Neil E. Golemo: Howdy and welcome to Here’s the Story, a show that brings student affairs li to life by sharing the authentic voices and lived experiences of those who are shaping the field every day. My name is Neil Golemo and I’m the luckiest guy I know. I’m blessed to serve as the Director of Campus Living and Learning on Texas A&M University’s Sunny Galveston Island campus.

I’m a father, a husband. And a son over here just trying to do my best to do a little good or get caught trying. Today I wanna thank to our sponsor Evolve. Evolve is a series of leadership coaching journeys designed to bring clarity, capacity, and confidence. Empowering courageous leadership to reimagine the future of higher education.

Today, it’s just me. All by my lonesome. I get you all to myself. I’m gonna introduce my friend Jackson. Jackson, Tidwell Jackson. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Just tell our listener out there.

Jackson Tidwell: Absolutely. Good afternoon, Neil. Happy Monday. Delighted to be with you, my friend. My name is Jackson Tidwell.

I serve as the Director of Student Conduct and Community Standards at UT San Antonio. Previously I worked in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana in student activities, fraternity and sorority life, and alumni relations. And super delighted to be here to talk student affairs. Lithium, my friend.

Neil E. Golemo: Is there anything you didn’t do?

Jackson Tidwell: No I didn’t do. I had Residence Life, so all my housing professionals out there. I assisted with some fraternity and sorority housing, but I, my main goal and my main responsibility’s never been residence life, so I’ve not done that yet.

Neil E. Golemo: Okay. As long as you have a complex about it, then I’m happy so

Jackson Tidwell: I know it’s a tough job. Respect.

Neil E. Golemo: I always say if you can do residence life, you can do anything. So you’re pretty great though. Tell me your story, man.

Jackson Tidwell: Absolutely. My story takes place, which it’s crazy how much time flies almost six years ago, but it’s gonna take place in 2020. I was working at an institution, a wonderful institution in South Louisiana.

And Neil, do you know anything about what happens in South Louisiana between the months of July to about October?

Neil E. Golemo: I think I, I think living not Mardi Gras. Yeah. What

Jackson Tidwell: do you think?

Neil E. Golemo: It’s everybody’s favorite season.

Jackson Tidwell: Yeah.

Neil E. Golemo: Hurricane season.

Jackson Tidwell: Hurricane season, absolutely. I was living in tornado alley, Oklahoma in 2020, made my way down to South Louisiana where I worked in fraternity and sorority life and student activities.

And during hurricane season there the university that I was working at. Has policies, hurricane plans, phase one, phase two. Phase three and the title of my story is Policies Have Purpose. I know as Student Affairs Professionals, we’ve always been spaces of, where’s the policy for that?

People wanna argue the policy ex. And I have a strong belief that poll policies are always grounded in purpose. That we’re not just gonna have an arbitrary policy. That there really, there always is gonna be a reason, some depth to a policy. And it really resonates with me. Back in 2020 and August, hurricane Laura rolled into South Louisiana and immediately the university went into that, the phase three.

Of the hurricane plan and in phase three of the hurricane plan, one of my roles was to walk door to door, knock on fraternity houses and tell their residents to evacuate. Neil, you could guess that wasn’t really well received. I heard a lot of our arguing. A lot of it’s my right to be here. I pay rent.

You’re not a member, you can’t tell, sovereign citizen, those things. But I reminded them of the policy and due to their health and safety, they needed to evacuate the premises. And that was important because on the property where all the fraternity houses are located, there were these gigantic water oaks.

And if you know anything about water oaks Yeah. During hurricane season they’re prone to, to fall. I went door to door had a lot of arguing. A lot of people didn’t want to comply, but ultimately they did. Once they realized that conduct could get involved and that they needed to they did not need to fail to comply to the university directive.

Neil E. Golemo: Hold on a second. So you’re going up and you’re saying there’s a

Jackson Tidwell: knock. I would say we’ve, they’re all aware there’s a hurricane, but we’ve entered our phase three. You need to evacuate the fraternity house. You need to go to another place.

