I am honored that I have the opportunity to help them become the people they want to become simply by having conversations with them and genuinely caring for them. That’s what makes this a career and not a job.


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SOCIAL MEDIA: WHAT STUDENT AFFAIRS PROFESSIONALS ARE MISSING BY NOT CONNECTING

10/9/2014

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“Do you add your students on social media?” This is the beginning of a conversation that typically leads to me wanting to pull my hair out. Often student affairs pros answer this question with one of the following, “Absolutely not,” “Only after they graduate,” or “occasionally but only if I have a closer personal relationship with the student.” When I go on to ask why they choose to not connect with students, the most common response is that it isunprofessional and blurs the line between a professional and personal relationship potentially making for awkward/inappropriate situations. While this explanation may have held water in the early 2000’s at the advent of contemporary social media, it is floundering today. We live in an age where it is nearly impossible to find someone who isn’t connected to some social media at some capacity. So, if we aren’t connecting to our students who are so deeply invested in the social media culture then, what are we missing?

Community Engagement

As a residence life professional, community development is one of my favorite conversations. I always run across other pros who ask me why my RA staff is so invested in their work, or why our attendance at events and programs is so high. I always tell them it is because I invest a significant amount of my time into developing a strong community with my staff and with my building as a whole. Part of this is connecting with students at their level on social media. When I was an RA I would read through my roster of residents and add all of them on Facebook and Twitter before the Fall semester started. This allowed me to get a feel for the individual resident’s likes, dislikes, motivations and social attitudes. I was then able to tailor my programs, conversations and other initiatives to individuals, which ultimately led to a happy floor, which then led to an opportunity to develop a strong floor community.

Other than passively utilizing social media to gauge individual dynamics to later influence floor/building dynamics, I actively engage residents as well. It only stands to reason that we, as student affairs professionals, would meet the students at the venue where they are most active. Examples of this active engagement are things like congratulating students who post things about a success they just had (i.e. getting an “A” on a paper, joining an honor society, etc.) wishing individual students a happy birthday (often times Facebook will remind us,) and just purely being social by posting appropriate things to individual students accounts or for the community at-large to see. When I was an RA on the top floor of a high-rise building for three years I started a Twitter hashtag to promote floor pride. So, any time someone on our floor (or off it for that matter) did something they were proud of or wanted to give praise to the floor as a whole or another member of the community they would hashtag #PSUPenthouse. These little things are things that have always been particularly successful in the facilitation of a strong floor and building community, but community development isn’t the only thing to utilize social media for.Students wear their hearts on their social media pages and oft give us prompts for much needed conversations.

Life, Love and Loneliness

Let’s face it; many of our students (and potentially co-workers) share just about everything on social media. From the inconsequential what they ate that morning and how the Dunkin’ Donuts employee messed up their order, to the potentially life altering break-ups or family issues happening around them. Of course it can be frustrating sorting through the minutiae of the over-sharing student’s life,however it can be extremely powerful when we catch the few things they want someone to catch.

Social media gives us the opportunity to share the happiness of success with students, appreciate the positive relationships they are engaged in, but it also allows us to act as a safety net for when things aren’t going so well. When a student goes through a rough break up and they change their relationship status on Facebook that is the perfect opportunity for us as professionals to check-in with the student (assuming, of course, we have that kind of relationship.) If a student expresses exasperation about their home life (i.e. “I can’t stand being home!” “Get me out of this place!” etc.) that too is a great way to prompt a conversation about their wellbeing and to just make sure they are okay. The one situation we all hope to never have to come across is a student having suicidal ideations. However, if it is happening, we might as well be one of the first to know so we can assist the student as soon as possible. In the past I have had students post things like “It’s all too much right now, maybe I’ll just end it.” Of course, it was a bit awkward prompting the conversation based off of this post however, after I approached the student about it they confided in me about all the difficulties they had been having that I had missed in other interaction and we were able to refer them to the appropriate help. I absolutely believe connecting with students on social media can potentially save lives, and allow for other conversations about problematic behaviors.

Snapchats are Worth 1,000 Words

College is fun. I had a fantastic time socially as and undergrad, but I definitely did some really stupid stuff. As I was going through school, Facebook was big, Twitter was on the rise and Snapchat didn’t exist until the very end. So, the stupid stuff my friends and I were doing wasn’t being as readily documented as it is today. Then, people would post pictures a week after an event of even the next day. Now, students send pictures of all their activities almost immediately via Snapchat. If you are friends with your students on Snapchat this could lead to potentially awkward situations but it could also lead to potentially lifesaving or, at the least, very powerful conversations.

