Stacey Pearson Wharton:
How do we help them deal with the losses that they’ve experienced around COVID? There’s a new phenomenon of fear of normalcy returning. I think it’s, you have FOMO in this like FONO, and that’s about fear of normal operations and people being concerned. And I, and I, I bet you, all of us have had that moment that we’ve been to place and it’s like a hundred people and you’re like, okay, this is weird. And so students will be experiencing that same thing and being income limiting at the same time.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs Now. I’m your host, Dr. Glenn DeGuzman. In today’s episode, we are discussing with our panelists, how they’ve been planning for and strategizing to best support college students as they returned to campus while the COVID-19 and Delta variant pandemic rages onward. Student Affairs Now is the premiere podcast and 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. Find details about this episode or browse our archives at studentaffairsnow.com. Before we jump into this conversation, I do want to acknowledge today’s sponsors. EverFi. So how will your institution rise to reach today’s socially conscious generation? These students rate commitment to safety, wellbeing, and inclusion, as important as academics and extracurriculars. It’s time to reimagine the work of student affairs as an investment, not an expense. For over 20 years

Glenn DeGuzman:
EverFi has been a trusted partner for 1,500 colleges and universities with nine efficacy studies behind their courses. You will have confidence that you’re using the standard of care for students’ safety and wellbeing with the results to prove it transform the future of your institution and the community you serve. Learn more at everfi.com/studentaffairsnow. This episode is also brought to you by Anthology, learn more about their innovative data-driven platforms to build and foster your campus student engagement experience. Learn more by visiting anthology.com/engage. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Glenn DeGuzman. I’m the associate Dean of students and director of residential life at the University of California, Berkeley. I use the he series as my pronouns, and I’m hosting this conversation today from my home in Livermore, California, which is the ancestral home of the Aloni peoples. Today’s topic is very difficult.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And you know, with COVID still raging on, this has impacted so many of us, all of us really on a global scale. And I know even six months ago, we hosted an episode on Student Affairs Now really starting to look post COVID. And what does that future look like? But I think that one of the things that we can definitely say now is that pandemic recovery efforts have definitely been impacted as we continue to struggle with this. So this episode came to be, we receive a lots of requests for this type of conversation. I’m grateful. I’m really, really grateful to have this group of panelists join me today. As I know the conversation that we’re about to have is coming from professionals and student affairs practitioners, who’ve been part of their campus and community COVID response. I also want to share that this episode is being recorded on August 30th.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And I share this date because each day we continue to learn more and more about COVID-19 and the more and dangerous Delta variant policies, protocols, guidelines, keep shifting and changing. So having that date will kind of give you sort of like an understanding of where, when we recorded this episode. So let’s meet our panelists, like to start by introducing we’re going to have today, Amber Ulmer, who is the associate director of residential life from the University of California, Berkeley, welcome Amber. We also have Dr. Stacey Pearson Wharton, Dean of health and wellness and director of the counseling center from Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. Hello, Stacey. We also have Dr. Kim Monteaux De Freitas the director of fraternity and sorority life from The Ohio State University. Welcome to the podcast. If we can, I’m going to have each of you to sort of share a little bit more about yourself with the audience.

Glenn DeGuzman:
So they get a little more sense of what you do and how you’re connected to this topic in particular. So if we can start with Amber.

Amber Ulmer:
Yeah, of course. So like, like Glenn said, I’m Amber Ulmer. I use they/she pronouns. Glenn is actually my supervisor and I help oversee our undergraduate residential life team. We have 8,000 residents this fall. We had 2000 last fall and through the pandemic, I also have taken on the oversight and the I am the architect of our isolation and quarantine area for campus. And that’s kept me really connected and close to our COVID response, not only for our residential students, but our campus at large and try to help our partners talk the same language and help them understand each other and move things along. Thank you, Amber. Stacey, a little bit more about you

