Chelsea Whitaker:
I think we’ve seen the struggles of our students as well as professional staff just increase exponentially. You know, it’s always been kind of in this upward trend, but I think the like density of it in the past couple years has really been extreme. And I think of course we think of the secondhand trauma experiences. We’re going through these critical life moments with a lot of our students when it comes to mental health emergencies when it comes to navigating the world as it is. And I think a lot of that is also not being able to turn off when you’re live on. You’re always on I even, and technically on vacation, I went downstairs, ran into some of my students, like you came back early and I’m like, no, I’m still technically not here. But especially, you know, those, those bigger moments when you’re dealing with mental health when you’re dealing with the death of a student, no matter how much counseling experience you get in graduate school, no one can really prepare you for that.And unfortunately no one outside the field can really understand that, but you also don’t want to then tax your peers with the emotional labor of listening to you through those experiences.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Student Affairs NOW I’m your host, Glenn DeGuzman. Now back in February of 2022, I hosted an episode called rethinking the residence director role and it featured awesome folks like and it was really well received from from many people as they spoke about their experiences as expert leaders in residence life or residence education. So this episode today brings school circles. We now hear the perspectives from those student affairs professionals who are currently serving as live in professional staff. They are the resident directors. In today’s episode, I’m joined by our panelists of RDS from various college and universities to share their experience. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online your podcast, an online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs, we release new episodes every week on Wednesdays.

Glenn DeGuzman:
You can find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsmow.com. Now this episode is sponsored by Simplicity. Simplicity is a true partner. They support all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. And this episode is also sponsored by LeaderShape go to leadershape.org to learn how they can work with you to create a just caring and thriving world. I’ll talk more about our sponsors in more detail at the end of this episode. So if you stay on long enough, you can hear more details. Again, my name is Glen Guzman. I’m the associate Dean of student and director of residential life at the University of California, Berkeley. I use hehe pronouns and I’m recording this episode from Livermore, California, which is the ancestral home of the unseated territory of the Pelman tribe of the Aloni peoples. So let’s meet our panelists. I’m so excited to have William Hsu from University of San Francisco, Chelsea Whitaker from New York University and Robert Magdeleno from the University of California, Berkeley, welcome to Student Affairs Now the best way to start obviously is to get our audience to get to know you a little bit better. So if we can have you introduce yourself and, we’ll start with you Will.

William Hsu:
All right. Thank you, Glen. Hi everyone. My name is Will Hsu. My English pronouns are he his, and I’m currently a residence director at the University of San Francisco which is on the unseated ancestral lands of the peoples. I am currently calling in and recording this episode on vacation actually in Guha, Mexico which is the unseated ancestral lands of many indigenous nations, but most notably the . I’ve been professionally in residential life and student affairs for roughly five years now. Educated undergrad and my master’s program at large public research four year institutions. And I’ve worked at worked full time small private religious specifically Catholic Jesuit, liberal arts four year institutions. And I’ve been living in as a student leader for four years but living in as a student affairs professional also for four years. So yeah, I’ll pass back.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Will, and thanks for taking time outta your vacation. I really appreciate that. Let’s go to Chelsea.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Hello. My name is Chelsea Whitaker. I use she hers pronouns. And I currently am a resident hall assistant director at New York University, which is on the land of the Lenape people. And I did my undergrad education at Washington University in St. Louis in theater and African African American studies where I also lived on for all four years, two of those as a resident advisor. And then I also worked as a staff member at, Wash U and lived on in that capacity, working with faculty and academic initiatives in the residence halls before then doing my master’s at the Ohio State University. Of course in higher education student affairs, where I also lived on. And so I believe I’ve lived on for about six years as a full-time professional staff member. And some of my work includes working with marginalized students in college theater programs as well as looking at abolitionist frameworks in community development.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Chelsea for joining the panel. Let’s go back from let’s go from the east coast back to the west coast to Robert.

Robert Magdeleno:
Thank you for name Robert Magdeleno. I use the him pronouns. I am currently a resident director at the university of California Berkeley. Before that I was a resident director at the University of Puget sound and I got my master’s degree at Lewison Clark College and my undergrad in political science at the University of Redlands. I like to joke that I was really into the liberal arts, small institutions. My biggest institution for Berkeley was my high school at 4,000. Everything else was below 2000 and absolutely loved my time with the liberal arts being a first generation college student to be a hundred percent honest. My imposter syndrome is doula roof. No one wants to listen to me. So I’m absolutely honored Glenn to have me here. Thank you so much. And I’m excited to talk with the entire panel.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I’m honored to have you and the rest of the panel here. And this is going to be a wonderful topic to discuss, and I’m, I’m just glad to get your perspectives on rethinking the resin director experience. So this question I’m going to direct to all of you and Chelsea, I’m going to actually have you kick off, but a popular topic over the past couple of years on this podcast has been around mental health of our students, but sometimes overlooked is a mental health of our professional live-in staff, like resident directors, community directors, obviously different institutions have different names and titles for that. But I’d like to hear from all of you, if you can speak to your experience or your experiences of your peers and colleagues regarding the stress and anxiety of being in this role you can speak into like how the pandemic and just issues across our nation, whether it’s civil unrest or hate crimes violence, et cetera, how has that impacted all of you in trying to support our residents? Chelsea wanted to kick us off?

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve seen the struggles of our students as well as professional staff just increase exponentially. You know, it’s always been kind of in this upward trend, but I think the like density of it in the past couple years has really been extreme. And I think of course we think of the secondhand trauma experiences. We’re going through these critical life moments with a lot of our students when it comes to mental health emergencies when it comes to navigating the world as it is. And I think a lot of that is also not being able to turn off when you’re live on. You’re always on I even, and technically on vacation, I went downstairs, ran into some of my students, like you came back early and I’m like, no, I’m still technically not here. But especially, you know, those, those bigger moments when you’re dealing with mental health when you’re dealing with the death of a student, no matter how much counseling experience you get in graduate school, no one can really prepare you for that.

Chelsea Whitaker:
And unfortunately no one outside the field can really understand that, but you also don’t want to then tax your peers with the emotional labor of listening to you through those experiences. And I feel really fortunate that I have great insurance through my university in which I can go to therapy on a regular basis, but that certainly has not been the case throughout my career. And so I think I had one professor that really said like, we should have required therapy, that’s paid by our employers. And I think that would be a great step into addressing the mental health of our live-in staff and staff.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Wow, great start. That’s really interesting to hear about the the therapy and provided with university Robert you want to add?

Robert Magdeleno:
Yeah, I think it’s been a really hard time, especially for all of us. I was in graduate school during the 2016 election and then all that followed after that. And I think the incredibly hard thing about the resident director role is we often move to this role. So we’re leaving our communities to join a new community of younger professionals as well. And I think for me, I’m luckily to be married and have an ability to step outside the role and talk someone who’s outside of student affairs, but often our entire community, student affairs professionals, usually resident directors who are dealing with the same issues we’re dealing with our students trying to navigate and also trying to navigate a new field, higher education and just the over political and social climate right now. I think it’s really hard to try to understand outside the world when your entire world is higher education. So I think for me, what’s really helped me is taking a step out of the role and trying to connect to the community. I’m thankfully in Berkeley, where I have a lot of great things to connect in the Bay Area outside of education. But I do think, especially as we look at resident directors and as we bring resident directors from different populations, how do we connect them to the community outside of higher education?

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks, Robert, Will, what are your thoughts?

William Hsu:
I think that, you know, the, one of the challenges with residential life and being live in is that the university like depends on us to be on site and to respond to the things that are, especially after hours. And what is also causing a lot of the burnout and the trauma that like we that my colleagues have addressed here is that is I think some, some of the ways that response is managed and for example, like if you are an RD and you’re not on duty but you still come into contact with something like what is your like responsibility and onus to still like respond to the incident and see it all the way through, but you weren’t on duty to begin with. And so I think some of those 24/7 challenges, the nuances to that are what needs to be examined in how we sort of tackle some of the infrastructure of like the wellness of our professionals.

William Hsu:
Because I think as conversations are happening in supervision, supervisors simply advocating for work life boundaries trying to coach their supervises to like establish worklife boundaries that can only go so far. But it’s not addressing the root of the, the nature of our work as a yeah, at its origins. I also think that during the pandemic so there were a couple of things I noted that were particular to my work context. There was heightened anxiety around specifically for our international student affairs professionals who were I know that in the first episode, Dr. Aja Holmes referred to how when campuses closed down res life professionals in particular were getting laid off or furloughed left and right. And but no one was stopping to consider the impact of a furlough or a layoff on international student affairs professional whose work visa is dependent on being on them being full-time status.