I always say “Students are going to do what they want regardless. The question is whether or not they tell you about it.” What I mean by that is, students will find ways around the rules and policies, they always do. However, when a student is having a serious issue with drinking, drugs, or sexual encounters hopefully they can talk to us about them. Typically they won’t start the conversation themselves even if they are having an issue so, it is our responsibility to initiate the conversation they may need. For instance, I had one resident who would always post pictures of themselves drinking large quantities of alcohol (underage,) doing drugs and suggesting they were participating in frequent unprotected sex. Thanks to social media (particularly Snapchat) I was able to have several conversations with the student about these behaviors and as it turns out, they wanted someone to talk with them about these issues because they were merely a symptom of a larger mental health concern. Yes, we can be put in uncomfortable situations by using social media with our students however, once we get over that discomfort I believe it can help us do our jobs better.

To Instagram and Beyond

As student affairs professionals,connection is key. It is what we preach, advocate and train for. But how can we fully connect with today’s generation of students without meeting them at their level where the most communication and interaction happens in their day-to-day lives? Once we get over the fear of being seen as unprofessional or inappropriate, I believe the student affairs community will benefit greatly from students and professionals interacting on a daily basis and on a more personal level. My challenge to other student affairs pros is this: if you don’t have anything to hide, go and follow or friend your students. This will ultimately lead to a more complete experience with your student staffs, students and co-workers. Now go out there and take a selfie with some students!


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TECH GENERATION: DON'T JUST "DEAL WITH IT"

10/9/2014

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Recently, I have had many conversations with others in our Student Affairs division here at Plattsburgh, about how sad it is that this newest generation of students has essentially always been connected to technology and social media. People complain about the evident decline in social competence for this newest batch of first-year students, which is immediately attributed to their addiction to screens. Computer, phone, and television screens that is. We blame the parents; we blame the students, but what about us? Are we just helpless observers in the seeming destruction of interpersonal connection as we know it? Or are we potential agents of change, to use a student affairs buzz phrase. Of course, I believe we are the latter or else I wouldn’t be writing this article. From my perspective, here’s how we can do it:

  1. Get Acquainted with the “Problems”: At this point, it seems safe to make the assumption that technology, and all things associated with it, is here to stay. Avoiding technological updates (i.e. using smartphones, social media, other digital media, etc.) won’t make the problem disappear. When we have problematic students or groups on our campuses we (hopefully) don’t ignore them and hope they go away. Instead we start asking questions and give ourselves every opportunity to positively affect change. The same should apply in this situation. If you aren’t quite tech or social media literate, feel free to ask colleagues or students questions. Not only can this help you better understand these platforms, it can also potentially aid your relationship with the students you asked. Students (like anyone) enjoy it when we take an interest in the things they do, or the things they are interested in. This is a win/win situation. Also, if you feel uncomfortable asking those around you, certainly utilize the amazing network established by the Student Affairs Collective!
  2. Upgrade: This isn’t always possible due to strapping financial situations, however if at all possible; join the next generation with the newest smartphone, tablet, iPad, or laptop. A friend of mine in the tech industry once told me, “These days technology advances exponentially, we can’t even imagine what’s coming next.” Don’t get left farther behind than you already are.
  3. Connect: Today, social media is such a pervasive part of our society it is nearly impossible for us to avoid being a part of it. I have written an article extolling the virtues of social media and all the good it can do for our relationships with students, but for the purposes of this article, my challenge is that if you haven’t already, checkout some apps that are hot on campuses these days. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are the barebones of social media competency. To truly understand what’s happening on our campuses I believe we need to dig deeper and look at apps such as Snapchat, Yik Yak, Kik, Vine, Tinder, etc. I’m not saying you need to necessarily actively participate in all of these apps or social media venues, however, I do believe developing a comprehensive understanding of these apps will help you understand how students are connecting/interacting today.
These are a few concrete steps that we can all take to catch up to the newest generation of college students in the realm of technology and social media. I believe as responsible leaders it is our task to understand current student culture and to actively engage that culture. We have the opportunity to stop being complacent and to make strides towards modeling effective interpersonal relationships. However, if we keep turning a blind-eye to the culture of students today, and relegating ourselves to a place of ignorance, we don’t stand a chance in this exponentially growing field. With that said, go download the new iOS update, update your Instagram, and checkout the app store!

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