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
Hi I’m Dr. Stacey Pearson Wharton also known as Dr. Stacey and I currently have the pleasure of serving as our Dean of health and wellness and director of counseling and psychological services on our campus. In the initial stages of the pandemic planning, I really was the person who was curating things for our campus. And so procuring the hotel that our students stayed in for quarantine housing and coordinating that through the semester, along with our public health campaigns and transportation and wastewater testing. And so kind of the initial person to bring those things to the table for the decision makers to make decisions. Currently, I am more involved or most involved in recovery and public health campaigning for the campus, as well as the mental health pieces for our counseling and psychological services. I use she, her, her pronounce.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Dr. Stacey.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Kim Monteaux De Freitas as was just mentioned. I use she her pronouns and I’m the director at The Ohio State University working and leading with our amazing sorority and fraternity community. Our community after our larger recruitment timeframe in the spring will be roughly 5,000 students. So over the last year and change I have been working really closely with our college of public health, with my liaison, which included and still continue to include specific epidemiologists that would work with me and particular scientists to really look at the sorority fraternity community and think about it through a prevention lens. We do have a lot of chapter facilities and we have an associate director for sorority and fraternity housing. So working with her as well really engaging the students in the conversations around COVID thinking about, again, the prevention methods, how can we tweak different things? And then obviously just thinking about the, what next. On a national lens. I am the national co-chair for NASPA for the fraternity and sorority KC. And I share that because on a KC level, we have also continued to offer COVID conversations. We had thought that we would have had the opportunity to wrap it up by now, but you’ll see some still going into the fall.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Right, right. I do want to just first congratulate all of you, because I know that Ohio State, and I know UC Berkeley opened last week. I know Susquehanna opened this week today, actually, if I’m understanding correctly. So congratulations to that, but obviously there’s a lot of stuff happening. Amber, I’m going to open with this question for you. As you shared in the beginning, we had about 8,000 undergraduate residents move in, which is 6,000 more than the previous year. And there was a lot of planning that was taking place during the summer. And as a campus was opening news started coming out about the Delta variant and just vaccinations were the buzz that was emerging, but would that buzz comes to stress and anxieties as the families are about to come in. And then obviously we have the wildfires in the west, which was creating poor air quality, for sure.

Glenn DeGuzman:
So I want to start this question. It’s going to be for all of you, but Amber, if you can kick off, how did move in go for you, as you implemented your COVID or pandemic response measured, was it what you expected or were there surprising things that you learn and want to share with our listeners?

Amber Ulmer:
Yeah, I think it’s a good question. I think it almost all went as high expected. You know, I think we were, we tried to be really thoughtful about where were the points where we may have hiccups or someone may not be able to do the thing we wanted them to do in the way we wanted them to do it. And, we tried to be thoughtful about how to individualized solutions for those people instead of needing to change our entire response and planning for move day.

Amber Ulmer:
We, with 8,000 folks, we spread our move in over four days which certainly helped lower the density on campus and the stress of everyone. I think some of the things that went as expected, the Berkeley students are incredibly compliant when we are clear with them about what the, what we need them to do. And moving, going into move in, we were really clear. Everyone needed to be masked. They included your family members. It was going to be outdoors for the most part. And you are gonna have a limited amount of time, which is pretty normal for us to do all of the things going up and down. We certainly had some hiccups that are historically hiccups that we have every move in, every move in here. So it’s nice to feel those things, again, like elevators going down and, and, you know, lines and stuff to get keys.

Amber Ulmer:
So it was nice because unlike last fall, when it was pretty much a ghost town for move in you know, it really felt like the energy came back to campus. And I think that helped the students start to settle their nerves a little, because a lot of students and their families in particular came with a lot of nerves on move in day and had a lot of questions and really wanted to be able to ask someone their questions. And obviously we were busy doing lots of things, but we really tried to take those individual moments to answer questions where we could. I think some of the surprising things we learned which I don’t think are necessarily surprising to me, are that students don’t really understand the symptoms of COVID totally when they’re on their own and by themselves.

Amber Ulmer:
I think we ha we’ve had a lot of folks say, I think my roommate has COVID. And when we talk, when we get the person connected to our health folks, it’s they had a headache, or, you know, it was, it was something that wasn’t necessarily even in line with what was going on in, in the COVID symptoms. So really trying to help figure out where are those things that we need to teach our residents early on so that we can connect to our health partners and work with our communications team to figure out how to clearly communicate those things so that students can know when is the time to call someone versus when is the time to say, I need more information about this, and I need to say curious,

Glenn DeGuzman:
Dr. Stacey, how was it for you at Susquehanna?