William Hsu:
So not just their work visa, but also their ability to stay in the states. And for those of us who are us citizens we still experience the lack of work and also lack of value attributed to our presence on campus. In response to that, like one of the things that many campuses did was create these COVID care manager positions or roles that naturally the residents directors filled in for, to check in on students who were placed into quarantine and isolation. What that also does though, at least for us, our our role was to contact a student by phone or email or text every single day throughout their isolation, just to make sure that they’re okay, monitor their symptoms case, manage them to get them connected to appropriate resources that made us experience, I guess, the the was duty responsibilities even more when we weren’t on duty.

William Hsu:
And I think for me in particular there was one time that I had a student who was not responsive whatsoever for like three days straight. I had to go do a wellness check on the student. And so I was extremely heightened with, am I masking enough? I have to like go to their door, wait for them to open the door, like am I putting myself in danger? And also am, is there a possibility that I’m going to step in and see a dead body? And so yeah, I think that, and thankfully none of those things happen, but those are things that I don’t think many administrators, the higher ups have really thought through like the intricacies of this trauma that us as resident structures are being exposed to.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks. Well, thanks for illuminating the, you know, the impacts or what goes through the mind of resident directors, particularly during the pandemic and sort of working on the isolation, quarantine spaces. Those are, those are definitely real feelings and thoughts that I know that have also been conveyed at my institution. Will, I’m going to stay with you. And and Chelsea, I’d also like you to, to add onto this question around the role of police. A major topic has been about what role does police play in the residence hall, obviously with a lot of issues and topics that has arisen nationally and at, on college campuses regarding the presence of police. It depends on university system. It depends on structure. It depends on the police, but they, police has historically played a significant role in safety and security response. I’d like to know what has been your experience or experiences of your colleagues with working with police?

William Hsu:
So I think my arrival at University of San Francisco, which was January 2020, right before the pandemic hit and all of our campuses shut down was at this very unique time for our campus where it was about a few years after some really strong student activism, particularly from our black identified students on just the I guess how problematic it was that our police officers were doing rounds throughout all of our residence halls. And as a result the time that I got there, there was already conversations in place about like, well so what the university was distinguishing, what is necessary police presence and what is unnecessary police presence and rounds in the residence halls were deemed unnecessary. And so while so currently we no longer have police officers doing rounds through our residence halls except to say hi to the community assistance, working the front desk of each hall. And I think we are still envisioning or like reimagining what does this continue to develop and look like?

William Hsu:
We are fortunate at USF to have a progressive policing community advisory board, or PPCAB for any listeners who want to Google search for our website and that we have a grant funded initiative through I, I know it’s I know it’s a Jesuit higher ed organization. I don’t remember the exact name, but our initiative, it’s the six plus U grant that funds our re reimagining public safety at the University of San Francisco initiative. These initiatives and also the advisory board are comprised of not just public safety leadership, but also faculty, staff, and students at the institution and and are constantly sifting through community feedback. And then also trying to think proactively on on what is the purpose if there is a purpose to public safety at our institutions, I will say though, that even though we have now been very stringent on the I guess, like what level of incidents do police respond to within our residence halls?

William Hsu:
What that has also resulted in inadvertently is that the act of policing has ended up falling on the on the operations and protocols of the residence life staff and that has manifested simply in the things that our functional area are so used to RAs doing rounds when they’re on duty or even or even students and student leaders. I would, I would venture to say weaponizing the wellness care system wellness check system to have staff essentially go knock on a door, but behind closed door, end up finding a policy violation and therefore using staff as a way to police their peers. And so and these are things that we are still continuing to examine and how in how do we shift the culture of residential life and also the educational values that we try to promote through residential curriculum away from policing and towards accountability. And so naturally things are still things can still continue to frustrate us in our relationship with public safety, but we are at least appreciative that we have these systems in place at the institution for feedback to be heard and responded to in a timely manner.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Will. Chelsea, what’s been your experience like working with police?

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yes. So I believe I mentioned this in my introduction. I am, fullheartedly an abolitionist. I don’t think police have any role in our society and don’t need to be as an institution, I do really like what Will said, reimagining public safety and, and what’s its purpose, because of course safety is important in any community and you want people to feel safe. So I think in my experiences, I’m trying to figure out a way, how do we make police obsolete in our community building that we do, that’s going to take a long time. Like I do not know if I’m going to see that in my lifetime. Cause it requires a lot of people, it requires that, you know, like will said, you then have all these responsibilities that we’ve put on police and how do you redistribute that to the community and build up those skills when especially most of our students, they have no experience in building those skills and that’s impossible to do in four years.

Chelsea Whitaker:
And so I think in particular, the institution that I’m at now, NYU, we don’t have an on campus police department. And so we have to work with the NYPD, which if you’ve read anything in the news, that’s a very difficult, intense relationship across the city and especially with the mayor that we currently have. And so we’ve even seen maybe even a year ago, you know, if we had a mental health emergencies, we’d have EMTs come and now it’s EMTs and nine police officers. And we really have no jurisdiction. We really have no way of giving feedback for that. And so it’s really assessing our own policies of, okay, how are we not traumatizing students when it’s not in our control? What can we do? What in looking really more at those proactive ways that we’re making students feel safe and how we’re addressing crises while also managing the roles and responsibilities of all the live on staff, our student staff and our professional staff as well. So it’s very difficult work. I would say, but I think kind of each little step, you know, is a move, not just towards reform, but towards not even needing police within residence life and with, on our campuses as well.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Well, thanks for sharing that. I did not know that NYPD was your direct police. I know at UC Berkeley, we have a University California police department in addition to the Berkeley police department, which is a whole different type of cause Robert knows a whole different type of relationship that we have to manage as well. Thanks for sharing. Both of you on that. Will I want to go back to, cause this sort of is a completely different line questioning, but it’s one, that’s often, it’s a popular question that we, we like to ask because obviously the resident director experience over the last, you know, decade has been evolving and and I always wonder having not been connected, you know, from a to my graduate program in a long time if you could go back to your grad program or back to any, or tell any graduate program with what, you know now, are there trainings or classes that you would tell them to focus on to just help prepare the next generation of resident directors, I guess, in other words, what is changing with our residential populations that grad programs should really start looking at in their curriculum or assistant opportunities to support the resident directors?

William Hsu:
I think that in terms of what’s changing with our residential population. I think the definition of meeting students where they’re at continues to evolve and we’re going to see that evolve generationally. That’s just I feel like the way our society works but in term and based off of that, going to different types of like classes or trainings I would say the first things that stuck out in my mind when I was processing this question were my own experiences of having law and higher education be a core to my to my master’s program curriculum. So it wasn’t an elective. I had to take it. In addition counseling programs or counseling coursework is I think beneficial. And if there is no counseling coursework available at your program, then I think it is really prudent for our rising professionals to get some experience with advising techniques, because those are all sort of I don’t want to say interchangeable, but they’re all related.

William Hsu:
And I think that those are all the techniques that I feel like I’ve had to draw upon the most when responding to different student complaints or concerns that have been brought to my attention. I also think that up and coming generations of residents the students living on our campuses are becoming more and more familiar with mental health services. And so as a result for us to have I guess some competency of that, and that’s also why I bring up counseling and advising techniques and to better understand populations or at least to have the toolbox of skills to to dissect how we meet students, how we meet audiences, where they are if programs offer some sort of marketing elective, then I think that I would recommend that as well. So however, I want to hone in on some sort of training or skill building around responding to crisis because I don’t know about other institutions across the country, but I know many institutions in California are doing away with their residential life graduate assistance being in an on-call rotation.