Neil E. Golemo: And they’re fighting you on this.

Jackson Tidwell: Correct. Because they don’t want to drive to where they’re from.

They don’t want to go off campus. They might, a lot of ’em had jobs and they’re working in the city, so like they, they didn’t wanna leave. They wanted to stay. And they’re in college. They’re having a great time. They don’t want to go back home. Not, yeah. Yeah.

Neil E. Golemo: School’s out. That’s a hurricane.

That’s right.

Jackson Tidwell: Yeah. Door to door doing that. Thankfully everybody complied. I had an outstanding dean of students and outstanding associate dean of students that really supported me in that experience. And ultimately, later on that the next day when the hurricane rolled through some water oaks split.

A giant water oak fell right down the middle of the, one of the second fraternity house on the row. Six people lived in the house at the time and no one was in the house because it evacuated and went right down the living quarters. So definitely could have been a loss of life. Severe injury. To this day, the house has still not been rebuilt.

Oh, so I go back to that moment. It wasn’t fun. I didn’t thoroughly en enjoy it. They might not have seen the importance at the time, but anytime I’m arguing or in conduct now, we base our daily conversations off the policies that we have. We want to do an educational format, but it’s all about our policies and procedures.

I think of that story in that all of our policies. It has some sort of purpose to mitigate risk or some sort of purpose to improve the learning environment for our students. And I think about South Louisiana and that hurricane, and if someone tells me, I’m a rule follower, naturally Neil, but if someone tells me there’s a policy for that, we need to do this.

You know what, I’m following the policy. ’cause I know that whoever created it, they, there’s a reason to it.

Neil E. Golemo: I’ll follow I like to think that I’m a rule follower too, but I will follow any rule unless it’s dumb and then. I was always that guy who wanted to argue, yeah, why? This is stupid.

Jackson Tidwell: My dad’s a judge. So I’ll come, I grew up in a hou a household for, the rule is the rule settled law.

Neil E. Golemo: So I have to note, did you talk to these guys after they returned, or,

Jackson Tidwell: I had a couple just tell me like, hey, like we, we understand of the, we understand the risk. But like the thing is I was there for four and a half years.

After that. And we had other hurricanes and there were other times we’d have to evacuate. And we never had, never, we didn’t have problems again. They did. I literally, I remember one time I went to a house and they were starting, they were upset and I literally just turned and pointed to the empty lot of where the fraternity house that was destroyed where it was located.

And they’re like, okay, yeah. Fair enough.

Neil E. Golemo: It’s funny ’cause in the, in this line of work. We do get a fair amount of man, this would be a perfect, I told you so moment mess around finding out and it’s really hard sometimes to not just be like,

Jackson Tidwell: mean, I would say in the moment I was like, yeah, I did what I was supposed to do.

But also there was a sense of, happiness and that you could see that there was, we always say that our work is grounded in learning outside of the classroom. And there was a sense of, I think some students, not everybody, they never admit it, but a lot of ’em, I think learned from the experience.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah.

Jackson Tidwell: And I think they’re more willing to listen to the guidance of people that are working to support their educational experience.

Neil E. Golemo: So you never talked to the guys about, it never came up or aren’t you glad you listened to me?

Jackson Tidwell: No, because they had, it was completely destroyed and they had a lot going on.

And I think the other fraternities sympathized oh my gosh. Yeah. And I would just say, yeah, that, that’s why our policies exist. That’s why we had to evacuate due to the, those water oaks on the premises. But there was never like a, I can’t remember. And I’ve slept since then, but I can’t remember if there was a so conversation with the fraternity.

That had happened to,

Neil E. Golemo: yeah, I guess it’s hard to,

Jackson Tidwell: but I do remember that, that time ev, all of them had members that didn’t want to comply. All of ’em ended up complying, but it wasn’t just them, but they were the ones that it happened to,

Neil E. Golemo: I remember hurricane. It was Hurricane Laura.