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
Well, It feels remarkably normal is my kind of my grand sentiment when I left the counseling center today to come home. So for this recording, they will people in the waiting room and I squealed because we have not had anybody in our waiting room since March of 2020. And so there’s that piece of it. Kind of like Berkeley students, our culture has really redid a lot of complacency and if not, students will check you or they will tell on you. And so really kind of trying to, which is interesting in an environment that is very only 73%, 67% 30 something percent of the people in my county are vaccinated. And so it’s a very conservative, very anti masker, anti-vaxxer not overall certainly, but not, and not the university, but in the larger community. And so it was interesting to think about bringing people into our space, but we found people to be highly respectful and compliant of what we’re trying to do, which we oftentimes talk about it as saving the semester.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Really interesting to hear the different background and differences between Berkeley and your institution and Kim, how, how was it for you? How did it go as expected?

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
So, honestly, I don’t know if I really had any expectations. I was just ready to go in and be a part of the energy. Looking back at the last week, I have to say that I am really proud of the students. We had some really amazing back to campus events and we had a yard show on Friday. We’re a little over 500 students showed up. It was outside. So it’s not like inside where masks are mandated. But we had lots of events going on in campus. Lots of energy because we did have events on campus until this fall were 10 max. So just again, naming the energy was really exciting. Not too many issues with compliance. I did go to a event last night where I had to point out to a couple students, Hey, can you put your mask over your nose? But overall it’s been pretty good.

Glenn DeGuzman:
That’s great to hear. And, you know, it makes me think about, as you’re sharing, you’re kind of opening responses, the energy that’s even coming up within me, just thinking about like, yeah, there’s, we’re actually seeing people again. And it’s definitely brought a lot of like positive energy through me. Stacey, let me direct this question towards you. And this is around some of the challenges that campus leaders are facing, obviously during the summer. I think campus leaders were really looking into the crystal ball, really trying to forecast what fall opening was going to look like, looking at trends, looking at what happened the previous fall consulting with medical and public health officials. But obviously as we got closer to opening the Delta variant started reignited and just created a lot of stress amongst folks. I wonder if you could take us through some of the pressures and thought processes you believe campus leaders must be experiencing as the fall semester gets underway?

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
Well, I think that the Delta variant was like that that what do you call it that, that commercial, the infomercial that says, but wait, there’s more because I think that there was this moment that we thought that we had turned the corner, right. And that we were going to have a relatively pre COVID type experience, particularly given that for us 95% or so of our population is vaccinated, right? So we thought this is going to be amazing. And then Delta was like, I don’t know. So I think there are a couple of things that are in people’s head. The first is just the mere fatigue and exhaustion with believing and disappointment, believing that we had turned the corner. And that is in fact not the case and in way, figuring out ways to keep people engaged in all the safety measures, even though people are sick of the mask and all of those things, but continuing to stress the importance in helping people to go the distance with that, certainly staying safe and open is important.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And people trying to figure out how to manage the vaccines and whether are we going to mandate it or not, we’re going to mandate it for faculty and staff and students. And we’re only going to mandate it for students. Are we going to give exemptions what will be what’s exemption processes? So just really kind of trying to manage the whole entire vaccine process. The other piece that is really unique is that all of us have second year students on our campus for FTIC. So our first time in college folks, and so really helping them to adjust and to transition in this new way of they are in college, but not at college, but here for the first time. And so really managing that group as well and helping students as well to reengage, how do, how do they get their head back in the game?