William Hsu:
Partially because of HR policies and FLSA not really allowing that, nor should we allow that because there is no equitable way to compensate for that, especially if our graduate assistants are hourly or stipend. And, but I’ve heard a lot of debate in the field about, well, if these graduate if this graduate assistantship doesn’t provide crisis experience, how are, how is this person going to be a strong candidate for res life positions after? And I think that our field has been very locked into this definition of crisis experience is valuable when it’s after hours, when that’s not the case like CRI crisis experiences is transferable, anytime you experience something out of the blue. And so but I think how we train our rising professionals to make sound decisions, to think critically and also to take care of themselves after that is all packaged in a responding to crisis session or training or class that I’m imagining.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Great. Thanks Will. Chelsea you want to add on

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yes, I will echo everything Will just laid out in a very like logical explicit way. Cause I think when I think back to my graduate training, like of course the content was helpful, but I think the faculty did a really great job of teaching us how to think essentially. So, you know, yes, we have these historical theories that, you know, you’re like, how do I actually apply this when I’m being a practitioner? And so when it comes to changing populations, you know, I was learning about the value of social media. We are learning about different frameworks and how to even approach looking at a theory from different ways. And so I feel like that emphasis on how do we reenvision these theories when we’re encountering students that did not exist, you know, 50 years ago or we’re not even looked at, we’re not even in our institutions at all. And how do we look at those theories and really translate that to something tangible? I think not ignoring what our incoming students are doing with social media and things like that, but really being able to to embrace it again, that kind of meeting them where they’re at and not where we think they should be.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks, Chelsea. Robert, I want to ask this question to you. The type of work RDs and RAs are facing around with residents with mental health student concern issues has some colleges and universities thinking about licensed social workers working in the res halls. I asked this question in a previous podcast and I want your take on this. Would you like more professionally trained people to support RDs in this capacity, meaning licensed social workers or should RDs be trained in their grad program to better support residents?

Robert Magdeleno:
I think simply yes. And I think Will really hit on the head, is that for graduate and talking about programming, we need to learn to support, how do we do mental health? How do we support crisis, but how do we advise in council? And I think that’s something we do need to focus on as we’ve moved to new RDs. I think I’m very hesitant to say yes to a social worker, because I have seen in previous past, so that that’s just the bandaid to the solution. The RDs are still going to be burnt up. They’re still going to be handling mental health crisis. And I don’t want to be hearing while we hired a social worker. So, and just like kind of covering it up and brushing the issue under the rug of the burnout and the amount of work we’re doing. I think in particular for me, what I would really like to see and Berkeley had this for a little bit, I’m hoping to bring it back eventually is mental health professional for RAs.

Robert Magdeleno:
I’ve had a lot of RAs tell me that they scheduled that therapy the other week. So my one-on-one can be their next therapy session. I think I’m more and more focusing my one-on-ones as a therapy session, especially as we talked previously with the amount that’s going on outside of higher education than trying to navigate this field and navigate everything else, one-on-ones have really truly become therapy sessions for my residents. And I think as I’ve grown in the profession learned how to build my boundaries. I’ve been able to navigate more, but I remember as a first year professional, every 1:1 was draining, it was exhausting. I didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the skillset to build those boundaries and also how to like debrief and decompress from that. So I think for me, I’m loving that the people above me are having conversations about social workers, but I really want to focus on how do we spark the RAs because right now that’s the RDS and the RDS are supporting the rest of the student population as well.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Robert for sharing that this question came in and it was brought up by some folks outside of this, this I didn’t come up with this question, but I love this question. So I want to share it and I’m going to direct this to Chelsea. There’s been talk about this idea of the great resignation that a lot of student affairs professionals and a lot of live-in professionals are leaving in greater numbers out of these student affairs profession. What are you seeing or hearing from your fellow peers? Are they leaving? Is it about compensation? Is it about evolving work or is it about the impacts of the pandemic? There’s there seems to be a lot of different takes on this. I want your take on it.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yeah, absolutely. So the great resignation is very much a pattern and an issue we should be paying attention to. I think what frustrates me the most, I think about this concept is that it’s exclusive to higher education. If you look all across the country people are resigning because they’re realizing they’re not being compensated enough. Especially in responses to how our economy is going, even just the cost of living as well. And so you’re also seeing those impacts in higher education. And I think especially having had experience, I did work as a corporate project manager for a year now I’m I kind of made the opposite. I moved into higher ed, whereas a lot of people are now moving into corporate life. And it’s, it’s kind of a catch 22 because I was working the same amount of hours in corporate and getting paid more, but I didn’t enjoy the work.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Whereas now I completely understand why several of my peers, several folks are leaving higher education as a field. I know for me, I’m passionate about working with college students and so I’m in the perfect place for that. And so I think for a lot of people, it’s just, you know, that is not becoming worth it for what they want. And I think especially looking with COVID not only like the financial effects that happens, but I think a lot of people did a lot of self-reflection and I think our mortality was much more in our faces and realizing what do you want? And so I think a lot of it is a personal decision. And I think it’s not just an issue with higher education. It’s an issue with how we treat workers in this, in this country as a whole and across the world. And so I feel like if we plugged in to other industries to what else is happening, I think it wouldn’t be such a shock. And we could really start to address some of those root problems. And I think, you know, very pro-union and so making sure that we’re addressing those issues too. Cause I think a lot, especially for living staff, a lot of us are not unionized, but where there are unions are our campuses and really how can we all build power to get everyone paid fairly.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Robert, what’s your take on this?

Robert Magdeleno:
I think so referring back to the previous podcast, unfortunately I don’t remember who said this, so I’m sorry. But they had mentioned that the resignation was that campus we’re able to evolve and change quickly when we were always told they could never evolve and change and that was to accommodate everything happening. And as we return back to pandemic recovery, returning back to whatever normal is, we’re being told things can’t change anymore and it’s incredibly frustrating and it’s been very in our face that things can’t change. And though I do agree with that. I think that’s a second wave of the great resignation. We have to talk about the first wave. And I think that first wave is that’s not being valued. I think it’s easy to say that the RD positions a general position, but to be honest, I think that’s a scapegoat sometimes to say, I don’t know what an RD does.

Robert Magdeleno:
I think often when I was hearing we talk about the George Folk paper test, we set great emails from institutions talking about how we support black students, how we support students. And I always set at the bottom, especially liberal arts, the small institu I worked at, please contact your mental health professional or your resident director to talk about these issues. But there was no emails going to the resident directors. There was no emails going to the professionals like how do we support you? And I think it was an issue of a lot of younger professionals where the institution said they had the values of taking care of folks, but they focus on the students and they didn’t focus on the people doing the work. And I think part of the reason I am part of the great resignation I was in that first wave, I felt my institution had a great values, but some of the key actors in it, weren’t living up to those values.

Robert Magdeleno:
And I felt often used, I became a mental health professional. I became a public health professional. I became a COVID respondent all within the crisis of a month or two without even Robert what’s going on? How can we support you? Who can we hire? What can we do? And I think that resignation I’m a little, get a little ick maybe about the term is that it puts the onus on the person to leave. When I do think it’s the onus on the institution to say, why are people leaving? And I think partially it’s because you tell the RD they’re generalist, but please sit down and talk to me what I actually do, because I honestly feels like you don’t know the work I’m doing and you’re just going to keep adding because I wear so many hats.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks for sharing that Robert actually builds. I mean, leads to this next question. You know, we do talk a lot about, and, and when I say we I’m talking about leadership campus leaders like myself, we talk a lot about resilience in student affairs. And but I also wonder how the next generation of resident directors will come to terms with our request to say, we need to be more resilient. Given that many live in staff have experienced so much over the past two years, whereas I do feel that resiliency is needed. I also believe that campus and department leaders like myself need to also play a part in creating a work environment, support the resident directors and the live-in staff, given the current old and anticipated professional challenges that you’re all facing. So my question for all of you is what structural or policy changes or strategies are you seeing now or would like to see campus leaders implement in the future? Who would like to go first?

Robert Magdeleno:
I can take it. I think I’ve touched on it a little bit in my first answer was mentioning that I think connecting with community, connecting with folks outside of higher education is also been helpful. But my previous institution, I didn’t have a duty phone. I didn’t have a work phone. If I was on duty, they were calling my personal cell phone and that was hard. At UC Berkeley I’m thankful to say that I have a work phone, I have a duty phone and we have a separate duty phone from that too. And that’s been a really nice work and balance. And I think as we’re hearing people in your level lens, talk about work life balance. It’s interesting to see the takes. They do. I think there’s some institutions like here’s what I did for work life balance, but not understanding the population, the generation while others are bringing us to the table and think we have this podcast to talk about these issues. And I think for me, it’s how do we understand org life balance, but how do we make sure RDS and younger professionals are at that table too?

Glenn DeGuzman:
Great. Chelsea, what are your thoughts on this?

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yes, this is a, a tough question for sure. But I think some of the things that come to mind is like a four day work week would be great. I think now what’s been really great at my current institution is that when we do work weekends or an extra night, like we do get those comp days, which is really great and they’re really strict about it. They’re like, no, you must not be here. And I’m like, that is no problem. Great. Or even thinking about, I think across any institution, like even apartment equity you know, you don’t want to go home and feel like you’re living in a residence hall of like you want to go home and feel like it’s home. And I’ve become fantastic with a role of contact paper. But also at the end of the day.