Jackson Tidwell: Hurricane Laura.

Neil E. Golemo: It was a hurricane in a pandemic. And our processes are like, we. If we believe that there’s even a realistic chance it’s gonna hit, make landfall here. We hightail it up to College Station and

Jackson Tidwell: smart.

Neil E. Golemo: I remember watching this ’cause it’s serious. Putting them on the road, like doing an evacuation is a decision as well, right?

Because you don’t wanna put all of your students on the road. Anytime you do, there’s danger. So when we did that, that was a, I remember it was really hard for us because we were right on the cone, the two thirds probability cone.

Jackson Tidwell: Yeah.

Neil E. Golemo: And then we ended up doing it, all of it and then got nothing ’cause it doglegged back to Louisiana.

So where were you? Like, where did you pull up

Jackson Tidwell: during the hurricane?

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah,

Jackson Tidwell: I that one specifically, I went to my parents’ house in East Texas. So I evacuated and that was my first one. And it was COVID. It was like, I don’t got time for this. So I was like get me out of there.

Neil E. Golemo: So Jackson you have been friends for a minute and you have a billion stories.

Why’d you pick that one?

Jackson Tidwell: I think for where I’m in my life now leading an office of student conduct, I think that. I have reflected when people ask about kind of monumental times in my car career thus far of like moments. I go back to teachable moments. That one comes up and it’s a little different.

I have a lot I agree with you, I have a lot of stories as do many people that have worked in student affairs more than six months. But that one I think of just how unique it is. But also how it’s grounded in what we want best for our students, right? We, want our students to learn, responsibility.

We want them to learn the importance of physical wellbeing. And I really go back to that conversation with those students and relate it to my work, work that I’m doing presently. Thankfully, San Antonio doesn’t have a hurricane problem, but

Neil E. Golemo: give it some time. Yeah.

Jackson Tidwell: Yeah. Give it some time.

You never know. 2026 might be a little different.

Neil E. Golemo: You talk, you make a really good point about like policies have a purpose. And like we follow these policies, because they all should, they have a reason, but not all policies are equal. How do you deal with the.

Where maybe you’re not all in on the policy or maybe you don’t really understand completely the why behind the policy.

Jackson Tidwell: Once again, I’m a rule follower, so typically if you’re asking me, Neil, you’re not asking just like to the, the universe. I would say for me I’m always gonna follow the policy just ’cause I believe policy should be written in the chance of.

There’s purpose behind them and that they’re there’re to mitigate risk potentially. Yeah. But I do think we have to, you don’t want to over duplicate the efforts of, I think policies, I think people also have a problem with policies ’cause they get lost in the sauce. It’s just like, all these po all these things and a lot of times policies will negate one another or that they’ll, and not be, there’s not a lot of clarity.

And you feel like you can’t enforce it. Thankfully, with the lot of the policies I’ve encountered, we were able to enforce, so like a policy right now that I think’s, a hot topic is like what universities are doing with ai, okay. There, there’s so much we don’t know, and we have a policy that AI is considered cheating or unauthorized assistance, but.

There’s not a lot. We have a broad policy in our code of student conduct, but a lot of universities are struggling with creating policy in an area, in areas, especially where we don’t know enough. We’re still learning. It’s such an evolving, evolving topic.

Neil E. Golemo: So if if you don’t know, how do you, when you’re at their front door and they’re trying to.

They’ve watched every episode of Law and Order, so Oh

Jackson Tidwell: yeah. They’re getting you. They’re Olivia Benson. Yeah. Yeah.

Neil E. Golemo: Uncle Larry, the real estate lawyer is on speaker phone and

Jackson Tidwell: yeah, for

Neil E. Golemo: sure.

Jackson Tidwell: Somebody’s dad’s a lawyer.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. And so you’re trying, to me, I think it’s the most appropriate and, honestly, I worry about students that don’t ever question sometimes. Yeah. If you don’t understand, you should ask. And it’s my job to be able to articulate that to you. Things like that where you don’t really know, like how do how do you defend it with your whole chest?