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
How do we help them deal with the losses that they’ve experienced around COVID? There’s a new phenomenon of fear of normalcy returning. I think it’s, you have FOMO in this like FONO, and that’s about fear of normal operations and people being concerned. And I, and I, I bet you, all of us have had that moment that we’ve been to place and it’s like a hundred people and you’re like, okay, this is weird. And so students will be experiencing that same thing and being income limiting at the same time. And then the last two things that I will note is what’s happening in the external community and how is that going to impact the workforce? And so are your schools open? Are they going to be open? And what does that mean for the workforce? Our campus and university, are they masking, or aren’t they masking and how, what is happening in the community that is around us is going to impact our lives and work and mission here at the university.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And of course the last, but definitely not least is all the fiscal stewardship pieces. And what does it mean if we have to, can we survive if we, and that’s both for schools, our size and schools, the size of Berkeley at Ohio State, because so much revenue comes from the residential life portion. And so how do we be good financial stewards in the midst of this global pandemic, but also you put on that, the demographic cliff, the racial reckoning, the wildfires, the war zones, the, and all the other things that are happening. It makes a fiduciary stewardship even more complex and complicated.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Wow. Every single point you made are conversations that I’m in. And I think that was beautifully said, and I love this, that FONO fear of normal operations. That is a quote. You heard it here first on student first. That’s great. I love that when I use that Kim, let’s talk about you kind of alluded to in the very beginning with the your event that you had. I know that I’ve spoken to many student affairs professionals who like, like you like me, we just want to return to that in person college experience, but I’m also running into a number of student affairs professionals who want to maintain their remote learning, obviously understandably like that’s, you’re still a lot of concern and fear. And as a profession, I know we recognize the value of in-person engagement and the holistic development of our students. And that oftentimes can only happen in that in-person space. It’s the center of what we do with engagement with student orgs, fraternities, and sororities. So I’m curious to know what type of efforts do you, or your hearing other campus are taking to help these organizations recalibrate and, you know to maybe overcome the fear of normal offer the FONO, right? The fear of normal operations and recognizing, but also recognizing the risk of COVID.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
Yeah, this is a great, great, great, great question and conversation. I think that we’ll all be saying, you know, this will be ever-changing throughout this fall. As I shared here, there’s a lot of excitement to be in person. But I know that my colleagues are still having a lot of conversations with the students and the organizations about backup plans. So if we do plan to have something, a person what is plan B and what is plan C depending on what’s happening here in the county, right here in the state and here in the country. I also think that we need to think about the audience, so particular meetings, as I’ve shared with my team you know, maybe we will stay online and we might for the foreseeable future, I think about meetings with advisors and alumni and graduate members. Some of them were driving two hours to meet with us.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
That’s not necessary. So I think that we’ve learned a lot through this time that maybe we’ll stick with us like the zoom meetings at, at night, right. With advisors, and also thinking about how our HR departments and institutions across the country are also thinking about staff can still get the job done from home. So how are re-evaluating what hybrid work looks like, what maybe some days at home look like. And there’s, there’s a lot of articles out there about this, so it’s not just me bringing this up, but I’m very fortunate that I’m, I’m living this experience where I’m being asked to think about, you know, our team and what that can look like for us to be remote some days, and here in the office as a student facing entity on other days I think that no matter what we need to be conscious and remember the different identities different identities have been, been impacted differently throughout the COVID pandemics and other pandemics occurring. And you mentioned earlier, you know, like folks have, have lost individuals and this continues to impact particular identities more than others. So just really being aware of that, thinking about the parents and the families out there, and individuals who may not have children, but are taking care of maybe their parents or another family member and really centering that while we are student affairs professionals, we’re humans. So really remembering that during this time, while decisions are being made,

Glenn DeGuzman:
I appreciate you centering the the, the, the student first professionals life outside of the workspace. I think that is something that oftentimes gets lost in particularly as we, we are just putting our there’s so much fatigue, like compassion, fatigue, where we’re investing in, in our teams. And just to speak about that, I appreciate you mentioning that. Speaking of staff we’re working really hard, and this is a very direct question because from someone who asked about resident assistance Amber, this question is for you obviously, RAs play a very big role on college campuses nationally. It plays a big role at UC Berkeley and they are, and we know we’re very appreciative of what they do for us. I know you are a big follower of the science behind how we mitigate and address COVID spread. Can you talk about how you maybe adapted and changed and modified RA training to incorporate the science?

Amber Ulmer:
Yeah, of course. So, you know, I have some background in this, I trained as a middle school science teacher, so science communication that is clear and helps people be curious is really important to me. And so that’s, that has been at the center of, of how I’ve kind of approached this. I think I’ve also really said we’re going to listen to our campus and community health experts. We are not going to debate with them. We are not, we can ask questions of them and gather more information, but their legitimacy and ability to help us through this, this pandemic is going to be really central to how we understand this. We have an incredibly student focused medical director at our health center, and she is probably the least doctor, doctor I’ve ever seen. She really knows how to talk to students and they put together a COVID response team that really centered the students and how to answer their questions.