Chelsea Whitaker:
And I think that impacts who we’re also seeing come in as hall directors, you know, it’s easy for someone who is young and unattached to come into and accept kind of any apartment. But we’re really losing, you know, folks who want to build families and want to have lives. And aren’t just folks who aren’t just focused on a nuclear family model either. And so I think part of that resilience, like Robert said is having that community around you as well. And so I think being able to build ways outside of work that’s not a work happy hour, that’s not the party. But feel really tangible would be really, really great ways I think, to, to help build the resilience and people’s ability to stay too.

Glenn DeGuzman:
What are your thoughts on that?

William Hsu:
So I think my take on the structural or policy changes is a little bit to what I heard Chelsea mention compensation, equity. We I think it was from yeah, one of the panels I mentioned in the last episode of this topic. No apartments are are created equally within our field. And so think it it’s structural and it’s going to be, and it’s a big challenge because infrastructure, but simply the number of bedrooms offered to standard standardized for an RD department appliances in unit laundry parking, I think parking is a big one because our contracts all require us to live on campus.

William Hsu:
In order to hold a job, if this if transportation is not included then and parking is not included, then we are essentially paying some of the salary that’s been paid to us in order to in order to fulfill the responsibility of living on campus to hold the job. And that, yeah, that’s absurd to me. I also think that some things about like protocol have been shifted that I do appreciate at University of San Francisco. Our campus used to be one where the RD on duty had to go had to go to the hospital whenever a student was admitted to the emergency room and had to be there with the student until they were conscious. And now especially in COVID where, if hospital staff won’t let us in anyways, because we aren’t blood relatives of the student and they can’t tell us anything anyway.

William Hsu:
So we’ve determined that there is no purpose for us going to the hospital and hopefully it stays that way. Even when we switch, when we transition into an endemic instead of a pandemic but it would also be great that we are limiting the number of phone calls that we get when we are on duty. So many campuses have their RA on duty, sorry, RAs on duty call in to the duty phone whenever they’re checking in for duty, just to, and that is in, in essence one of our ways of holding RAs accountable that they are performing the responsibilities. But multiple duty calls the are becoming extra sources of traumatization simply through association with the duty ring tone. And so now having our RAs on duty text in instead of call or like we using text, I think that has been a way that has not only been a little kinder to us with RDs on duty who are in terms of like our association with trauma that we’re going to get when we’re on duty anyways, but also kinder to our students because we’re meeting them where they’re at.

William Hsu:
I I’ve heard a lot from my colleagues and I, I concur a lot about the need that the institutions need to express more value in the RD staff and live on staff in general. And I think that expressing value has subconsciously been conflated with compensation and it is compensation and it is also attention, communication and energy. As Robert had shared not being communicated with or consulted with in during a tragedy, when the institutions focus on the students, of course is going to be focused on the students because the students are where the money comes from at the institution. But but like if there’s no even attention or preparation given to the staff it, it really does feel like we are being scapegoated for the student’s sake in order for the student to still be okay, and to matriculate at the institution.

Robert Magdeleno:
So then can I have one more thing also that kind of sparked with me? Yeah. I think we talk a lot about compensation too, but one thing that I think that Berkeley I grateful before is our contract’s been extended. I think reshipping the narrative that the RD role is two years. And then you go to a different institution. I think seeing an institution invests in the RDs and state, like if you want a career position here, how do we connect you? How do we work with you here? I think some institutions are very much like you’re here for two years, I’ll help you find a new job after. And that never feels great either. because if I’m going to be putting into the work community, I would love to see the directors try to add how do we make the RD stay here if the RD wants to stay here. And I think that’s a final shift I would love to see. And when we talk about valuing the RD is valuing their work and wanting to keep ’em at that institution that time. Well, your contracts up. Good luck finding your next job.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Yeah. Thanks for adding that. I was very thoughtful and I appreciate the authenticity and the realness of the responses. I know that those are difficult. This is a, that’s a difficult question and I really appreciate the, the responses for sure. We are also at the end of our podcast, we always end with our wrap up question, obviously the, the podcast at student affairs now. And if you could just sort of summarize your thoughts on what are you thinking about what emerged for you during this conversation or what are you excited about or what’s what’s still troubling you, if you can kind of just quickly summarize I’m going to have, will you go first and then Chelsea and then Robert, you can close us up.

William Hsu:
I think one of the things that is definitely troubling me is is still Chelsea enlightening us of how especially many urban institutions don’t have their own public safety department or campus police department and rely on the greater police force of that municipality. And and I think that, that that troubles me because we, we working in higher ed in student affairs already know how much of a silo, how isolated our field is compared to even the broader field of education and other disciplines out there. And so if we’re, if we already aren’t experiencing a whole lot of understanding of what happens in our field from other disciplines, that just that just sounds like a losing battle in the work that we are trying to do in order to ultimately support our students and their development. So yeah, I don’t know. I hate to end on that, but I, I’m still just deeply troubled by that and I don’t necessarily have thoughts on like how to imagine a better solution, but yeah, that’s my answer to what’s troubling me

Glenn DeGuzman:
And that’s a great response Will, and then it’s real. And then I think that’s, and this is what this conversation does. It just emerges so many different feelings and thoughts, Kelsey, your final thoughts.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yeah. I think kind of going off of the, the silos that just Will mentioned, I think this conversation, even for me, you know, aspiring sounds cheesy, but I think it’s like I only have one brain. I can only think about so much at one time. So I think to bring so many other perspectives together is great. And I think higher ed as a whole is so focused on, you know, institutions want to be the first, they want to be the best. And we don’t prioritize sharing information. We don’t prioritize sharing strategies that have worked especially higher ed institutions are virtually everywhere. But of course, you know, in different geographical areas and, you know, different types and structures. So I think if we focused a lot more on sharing what we’re doing and making sure we’re doing at the end of the day, what’s best for our students across institutions. I think that would be a really great step in improving higher education

Glenn DeGuzman:
And Robert.

Robert Magdeleno:
I think mine is incredibly similar to Chelsea. I’m great. Incredibly grateful to be on this. I’ve learned so much just from will and Chelsea in this 50 minute conversation. And I think we talk a lot about being siloed in the RD role, there’s RD roles at, at every institution, we should be connecting with other folks and having those conversations, what can we learn and what can we take from other institutions? And one thing the pandemic did teach us is the world. Isn’t that big, it’s a quick zoom call to talk from Mexico and New York, and I would love to continue having that conversation with other folks other again, will Chelsea, thank you so much. I’ve learned so much from you just this brief conversation.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I normally don’t answer this question, but I gotta really get, I gotta chime in here. I’m super appreciative of just the different perspectives and thoughts that you all shared as well. I know that the last couple years, as a director of residential life, I’ve heard so many different thoughts and ideas, emerging feelings and you know, it’s a lot and trying to sort and organize and prioritize where they even begin has been a challenge. And but just even continuing the conversation like this, hearing your thoughts and ideas, I’m really appreciative of you just joining me me on this podcast today. So thank you to everyone here. Will Hsu, Chelsea Whitaker, Robert Magdeleno, thank you. I’m grateful for your time and contribution to this podcast. Nat Ambrosey thank you again for behind the scenes. I think, you know, Nat a long time ago did some time at UC Berkeley.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And I think you’re going to really appreciate listening to this as you prepare and describe it for for it being aired. Again, I want to thank our sponsor Simplicity and LeaderShape. Simplicity is a global leader in student service technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partners with the institutions, simplicity supports all aspects of student life, including, but not limited to career services and development, student conduct and wellbeing, student success and accessibility services to learn more, visit simplicity.com. You can connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and LeaderShape. Thank you. They partner with colleges and universities to transform to create transformational leadership experiences, both virtual and in person for students and professionals with a focus on creating a more, just, caring and thriving world. LeaderShape offers, engaging learning experiences on courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building to find out more, please visit them at www.leadershape.org/virtual programs or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Glenn DeGuzman:
So the audience and listeners, thanks for joining us. This was a phenomenal podcast. I really appreciate all of you just being here and sharing for those who are listening in and you got to the very end of this podcast if you’re not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please join and visit our website studentaffairsnow.com, scroll to the bottom and add your email to our MailChimp list. If you are listening wherever watching on, on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. I’m Glenn Guzman, thanks for listening or watching wherever you are, go at and make it a good day. Take care, everybody.