Like you have to sometimes.

Jackson Tidwell: I’ll respond two things to that. One, prior to higher education, I worked customer service for two years. I can handle hospitality getting, yelled at, pretty explicitly. So that was, that really grounded my perspective. And then the next thing is, I would agree with you.

I don’t have a problem being questioned because I do believe that as administrators it is our responsibility, explaining, policy that’s teachable moments for our students. I think the disrespectful arguing and the, not putting their putting their foot down and not coming to terms with it.

That, that is, I think when it crosses the line. But I had no problem with people saying like, why do we need to do this? What is the importance? What can we do? Where is the policy, et cetera. Because I do think even though I am a rule follower and I follow policies, I’m not that kind of like.

Person where it’s oh, we have a policy for this. And then I don’t even look at the policy. I want to at least read and understand Yeah. What I’m being held to. So I’m not one of those oh, someone can say, oh, we have a policy for that, and that policy never existed. That’s not me.

I’m gonna read the policy and see, but if there is a policy I’m most likely going to follow it.

Neil E. Golemo: Sometimes following the policy. I don’t know. I wish we could get like a nickel for every time we’ve said the word policy today,

Jackson Tidwell: probably

Neil E. Golemo: following one of those. Sometimes it’s about just being consistent, like the second you bring into question this one versus that one you’re cooked.

Like you can’t say that, you made the exception for that person over here with that rule. So the rule doesn’t really,

Jackson Tidwell: you can’t live in a world, I mean I think student affairs in higher ed, but there’s a lot of gray. But I think when it comes to the policy, like you have, like they need to be, they can be broad where you can put, but I think when you’re enforcing that policy, it’s gotta try to be black as wide as possible.

’cause that’s where you get into problems.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. The, yeah. I think there’s places where like you, your discretion needs to. Speak a little bit or maybe not. I don’t know. Okay. You talk about the story and you chose the story because you feel like it’s relevant. So what is something that, that, today, Jackson would tell six years ago, Jackson what would you do differently?

Jackson Tidwell: Oh man. That’s a great question.

Neil E. Golemo: I know.

Jackson Tidwell: Good. Yeah. Good job with that one. I would say one, I feel like a lot of put, a lot of six years ago, Jackson put a lot of pressure on himself.

And I would think, and, I took a lot of things personally.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah.

Jackson Tidwell: And I would tell six year ago J Jackson to just do your best, be yourself, represent your values, and don’t take things personally.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. Yeah, man. I think that kind of advice is pretty evergreen.

Jackson Tidwell: And that I think I can, so sometimes if I’m not intentionally working on that, like I can still take things personally, but I really, if you worked in conduct more than a year you’ll know that you, you can’t. So that I think is something that would go tell myself.

Neil E. Golemo: So okay. Apply that to like, conduct right now, conduct is so important. And honestly, I think it’s the favorite, my favorite part of my job. My mom was an educator for 40 years, and when I told her I was getting into the business she said to watch out. Watch out. Yeah. She said, are you sure?

No. She told me to watch out for the ones that give me the most guff because they’re gonna end up being my favorite. And, honestly, that for the most part is held to be completely true. Like how does that advice hold up now? Like how do you put that into work every day?

Jackson Tidwell: My role’s a little different in that I am the director, so I’m triaging a lot of the cases. So I’ll meet with students, but I’m not the lead caseworker on the cases. So I think that. I do agree with your insight of sometimes the tough cookies end up being the, the memories you come back to because you could really see like a transformational change in, in, in their life due to the efforts of your staff and what they were able to do for the student. And ultimately, thing about conduct is, yes, we hold students accountable, but we want our students, we want to retain our students. We want our students to graduate. If there ever is a suspension on the table, we want them to come back and graduate from our institution and support them.