Amber Ulmer:
And I think that seeing that helped me say to my RAs, I understand how the campus is responding to this, and I can’t answer questions that are specific to residential life, and I can help you get the information that you need and tease it out of the websites and tease it out of the emails and, and help you figure out how to make sense of what’s happening and the unraveling of our world in this moment, so that we can make our own individual decisions. Cause that’s the other thing I’m really clear about is we are all making our own individual decisions that collectively come together. And I, you know, really early on in the pandemic, we decided to really shut down and minimize what our RAs were doing because we didn’t have enough science to understand where the risk was for them.

Amber Ulmer:
And so we really pivoted early on and as we understood more and more specific to our campus, but globally as well, we started to reincorporate their work back in. So doing those in-person responses for a limited number of things, we are almost back to normal operations. There’s still some things that they, you know, will call someone about before they necessarily go and do the thing. I think I’ve really appreciated the RAs that have stayed curious. And I think the ones that raised their hand and said, I don’t understand this thing. One of the things that we did last week or two weeks ago in RA training is I was supposed to do a budget overview and it was easily more done in a video format. And so I recorded a video and instead I, I asked our whole team to watch a campus conversation that our epidemiologists and our health center folks had.

Amber Ulmer:
And I think that helps people understand because I was seeing lots of questions that didn’t necessarily follow the science. So a lot of questions about, should we even be doing things outdoors in person and, you know, knowing that we needed to bring back some of the normalcy, we needed to be able to do some of the things and have the experience. We could not keep 8,000 people in their rooms like we did last fall. And so really trying to hone in on their questions and understand where their concerns were so that we could get that specific thing answered. And I think when we, when we had our UHS team come in and talk directly, we collected a hundred questions and we got to get through about 40 of them were answering the rest of the questions right now.

Amber Ulmer:
And I think that really, really helped our team understand that we were going to listen to them. It didn’t mean that they didn’t always, they always got to be a direct part of the decision making, but we wanted them to understand that their questions were really important because that will help us understand how to communicate to the rest of the team. And the team is not just the resident assistants, it’s the residents, it’s our custodial staff, it’s our health professions. It’s everyone on the campus. And I was really clear early on also that everyone on this campus needed to be able to say to someone else I needed to put a mask on. And we did a lot of training early on and tried to help lots of people outside of residential life become comfortable with that statement. I think like I said earlier, UC Berkeley students, when it’s clear to them really do follow the rules.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Yeah. And, and I think to your point, it really helps when you have you’re on the same page with the locale, with with staff. But we know that’s not always the case, you know, and other location. I know, I know that I was just reading a newsfeed and I know that the Florida Board of Governors, this question is from Kim. That’s a tough question. It’s I know the floor board of governors or recommended or attorney to pre pandemic conditions within the CDC guidelines. Right. So interpret that. And then you have the governor of Florida who dismissed masking recommendation. And this is an example, really that illuminates sometimes mixed messages that just kind of confuse people. And it speaks to the greater context, you know, where students are coming to campus from all over, you know, US and the world with mixed interpretations. And I think there is a responsibility role for campuses, student affairs professionals to try to get everyone on the same page. And that’s a big tall ask and very difficult to do. So I’m curious to know what you are doing on your campus or what you’re hearing to help communicate clear expectations and getting students on the same page.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
Yeah, well, this one is challenging and obviously ever evolving. I would say for me personally, I feel very fortunate that I work at an institution that has been very diligent with communications. We have a senior vice president who really believes, and it’s just in her being of being transparent with her leaders and her managers about what messaging is coming. You know, she listens to us and to the students and is finding different ways to communicate out. So whether that is from the top down with our president sharing, what are the expectations, again, some senior leaders, and then thinking about how we also reiterate those messages through different student newsletters, whether that’s like a student org insider, or maybe a Friday letter from students from sorority and fraternity life, just saying, Hey, this is how this impacts you for your events, that you are planning or, Hey, this is how this impacts you for your parent weekend, that you’re planning.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
I also want to go back to something that Amber said, I’m talking about, how do we bring in those specialists, right. Those who have the expertise. I am not an epidemiologist, but again, it has been wonderful to work with our college of public or public health to bring them in, to listen to the students, have the conversations with the students, answer the questions and to have other point people. We are really fortunate as student affairs professionals that we have most of us, right. We have these specialists and scientists right on our campuses, if not, it’s likely that there’s someone in the town or the community, the city that is working with us. So how can we bridge that and make those relationships to also make it really noticeable to the students that they care about them? There’s always going to be some students that question, why are we doing this?