Chelsea Whitaker:
I think we’ve seen the struggles of our students as well as professional staff just increase exponentially. You know, it’s always been kind of in this upward trend, but I think the like density of it in the past couple years has really been extreme. And I think of course we think of the secondhand trauma experiences. We’re going through these critical life moments with a lot of our students when it comes to mental health emergencies when it comes to navigating the world as it is. And I think a lot of that is also not being able to turn off when you’re live on. You’re always on I even, and technically on vacation, I went downstairs, ran into some of my students, like you came back early and I’m like, no, I’m still technically not here. But especially, you know, those, those bigger moments when you’re dealing with mental health when you’re dealing with the death of a student, no matter how much counseling experience you get in graduate school, no one can really prepare you for that.And unfortunately no one outside the field can really understand that, but you also don’t want to then tax your peers with the emotional labor of listening to you through those experiences.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Student Affairs NOW I’m your host, Glenn DeGuzman. Now back in February of 2022, I hosted an episode called rethinking the residence director role and it featured awesome folks like and it was really well received from from many people as they spoke about their experiences as expert leaders in residence life or residence education. So this episode today brings school circles. We now hear the perspectives from those student affairs professionals who are currently serving as live in professional staff. They are the resident directors. In today’s episode, I’m joined by our panelists of RDS from various college and universities to share their experience. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online your podcast, an online learning community for thousands of us who work in alongside or adjacent to the field of higher education and student affairs, we release new episodes every week on Wednesdays.

Glenn DeGuzman:
You can find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsmow.com. Now this episode is sponsored by Simplicity. Simplicity is a true partner. They support all aspects of student life with technology platforms that empower institutions to make data driven decisions. And this episode is also sponsored by LeaderShape go to leadershape.org to learn how they can work with you to create a just caring and thriving world. I’ll talk more about our sponsors in more detail at the end of this episode. So if you stay on long enough, you can hear more details. Again, my name is Glen Guzman. I’m the associate Dean of student and director of residential life at the University of California, Berkeley. I use hehe pronouns and I’m recording this episode from Livermore, California, which is the ancestral home of the unseated territory of the Pelman tribe of the Aloni peoples. So let’s meet our panelists. I’m so excited to have William Hsu from University of San Francisco, Chelsea Whitaker from New York University and Robert Magdeleno from the University of California, Berkeley, welcome to Student Affairs Now the best way to start obviously is to get our audience to get to know you a little bit better. So if we can have you introduce yourself and, we’ll start with you Will.

William Hsu:
All right. Thank you, Glen. Hi everyone. My name is Will Hsu. My English pronouns are he his, and I’m currently a residence director at the University of San Francisco which is on the unseated ancestral lands of the peoples. I am currently calling in and recording this episode on vacation actually in Guha, Mexico which is the unseated ancestral lands of many indigenous nations, but most notably the . I’ve been professionally in residential life and student affairs for roughly five years now. Educated undergrad and my master’s program at large public research four year institutions. And I’ve worked at worked full time small private religious specifically Catholic Jesuit, liberal arts four year institutions. And I’ve been living in as a student leader for four years but living in as a student affairs professional also for four years. So yeah, I’ll pass back.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Will, and thanks for taking time outta your vacation. I really appreciate that. Let’s go to Chelsea.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Hello. My name is Chelsea Whitaker. I use she hers pronouns. And I currently am a resident hall assistant director at New York University, which is on the land of the Lenape people. And I did my undergrad education at Washington University in St. Louis in theater and African African American studies where I also lived on for all four years, two of those as a resident advisor. And then I also worked as a staff member at, Wash U and lived on in that capacity, working with faculty and academic initiatives in the residence halls before then doing my master’s at the Ohio State University. Of course in higher education student affairs, where I also lived on. And so I believe I’ve lived on for about six years as a full-time professional staff member. And some of my work includes working with marginalized students in college theater programs as well as looking at abolitionist frameworks in community development.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Chelsea for joining the panel. Let’s go back from let’s go from the east coast back to the west coast to Robert.

Robert Magdeleno:
Thank you for name Robert Magdeleno. I use the him pronouns. I am currently a resident director at the university of California Berkeley. Before that I was a resident director at the University of Puget sound and I got my master’s degree at Lewison Clark College and my undergrad in political science at the University of Redlands. I like to joke that I was really into the liberal arts, small institutions. My biggest institution for Berkeley was my high school at 4,000. Everything else was below 2000 and absolutely loved my time with the liberal arts being a first generation college student to be a hundred percent honest. My imposter syndrome is doula roof. No one wants to listen to me. So I’m absolutely honored Glenn to have me here. Thank you so much. And I’m excited to talk with the entire panel.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I’m honored to have you and the rest of the panel here. And this is going to be a wonderful topic to discuss, and I’m, I’m just glad to get your perspectives on rethinking the resin director experience. So this question I’m going to direct to all of you and Chelsea, I’m going to actually have you kick off, but a popular topic over the past couple of years on this podcast has been around mental health of our students, but sometimes overlooked is a mental health of our professional live-in staff, like resident directors, community directors, obviously different institutions have different names and titles for that. But I’d like to hear from all of you, if you can speak to your experience or your experiences of your peers and colleagues regarding the stress and anxiety of being in this role you can speak into like how the pandemic and just issues across our nation, whether it’s civil unrest or hate crimes violence, et cetera, how has that impacted all of you in trying to support our residents? Chelsea wanted to kick us off?

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yeah, absolutely. I think we’ve seen the struggles of our students as well as professional staff just increase exponentially. You know, it’s always been kind of in this upward trend, but I think the like density of it in the past couple years has really been extreme. And I think of course we think of the secondhand trauma experiences. We’re going through these critical life moments with a lot of our students when it comes to mental health emergencies when it comes to navigating the world as it is. And I think a lot of that is also not being able to turn off when you’re live on. You’re always on I even, and technically on vacation, I went downstairs, ran into some of my students, like you came back early and I’m like, no, I’m still technically not here. But especially, you know, those, those bigger moments when you’re dealing with mental health when you’re dealing with the death of a student, no matter how much counseling experience you get in graduate school, no one can really prepare you for that.

Chelsea Whitaker:
And unfortunately no one outside the field can really understand that, but you also don’t want to then tax your peers with the emotional labor of listening to you through those experiences. And I feel really fortunate that I have great insurance through my university in which I can go to therapy on a regular basis, but that certainly has not been the case throughout my career. And so I think I had one professor that really said like, we should have required therapy, that’s paid by our employers. And I think that would be a great step into addressing the mental health of our live-in staff and staff.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Wow, great start. That’s really interesting to hear about the the therapy and provided with university Robert you want to add?

Robert Magdeleno:
Yeah, I think it’s been a really hard time, especially for all of us. I was in graduate school during the 2016 election and then all that followed after that. And I think the incredibly hard thing about the resident director role is we often move to this role. So we’re leaving our communities to join a new community of younger professionals as well. And I think for me, I’m luckily to be married and have an ability to step outside the role and talk someone who’s outside of student affairs, but often our entire community, student affairs professionals, usually resident directors who are dealing with the same issues we’re dealing with our students trying to navigate and also trying to navigate a new field, higher education and just the over political and social climate right now. I think it’s really hard to try to understand outside the world when your entire world is higher education. So I think for me, what’s really helped me is taking a step out of the role and trying to connect to the community. I’m thankfully in Berkeley, where I have a lot of great things to connect in the Bay Area outside of education. But I do think, especially as we look at resident directors and as we bring resident directors from different populations, how do we connect them to the community outside of higher education?

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks, Robert, Will, what are your thoughts?

William Hsu:
I think that, you know, the, one of the challenges with residential life and being live in is that the university like depends on us to be on site and to respond to the things that are, especially after hours. And what is also causing a lot of the burnout and the trauma that like we that my colleagues have addressed here is that is I think some, some of the ways that response is managed and for example, like if you are an RD and you’re not on duty but you still come into contact with something like what is your like responsibility and onus to still like respond to the incident and see it all the way through, but you weren’t on duty to begin with. And so I think some of those 24/7 challenges, the nuances to that are what needs to be examined in how we sort of tackle some of the infrastructure of like the wellness of our professionals.

William Hsu:
Because I think as conversations are happening in supervision, supervisors simply advocating for work life boundaries trying to coach their supervises to like establish worklife boundaries that can only go so far. But it’s not addressing the root of the, the nature of our work as a yeah, at its origins. I also think that during the pandemic so there were a couple of things I noted that were particular to my work context. There was heightened anxiety around specifically for our international student affairs professionals who were I know that in the first episode, Dr. Aja Holmes referred to how when campuses closed down res life professionals in particular were getting laid off or furloughed left and right. And but no one was stopping to consider the impact of a furlough or a layoff on international student affairs professional whose work visa is dependent on being on them being full-time status.