We’re just trying to be consistent and in turn that behavior and do a teachable moment.

Neil E. Golemo: Consistency is clear, and clear is kind, like I don’t ever, I don’t really ever blame a student too much for not knowing something. There’s no way they should have really known. Like we had a, just had a case come in for self plagiarism student took a class.

Failed the class the first, no, we had to withdraw from the class the first time and then got the exact same assignment. And so they turned in the same assignment they did last time. They just updated the, the date and everything. And and those kill me because. How would you know?

Like how would, I don’t know how I would expect a student to just understand that. Like you could plagiarize yourself, right?

Jackson Tidwell: Yeah.

Neil E. Golemo: And so I think sometimes for me, the work is in showing a little bit of grace if you can, and and getting down into the situation with them. Trying to help them see it, but like in those types of circumstances, I think Grace can go really long way.

And then in others, no, they knew better. Like they knew better.

Jackson Tidwell: I’m loving this chat, man. I hope I get to come back deep chat with Neil. This is awesome.

Neil E. Golemo: Just need another hurricane and

Jackson Tidwell: okay. Yeah, for sure. I’ll find some story.

Neil E. Golemo: That would be a story. I guess my, my my last question is just, what is it that you hope that other people are gonna take from this?

Jackson Tidwell: Two things. One, I think I would want. If anybody is struggling in writing policy or enforcing policy and feel like it’s a lost cause or like a lose, that you can’t really push the needle and move it. I would just, and use this to encourage them to. Go on. I didn’t write these policies.

They were already created when I was hired at the institution, but I was required to enforce them. And I think at first there was a lot of intimidation or is this what is the point of this? Even, even when people are arguing that with you, you even start to second guess yourself.

So I think if people are in the policy game, enforcing the policies that their institution holds, just keep strong. Make sure you know it because students will try to recite it back, but just make sure you know it. And then ultimately, second thing is, and I’m repeating myself, is make it a teachable moment for the students.

Don’t make it. You need to do this ’cause you’re required to do this. Let them know the why. As I can think of how many student affairs at student affairs conferences right now, how many presentations are focused on this generation of students. They wanna know the why. Yeah. And I can see that every day when we’re working with our students here in conduct of they want to know why, like why is that a code of conduct violation?

Why can’t they do that? And I think that. Having a stance of educating the policy and educating the purpose behind the policy is what’s really going to drive that change.

Neil E. Golemo: I know I said that was my last question, but I lied. How do you deal with policy? And, I’m not saying that this is especially, applicable to these days but how do you deal with the policy that you don’t really, you don’t agree with?

Jackson Tidwell: I’ll, I’m gonna kinda segue, I’m gonna take that question I’m gonna kind of segue bit. I got the opportunity, and this is gonna be a shameless plug, but I’m gonna do it. I got the opportunity to go to the NASPA region three midmanagers Institute last year, and Knoxville, Tennessee. They did an outstanding job hosting us.

Shout out to my, group facilitator Dr. Angela Taylor at University of Louisville. But it, it was a, such an outstanding experience. And Dr. Nicole Lewis gave a talk, and I believe she did this with Dr. Angela Taylor, but they were talking about how as you rise up in leadership positions, the mission.

And the values and the job description of the supervisor above you, like you’re representative of that. So when it comes to, I think of that about so many times that I might not have agreed to a decision coming from the VP or dean of students, or maybe I don’t understand it, but accepting that.

This is a part of their vision and this is something that they want to do, and ultimately my job is to make sure that it gets done at my level or below. Yeah. So when it comes to policy that is I think back to their talk and how you represent. You represent above you, regardless of your opinion on that.

So whatever policy they’re pushing up above, you’re representative of that. Obviously, I’m not saying if it’s, again, like this is not arguing, this is saying in the work setting. I’m not saying people can have differences, but when it comes to the work and what they’re setting forth of their purpose of that, their division is student affairs.

Your representative of the people above you.

Neil E. Golemo: I guess it’s just about controlling what you can control, right?