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
And not that you know, as you brought up Florida and different messages, and again, really coming back to the consistency, consistency making sure that my colleague is saying the same thing as me to their student organization and going back again to what Amber said, how are we making time to listen to the students to have those conversations? I think we all know that conversations really matter and conversations definitely contribute to change. So if we’re just silencing them, never asking them what their thoughts are, how they’re feeling it’s, that’s just not the way to, to work and navigate this still very challenging time.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Yeah. And, and I think that you know, for every, I think a lot of students are trying to do their best to understand and try to be compliant. I think that’s the majority of the students that every once in a while, we know, you know, there are students who who will challenge the policy or have their own interpretation that will not align with what the campus is trying to do. So Amber, this question is really directed to you. You know, historically is in our student affairs profession, we use conduct systems really as a way for students, particularly newer students to reflect and learn and from learn from the mistakes you know, oftentimes providing educational sanctions of some sort some have seen COVID policies as different and or some institution, excuse me, you have seen conduct as a a different way that they might have a more rigid stance with more firmer consequences that really impacts maybe potentially a student’s standing, you know, leading up to, for example, probation or separation from an institution.

Glenn DeGuzman:
I’m kind of curious to know, like, what do you think how do you approach students who are going to, you know, willfully or maybe unintentionally not follow COVID expectations of the campus is setting forth around.

Amber Ulmer:
Yeah, actually thank you. You made a good distinction there. They are willfully doing it, or they are unknowingly doing it. I think there’s a difference there in part of, part of the conduct process or part of the followup process, depending on how you set it up, it needs to figure out is this person just, just needs more information and more coaching around how to do this, right. Or is this person trying to challenge us for maybe a different reason? And then that’s, we gotta figure out that that’s a whole different ball of wax. I think one of the things that I’ll say is that I’m very fortunate that in our conduct system, we have a lot of flexibility to be able to say, okay, this is something that we should handle maybe more informally.

Amber Ulmer:
This is something that we should put through a restorative practices or restorative justice type of conversation. This is something that actually needs to go into a formal process. And then for us, because we’re residential, we can escalate to our university campus conduct office. So we have a lot of options. And but what I knew early on was that most students were not going to willfully be flouting rules or doing things that they shouldn’t be doing. I took and, and my team took the stance that we were going to be really thoughtful. We were going to try to have as many individual conversations either at the moment of the documentation or following up with a staff member that had a relationship afterwards as possible. So we really have this buffer period for the first couple of weeks right now, in which we’re really just trying to have those conversations.

Amber Ulmer:
We’re asking the RAs to, when they say to someone I needed to put your face mask on to have, they have some talking points to be able to run through why this is important to us and important to our community, the RA feels like that’s a good enough conversation. The person got the point. We’re going to mark that as fine. We’re going to say that they, we had the conversation and we can move forward. If that person messes up again, we have a different alternative option for how we’re going to deal with that. And we’re going to try to individualize as many responses as possible. So we’re going to try to really think about and be thoughtful, is it because they’re in a roommate conflict and they’re really trying to do this thing to force someone out of their room is, you know, really deep diving, deep into the reason behind someone who quite frankly, when they get to the so many conduct reports that I know their name I, I know that something’s going on with them that is deeper than, than what we’ve been able to find out so far.

Amber Ulmer:
So really trying to figure out with those handful of people who are who have the most reports and, and the staff are the most frustrated about helping the staff understand we still need to have a calm touch with them. We still need to figure out how to get them to comply with what they’re asking for in the moment and trust in the process that we will be following up afterwards. We have a really clear escalation process with our campus partners and have really tried to be nimble throughout this thing. We had a little surge, what we called the COVID surge in February. And we needed to take out some of the less formal, more restorative options out of our conduct process because we needed to gain faster compliance. And so that’s what we did is we just cut out a few steps for a month while we were getting everything under control and folks to understand what we were asking them to do. And you know, we try to use the different tools that been based on where we were in the pandemic and where the campus specifically was and where the residence halls was specifically were.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Amber, for sharing that it does lead to probably oh Kim.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
If it’s okay. Can I add something into that? Just listening to Amber, I was hearing a lot about the individual and I just wanted to add in from a group level that it’s going to be really important, that those of us who work with organizations, whether sororities, fraternities, clubs, organizations that we’re also really being thoughtful and thinking about how a lot of these organizations, haven’t hosted events in a really long time, and thinking about who are the elected senior leaders of those organizations now, and how it could be that they haven’t hosted a large event on campus for homecoming or a social event off campus. So I’m just naming that. We’re all gonna need to be really intentional about how having those conversations about how to host events for organizations. And when Amber said, you know, some, some just don’t know, I think that that is an area where we have some control over, like, how do we help these organizations get that knowledge to help them be successful? Now there are, of course going to be some groups that aren’t going to show up, or aren’t going to still plan it out as we would like. But just naming that, we’ve got two years of organizations on many of our campuses that have not held large organizational events.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Right. And then also go ahead, go ahead.