William Hsu:
So not just their work visa, but also their ability to stay in the states. And for those of us who are us citizens we still experience the lack of work and also lack of value attributed to our presence on campus. In response to that, like one of the things that many campuses did was create these COVID care manager positions or roles that naturally the residents directors filled in for, to check in on students who were placed into quarantine and isolation. What that also does though, at least for us, our our role was to contact a student by phone or email or text every single day throughout their isolation, just to make sure that they’re okay, monitor their symptoms case, manage them to get them connected to appropriate resources that made us experience, I guess, the the was duty responsibilities even more when we weren’t on duty.

William Hsu:
And I think for me in particular there was one time that I had a student who was not responsive whatsoever for like three days straight. I had to go do a wellness check on the student. And so I was extremely heightened with, am I masking enough? I have to like go to their door, wait for them to open the door, like am I putting myself in danger? And also am, is there a possibility that I’m going to step in and see a dead body? And so yeah, I think that, and thankfully none of those things happen, but those are things that I don’t think many administrators, the higher ups have really thought through like the intricacies of this trauma that us as resident structures are being exposed to.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks. Well, thanks for illuminating the, you know, the impacts or what goes through the mind of resident directors, particularly during the pandemic and sort of working on the isolation, quarantine spaces. Those are, those are definitely real feelings and thoughts that I know that have also been conveyed at my institution. Will, I’m going to stay with you. And and Chelsea, I’d also like you to, to add onto this question around the role of police. A major topic has been about what role does police play in the residence hall, obviously with a lot of issues and topics that has arisen nationally and at, on college campuses regarding the presence of police. It depends on university system. It depends on structure. It depends on the police, but they, police has historically played a significant role in safety and security response. I’d like to know what has been your experience or experiences of your colleagues with working with police?

William Hsu:
So I think my arrival at University of San Francisco, which was January 2020, right before the pandemic hit and all of our campuses shut down was at this very unique time for our campus where it was about a few years after some really strong student activism, particularly from our black identified students on just the I guess how problematic it was that our police officers were doing rounds throughout all of our residence halls. And as a result the time that I got there, there was already conversations in place about like, well so what the university was distinguishing, what is necessary police presence and what is unnecessary police presence and rounds in the residence halls were deemed unnecessary. And so while so currently we no longer have police officers doing rounds through our residence halls except to say hi to the community assistance, working the front desk of each hall. And I think we are still envisioning or like reimagining what does this continue to develop and look like?

William Hsu:
We are fortunate at USF to have a progressive policing community advisory board, or PPCAB for any listeners who want to Google search for our website and that we have a grant funded initiative through I, I know it’s I know it’s a Jesuit higher ed organization. I don’t remember the exact name, but our initiative, it’s the six plus U grant that funds our re reimagining public safety at the University of San Francisco initiative. These initiatives and also the advisory board are comprised of not just public safety leadership, but also faculty, staff, and students at the institution and and are constantly sifting through community feedback. And then also trying to think proactively on on what is the purpose if there is a purpose to public safety at our institutions, I will say though, that even though we have now been very stringent on the I guess, like what level of incidents do police respond to within our residence halls?

William Hsu:
What that has also resulted in inadvertently is that the act of policing has ended up falling on the on the operations and protocols of the residence life staff and that has manifested simply in the things that our functional area are so used to RAs doing rounds when they’re on duty or even or even students and student leaders. I would, I would venture to say weaponizing the wellness care system wellness check system to have staff essentially go knock on a door, but behind closed door, end up finding a policy violation and therefore using staff as a way to police their peers. And so and these are things that we are still continuing to examine and how in how do we shift the culture of residential life and also the educational values that we try to promote through residential curriculum away from policing and towards accountability. And so naturally things are still things can still continue to frustrate us in our relationship with public safety, but we are at least appreciative that we have these systems in place at the institution for feedback to be heard and responded to in a timely manner.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Will. Chelsea, what’s been your experience like working with police?

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yes. So I believe I mentioned this in my introduction. I am, fullheartedly an abolitionist. I don’t think police have any role in our society and don’t need to be as an institution, I do really like what Will said, reimagining public safety and, and what’s its purpose, because of course safety is important in any community and you want people to feel safe. So I think in my experiences, I’m trying to figure out a way, how do we make police obsolete in our community building that we do, that’s going to take a long time. Like I do not know if I’m going to see that in my lifetime. Cause it requires a lot of people, it requires that, you know, like will said, you then have all these responsibilities that we’ve put on police and how do you redistribute that to the community and build up those skills when especially most of our students, they have no experience in building those skills and that’s impossible to do in four years.

Chelsea Whitaker:
And so I think in particular, the institution that I’m at now, NYU, we don’t have an on campus police department. And so we have to work with the NYPD, which if you’ve read anything in the news, that’s a very difficult, intense relationship across the city and especially with the mayor that we currently have. And so we’ve even seen maybe even a year ago, you know, if we had a mental health emergencies, we’d have EMTs come and now it’s EMTs and nine police officers. And we really have no jurisdiction. We really have no way of giving feedback for that. And so it’s really assessing our own policies of, okay, how are we not traumatizing students when it’s not in our control? What can we do? What in looking really more at those proactive ways that we’re making students feel safe and how we’re addressing crises while also managing the roles and responsibilities of all the live on staff, our student staff and our professional staff as well. So it’s very difficult work. I would say, but I think kind of each little step, you know, is a move, not just towards reform, but towards not even needing police within residence life and with, on our campuses as well.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Well, thanks for sharing that. I did not know that NYPD was your direct police. I know at UC Berkeley, we have a University California police department in addition to the Berkeley police department, which is a whole different type of cause Robert knows a whole different type of relationship that we have to manage as well. Thanks for sharing. Both of you on that. Will I want to go back to, cause this sort of is a completely different line questioning, but it’s one, that’s often, it’s a popular question that we, we like to ask because obviously the resident director experience over the last, you know, decade has been evolving and and I always wonder having not been connected, you know, from a to my graduate program in a long time if you could go back to your grad program or back to any, or tell any graduate program with what, you know now, are there trainings or classes that you would tell them to focus on to just help prepare the next generation of resident directors, I guess, in other words, what is changing with our residential populations that grad programs should really start looking at in their curriculum or assistant opportunities to support the resident directors?

William Hsu:
I think that in terms of what’s changing with our residential population. I think the definition of meeting students where they’re at continues to evolve and we’re going to see that evolve generationally. That’s just I feel like the way our society works but in term and based off of that, going to different types of like classes or trainings I would say the first things that stuck out in my mind when I was processing this question were my own experiences of having law and higher education be a core to my to my master’s program curriculum. So it wasn’t an elective. I had to take it. In addition counseling programs or counseling coursework is I think beneficial. And if there is no counseling coursework available at your program, then I think it is really prudent for our rising professionals to get some experience with advising techniques, because those are all sort of I don’t want to say interchangeable, but they’re all related.

William Hsu:
And I think that those are all the techniques that I feel like I’ve had to draw upon the most when responding to different student complaints or concerns that have been brought to my attention. I also think that up and coming generations of residents the students living on our campuses are becoming more and more familiar with mental health services. And so as a result for us to have I guess some competency of that, and that’s also why I bring up counseling and advising techniques and to better understand populations or at least to have the toolbox of skills to to dissect how we meet students, how we meet audiences, where they are if programs offer some sort of marketing elective, then I think that I would recommend that as well. So however, I want to hone in on some sort of training or skill building around responding to crisis because I don’t know about other institutions across the country, but I know many institutions in California are doing away with their residential life graduate assistance being in an on-call rotation.