Jackson Tidwell: Yep.

Neil E. Golemo: Like you can’t necessarily control this rule or that rule.

Jackson Tidwell: Yeah. And another thing I want to add, sorry to my, put my finger. Oh yeah. I was like boom. I think what’s important when you’re in those spaces of, even if you disagree, you don’t go to, you don’t go to areas you’re supervising and then be like I don’t agree with this.

But this is what we’re gonna do, because that just does, creates like an us versus Oh

Neil E. Golemo: yeah.

Jackson Tidwell: Us versus them complex. So it’s really important to, to take your opinion out of it and whatever’s being decided that you’re gonna to pass down, keep that very neutral. Because I’ve been in, because I would tell six years, there were times six years ago where I did that.

And I think people did that, and I put my own, I, because I took things personally, I’d put my own and invest my own personal time and opinions into things. And really, it shouldn’t have been that way. It was, this is the policy. This is what’s being directed of me. I need to do it.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. I had, I’ve had students make such tremendously good points that I feel like just been punched in the nose. Like I just like. What just happened because they make such really good points and I always tell ’em, if I can’t defend the rule, then I promise to work with you to change it.

’cause that’s empowering and honestly, like we’re all in this together and you wanna see students defend something, depend something, give ’em something to have ownership in. And that’s a skill they take with ’em forever.

Jackson Tidwell: Yep. Free.

Neil E. Golemo: Speaking of skills you take with you forever, I want thank our sponsors Evolve Higher Education needs Courageous leadership now more than ever, and poor leadership has never been more costly.

At Evolve Institute, we are empowering leaders with the capacity to turn challenges into possibilities and lead with and through them with clarity, confidence, and courage. We offer leadership coaching journeys for leadership teams and individual leaders. Visit evolv institute.com to learn more. Jackson I always feel so lucky when I get to spend a little bit of time with you,

Jackson Tidwell: the feeling’s mutual.

Neil, the feeling is totally mutual. It’s a pleasure.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. Is anybody who ever gets a chance to meet Jackson? Do yourself a favor because

Jackson Tidwell: oh wait, man. You need to tell my wife this.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah. My mom’s the one listening right now,

Jackson Tidwell: okay. Yeah. Hey,

Neil E. Golemo: might get

Jackson Tidwell: a text. Shout out Neil’s mom. I love people if anybody’s listening to this.

I love to connect with student affairs professionals. I’m a woo positivity include belief, connectedness. So

Neil E. Golemo: we have three of the same,

Jackson Tidwell: yeah I would love to connect with people doing the work. Keep on keeping on.

Neil E. Golemo: How can people connect with you?

Jackson Tidwell: They can follow me on LinkedIn. I’m currently on a social media cleanse, so it can’t do that, but connect me on LinkedIn, Jackson Tidwell, or shoot me an email at Jackson dot tidwell@upsa.edu.

I’d love to connect.

Neil E. Golemo: Yeah, we’ll make sure your information is in in the, the notes for this episode too.

Jackson Tidwell: Absolutely. Absolutely. This was good for the Soul, Neil.

Neil E. Golemo: Absolutely. All right, everybody. This has been, here’s the story, part of the Student Affairs Now family. We’re so glad you joined us to laugh, cry, learn sometimes commiserate, but always celebrate being a part of the Student Affairs experience.

If you have a story and we all have a story, please consider sharing with us by leaving a two minute. Pitch, buy a voice file@studentaffairsnow.com slash here’s the story. Every story is welcome and every earnest perspective is worthy. And even if you don’t feel like sharing yours, you can still find ours and others at student affairs.

now.com. If you can find us on YouTube, please smash that subscribe button and anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode has been edited by Nat Ambrosey. Nat, you’re the best. Thank you for making us sound better than we have any business sounding. We hope this has fed your flame a little bit, everybody, because your light matters.

Keep using it to make the world a brighter place. And until next time, this has been, here’s the story. Bye.