William Hsu:
Partially because of HR policies and FLSA not really allowing that, nor should we allow that because there is no equitable way to compensate for that, especially if our graduate assistants are hourly or stipend. And, but I’ve heard a lot of debate in the field about, well, if these graduate if this graduate assistantship doesn’t provide crisis experience, how are, how is this person going to be a strong candidate for res life positions after? And I think that our field has been very locked into this definition of crisis experience is valuable when it’s after hours, when that’s not the case like CRI crisis experiences is transferable, anytime you experience something out of the blue. And so but I think how we train our rising professionals to make sound decisions, to think critically and also to take care of themselves after that is all packaged in a responding to crisis session or training or class that I’m imagining.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Great. Thanks Will. Chelsea you want to add on

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yes, I will echo everything Will just laid out in a very like logical explicit way. Cause I think when I think back to my graduate training, like of course the content was helpful, but I think the faculty did a really great job of teaching us how to think essentially. So, you know, yes, we have these historical theories that, you know, you’re like, how do I actually apply this when I’m being a practitioner? And so when it comes to changing populations, you know, I was learning about the value of social media. We are learning about different frameworks and how to even approach looking at a theory from different ways. And so I feel like that emphasis on how do we reenvision these theories when we’re encountering students that did not exist, you know, 50 years ago or we’re not even looked at, we’re not even in our institutions at all. And how do we look at those theories and really translate that to something tangible? I think not ignoring what our incoming students are doing with social media and things like that, but really being able to to embrace it again, that kind of meeting them where they’re at and not where we think they should be.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks, Chelsea. Robert, I want to ask this question to you. The type of work RDs and RAs are facing around with residents with mental health student concern issues has some colleges and universities thinking about licensed social workers working in the res halls. I asked this question in a previous podcast and I want your take on this. Would you like more professionally trained people to support RDs in this capacity, meaning licensed social workers or should RDs be trained in their grad program to better support residents?

Robert Magdeleno:
I think simply yes. And I think Will really hit on the head, is that for graduate and talking about programming, we need to learn to support, how do we do mental health? How do we support crisis, but how do we advise in council? And I think that’s something we do need to focus on as we’ve moved to new RDs. I think I’m very hesitant to say yes to a social worker, because I have seen in previous past, so that that’s just the bandaid to the solution. The RDs are still going to be burnt up. They’re still going to be handling mental health crisis. And I don’t want to be hearing while we hired a social worker. So, and just like kind of covering it up and brushing the issue under the rug of the burnout and the amount of work we’re doing. I think in particular for me, what I would really like to see and Berkeley had this for a little bit, I’m hoping to bring it back eventually is mental health professional for RAs.

Robert Magdeleno:
I’ve had a lot of RAs tell me that they scheduled that therapy the other week. So my one-on-one can be their next therapy session. I think I’m more and more focusing my one-on-ones as a therapy session, especially as we talked previously with the amount that’s going on outside of higher education than trying to navigate this field and navigate everything else, one-on-ones have really truly become therapy sessions for my residents. And I think as I’ve grown in the profession learned how to build my boundaries. I’ve been able to navigate more, but I remember as a first year professional, every 1:1 was draining, it was exhausting. I didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the skillset to build those boundaries and also how to like debrief and decompress from that. So I think for me, I’m loving that the people above me are having conversations about social workers, but I really want to focus on how do we spark the RAs because right now that’s the RDS and the RDS are supporting the rest of the student population as well.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks Robert for sharing that this question came in and it was brought up by some folks outside of this, this I didn’t come up with this question, but I love this question. So I want to share it and I’m going to direct this to Chelsea. There’s been talk about this idea of the great resignation that a lot of student affairs professionals and a lot of live-in professionals are leaving in greater numbers out of these student affairs profession. What are you seeing or hearing from your fellow peers? Are they leaving? Is it about compensation? Is it about evolving work or is it about the impacts of the pandemic? There’s there seems to be a lot of different takes on this. I want your take on it.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yeah, absolutely. So the great resignation is very much a pattern and an issue we should be paying attention to. I think what frustrates me the most, I think about this concept is that it’s exclusive to higher education. If you look all across the country people are resigning because they’re realizing they’re not being compensated enough. Especially in responses to how our economy is going, even just the cost of living as well. And so you’re also seeing those impacts in higher education. And I think especially having had experience, I did work as a corporate project manager for a year now I’m I kind of made the opposite. I moved into higher ed, whereas a lot of people are now moving into corporate life. And it’s, it’s kind of a catch 22 because I was working the same amount of hours in corporate and getting paid more, but I didn’t enjoy the work.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Whereas now I completely understand why several of my peers, several folks are leaving higher education as a field. I know for me, I’m passionate about working with college students and so I’m in the perfect place for that. And so I think for a lot of people, it’s just, you know, that is not becoming worth it for what they want. And I think especially looking with COVID not only like the financial effects that happens, but I think a lot of people did a lot of self-reflection and I think our mortality was much more in our faces and realizing what do you want? And so I think a lot of it is a personal decision. And I think it’s not just an issue with higher education. It’s an issue with how we treat workers in this, in this country as a whole and across the world. And so I feel like if we plugged in to other industries to what else is happening, I think it wouldn’t be such a shock. And we could really start to address some of those root problems. And I think, you know, very pro-union and so making sure that we’re addressing those issues too. Cause I think a lot, especially for living staff, a lot of us are not unionized, but where there are unions are our campuses and really how can we all build power to get everyone paid fairly.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Robert, what’s your take on this?

Robert Magdeleno:
I think so referring back to the previous podcast, unfortunately I don’t remember who said this, so I’m sorry. But they had mentioned that the resignation was that campus we’re able to evolve and change quickly when we were always told they could never evolve and change and that was to accommodate everything happening. And as we return back to pandemic recovery, returning back to whatever normal is, we’re being told things can’t change anymore and it’s incredibly frustrating and it’s been very in our face that things can’t change. And though I do agree with that. I think that’s a second wave of the great resignation. We have to talk about the first wave. And I think that first wave is that’s not being valued. I think it’s easy to say that the RD positions a general position, but to be honest, I think that’s a scapegoat sometimes to say, I don’t know what an RD does.

Robert Magdeleno:
I think often when I was hearing we talk about the George Folk paper test, we set great emails from institutions talking about how we support black students, how we support students. And I always set at the bottom, especially liberal arts, the small institu I worked at, please contact your mental health professional or your resident director to talk about these issues. But there was no emails going to the resident directors. There was no emails going to the professionals like how do we support you? And I think it was an issue of a lot of younger professionals where the institution said they had the values of taking care of folks, but they focus on the students and they didn’t focus on the people doing the work. And I think part of the reason I am part of the great resignation I was in that first wave, I felt my institution had a great values, but some of the key actors in it, weren’t living up to those values.

Robert Magdeleno:
And I felt often used, I became a mental health professional. I became a public health professional. I became a COVID respondent all within the crisis of a month or two without even Robert what’s going on? How can we support you? Who can we hire? What can we do? And I think that resignation I’m a little, get a little ick maybe about the term is that it puts the onus on the person to leave. When I do think it’s the onus on the institution to say, why are people leaving? And I think partially it’s because you tell the RD they’re generalist, but please sit down and talk to me what I actually do, because I honestly feels like you don’t know the work I’m doing and you’re just going to keep adding because I wear so many hats.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thanks for sharing that Robert actually builds. I mean, leads to this next question. You know, we do talk a lot about, and, and when I say we I’m talking about leadership campus leaders like myself, we talk a lot about resilience in student affairs. And but I also wonder how the next generation of resident directors will come to terms with our request to say, we need to be more resilient. Given that many live in staff have experienced so much over the past two years, whereas I do feel that resiliency is needed. I also believe that campus and department leaders like myself need to also play a part in creating a work environment, support the resident directors and the live-in staff, given the current old and anticipated professional challenges that you’re all facing. So my question for all of you is what structural or policy changes or strategies are you seeing now or would like to see campus leaders implement in the future? Who would like to go first?

Robert Magdeleno:
I can take it. I think I’ve touched on it a little bit in my first answer was mentioning that I think connecting with community, connecting with folks outside of higher education is also been helpful. But my previous institution, I didn’t have a duty phone. I didn’t have a work phone. If I was on duty, they were calling my personal cell phone and that was hard. At UC Berkeley I’m thankful to say that I have a work phone, I have a duty phone and we have a separate duty phone from that too. And that’s been a really nice work and balance. And I think as we’re hearing people in your level lens, talk about work life balance. It’s interesting to see the takes. They do. I think there’s some institutions like here’s what I did for work life balance, but not understanding the population, the generation while others are bringing us to the table and think we have this podcast to talk about these issues. And I think for me, it’s how do we understand org life balance, but how do we make sure RDS and younger professionals are at that table too?

Glenn DeGuzman:
Great. Chelsea, what are your thoughts on this?

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yes, this is a, a tough question for sure. But I think some of the things that come to mind is like a four day work week would be great. I think now what’s been really great at my current institution is that when we do work weekends or an extra night, like we do get those comp days, which is really great and they’re really strict about it. They’re like, no, you must not be here. And I’m like, that is no problem. Great. Or even thinking about, I think across any institution, like even apartment equity you know, you don’t want to go home and feel like you’re living in a residence hall of like you want to go home and feel like it’s home. And I’ve become fantastic with a role of contact paper. But also at the end of the day.

Chelsea Whitaker:
And I think that impacts who we’re also seeing come in as hall directors, you know, it’s easy for someone who is young and unattached to come into and accept kind of any apartment. But we’re really losing, you know, folks who want to build families and want to have lives. And aren’t just folks who aren’t just focused on a nuclear family model either. And so I think part of that resilience, like Robert said is having that community around you as well. And so I think being able to build ways outside of work that’s not a work happy hour, that’s not the party. But feel really tangible would be really, really great ways I think, to, to help build the resilience and people’s ability to stay too.

Glenn DeGuzman:
What are your thoughts on that?

William Hsu:
So I think my take on the structural or policy changes is a little bit to what I heard Chelsea mention compensation, equity. We I think it was from yeah, one of the panels I mentioned in the last episode of this topic. No apartments are are created equally within our field. And so think it it’s structural and it’s going to be, and it’s a big challenge because infrastructure, but simply the number of bedrooms offered to standard standardized for an RD department appliances in unit laundry parking, I think parking is a big one because our contracts all require us to live on campus.

William Hsu:
In order to hold a job, if this if transportation is not included then and parking is not included, then we are essentially paying some of the salary that’s been paid to us in order to in order to fulfill the responsibility of living on campus to hold the job. And that, yeah, that’s absurd to me. I also think that some things about like protocol have been shifted that I do appreciate at University of San Francisco. Our campus used to be one where the RD on duty had to go had to go to the hospital whenever a student was admitted to the emergency room and had to be there with the student until they were conscious. And now especially in COVID where, if hospital staff won’t let us in anyways, because we aren’t blood relatives of the student and they can’t tell us anything anyway.

William Hsu:
So we’ve determined that there is no purpose for us going to the hospital and hopefully it stays that way. Even when we switch, when we transition into an endemic instead of a pandemic but it would also be great that we are limiting the number of phone calls that we get when we are on duty. So many campuses have their RA on duty, sorry, RAs on duty call in to the duty phone whenever they’re checking in for duty, just to, and that is in, in essence one of our ways of holding RAs accountable that they are performing the responsibilities. But multiple duty calls the are becoming extra sources of traumatization simply through association with the duty ring tone. And so now having our RAs on duty text in instead of call or like we using text, I think that has been a way that has not only been a little kinder to us with RDs on duty who are in terms of like our association with trauma that we’re going to get when we’re on duty anyways, but also kinder to our students because we’re meeting them where they’re at.

William Hsu:
I I’ve heard a lot from my colleagues and I, I concur a lot about the need that the institutions need to express more value in the RD staff and live on staff in general. And I think that expressing value has subconsciously been conflated with compensation and it is compensation and it is also attention, communication and energy. As Robert had shared not being communicated with or consulted with in during a tragedy, when the institutions focus on the students, of course is going to be focused on the students because the students are where the money comes from at the institution. But but like if there’s no even attention or preparation given to the staff it, it really does feel like we are being scapegoated for the student’s sake in order for the student to still be okay, and to matriculate at the institution.

Robert Magdeleno:
So then can I have one more thing also that kind of sparked with me? Yeah. I think we talk a lot about compensation too, but one thing that I think that Berkeley I grateful before is our contract’s been extended. I think reshipping the narrative that the RD role is two years. And then you go to a different institution. I think seeing an institution invests in the RDs and state, like if you want a career position here, how do we connect you? How do we work with you here? I think some institutions are very much like you’re here for two years, I’ll help you find a new job after. And that never feels great either. because if I’m going to be putting into the work community, I would love to see the directors try to add how do we make the RD stay here if the RD wants to stay here. And I think that’s a final shift I would love to see. And when we talk about valuing the RD is valuing their work and wanting to keep ’em at that institution that time. Well, your contracts up. Good luck finding your next job.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Yeah. Thanks for adding that. I was very thoughtful and I appreciate the authenticity and the realness of the responses. I know that those are difficult. This is a, that’s a difficult question and I really appreciate the, the responses for sure. We are also at the end of our podcast, we always end with our wrap up question, obviously the, the podcast at student affairs now. And if you could just sort of summarize your thoughts on what are you thinking about what emerged for you during this conversation or what are you excited about or what’s what’s still troubling you, if you can kind of just quickly summarize I’m going to have, will you go first and then Chelsea and then Robert, you can close us up.

William Hsu:
I think one of the things that is definitely troubling me is is still Chelsea enlightening us of how especially many urban institutions don’t have their own public safety department or campus police department and rely on the greater police force of that municipality. And and I think that, that that troubles me because we, we working in higher ed in student affairs already know how much of a silo, how isolated our field is compared to even the broader field of education and other disciplines out there. And so if we’re, if we already aren’t experiencing a whole lot of understanding of what happens in our field from other disciplines, that just that just sounds like a losing battle in the work that we are trying to do in order to ultimately support our students and their development. So yeah, I don’t know. I hate to end on that, but I, I’m still just deeply troubled by that and I don’t necessarily have thoughts on like how to imagine a better solution, but yeah, that’s my answer to what’s troubling me

Glenn DeGuzman:
And that’s a great response Will, and then it’s real. And then I think that’s, and this is what this conversation does. It just emerges so many different feelings and thoughts, Kelsey, your final thoughts.

Chelsea Whitaker:
Yeah. I think kind of going off of the, the silos that just Will mentioned, I think this conversation, even for me, you know, aspiring sounds cheesy, but I think it’s like I only have one brain. I can only think about so much at one time. So I think to bring so many other perspectives together is great. And I think higher ed as a whole is so focused on, you know, institutions want to be the first, they want to be the best. And we don’t prioritize sharing information. We don’t prioritize sharing strategies that have worked especially higher ed institutions are virtually everywhere. But of course, you know, in different geographical areas and, you know, different types and structures. So I think if we focused a lot more on sharing what we’re doing and making sure we’re doing at the end of the day, what’s best for our students across institutions. I think that would be a really great step in improving higher education

Glenn DeGuzman:
And Robert.

Robert Magdeleno:
I think mine is incredibly similar to Chelsea. I’m great. Incredibly grateful to be on this. I’ve learned so much just from will and Chelsea in this 50 minute conversation. And I think we talk a lot about being siloed in the RD role, there’s RD roles at, at every institution, we should be connecting with other folks and having those conversations, what can we learn and what can we take from other institutions? And one thing the pandemic did teach us is the world. Isn’t that big, it’s a quick zoom call to talk from Mexico and New York, and I would love to continue having that conversation with other folks other again, will Chelsea, thank you so much. I’ve learned so much from you just this brief conversation.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I normally don’t answer this question, but I gotta really get, I gotta chime in here. I’m super appreciative of just the different perspectives and thoughts that you all shared as well. I know that the last couple years, as a director of residential life, I’ve heard so many different thoughts and ideas, emerging feelings and you know, it’s a lot and trying to sort and organize and prioritize where they even begin has been a challenge. And but just even continuing the conversation like this, hearing your thoughts and ideas, I’m really appreciative of you just joining me me on this podcast today. So thank you to everyone here. Will Hsu, Chelsea Whitaker, Robert Magdeleno, thank you. I’m grateful for your time and contribution to this podcast. Nat Ambrosey thank you again for behind the scenes. I think, you know, Nat a long time ago did some time at UC Berkeley.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And I think you’re going to really appreciate listening to this as you prepare and describe it for for it being aired. Again, I want to thank our sponsor Simplicity and LeaderShape. Simplicity is a global leader in student service technology platforms with state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partners with the institutions, simplicity supports all aspects of student life, including, but not limited to career services and development, student conduct and wellbeing, student success and accessibility services to learn more, visit simplicity.com. You can connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and LeaderShape. Thank you. They partner with colleges and universities to transform to create transformational leadership experiences, both virtual and in person for students and professionals with a focus on creating a more, just, caring and thriving world. LeaderShape offers, engaging learning experiences on courageous dialogue, integrity, equity, resilience, and community building to find out more, please visit them at www.leadershape.org/virtual programs or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Glenn DeGuzman:
So the audience and listeners, thanks for joining us. This was a phenomenal podcast. I really appreciate all of you just being here and sharing for those who are listening in and you got to the very end of this podcast if you’re not already receiving our weekly newsletter, please join and visit our website studentaffairsnow.com, scroll to the bottom and add your email to our MailChimp list. If you are listening wherever watching on, on YouTube, give us a thumbs up. I’m Glenn Guzman, thanks for listening or watching wherever you are, go at and make it a good day. Take care, everybody.

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