Amber Ulmer:
I was going to say, I’d also say that brought up a thought for me, the whole community needs to reset its expectations, right? Because you know, we hosted some awesome welcome back programming that was outdoors. And, and we got a lot of noise complaints because the surrounding community didn’t know what was happening. They were like, what on earth is happening? It was called mask singer and it was literally masked singers. It was awesome. And you know, really having to follow up with not only the people who was us putting on the program to, to help understand that we needed to renormalize that with this many people on campus, things are going to happen and we need to keep people you know, active and in as safe as possible.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Great points. I keep even thinking about just even staff, new staff, trying to learn the code Ironman, the community, so great point all around. So this next question is directed to Stacey. Stacey, this is probably the one area that I get, probably the most questions on it is around the mental health impact on students, staff, and even faculty. You know, obviously we talked before we started recording about how this question can just be an episode onto itself. And I want to send her this question really on our students in particular. But what did we learn as a student affairs profession that would help prepare us for supporting the wellness of our newest students this upcoming fall and what concerns you the most?

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
So what concerns me, I’ll start with what concerns me the most. What concerns me is that people just everybody’s struggling. Like I don’t have a therapist friend, any place in the country, no matter what the population that they’re working with that has openings in their practice that therapists are unindicted right now with people who are really in distress for a myriad of reasons. But that distress level is really very high. And so what I know is that our students are then a microcosm of that are coming back to campus with that same level of the stress. I am also the chair of our care team or students of concern or bid or whatever you call it on our campus, the current chair. And I received 10 reports this morning when I opened up my email. It just was jumping off because people are concerned about students already.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And we had not even started classes yet. Certainly what we know is that isolation and quarantine had an emotional impact on our students. And and in that process of quarantining students that we had to find a way to try to be there and be present for them, even in the midst of that quarantine. And so we had things like at quarantine isolation, sunshine time and exercise on zoom and workshops on zoom and care coordinators. I forget what we call them, who called them once or twice once daily or once every other day to kind of check on them. And so we can’t leave students to themselves to be to just try to manage it because the emotional toll is really intense. What we also know is that there’s been an uptick in anxiety and depression among this particular age group and colleagues as well, certainly.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And that some places have done some things. So we have put together here, my campus kind of a COVID recovery program. We’re not calling it that, but that’s what it is. And we’re doing some preventative things to try to help. And so we’re trying to Institute more wellness and do things that are antidotes to some of the anxiety, including we’re upping our gratitude week, that we are upping our mindfulness in ways that make it most accessible to students. And our YouTube channels will start to get flooded as well as the social media with just really five minutes shots in the arm, no pun intended, but all the puns intended to help help students really be inoculated against the stress and the distress that can be caused by currently what we are living in. The other piece that we have that we are working on pretty hard is to try to equip even better our whole community to recognize when they see the stress of students that we’ve upped our game just a little bit on that.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
So that faculty and staff can help us to intervene even earlier than we typically was. And we already have a pretty robust kind of community of caring, but we really have sought to really do a better job around that with, with our, with our campus. And then to kind of give voice to this, to name it, to help people understand, oh, if you’re feeling this, this and this, that might be COVID recovery anxiety. If you’re feeling that bad in that pay attention. And as opposed to letting people try to make meaning of it on it, on their own, but providing a structure or a schema for people to attach themselves to in a way that helps them know and understand what’s going on, know that some campuses are holding COVID debrief meetings among their entire community. Just an opportunity for people to come together, to sit down and talk together, and then to use what they learned in those groups to try to come to help with programming, planning, and policy.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Wow, thank you for that insight. So I would like to try something new for the show. It’s sort of like a lightning round you know, my podcast, peer colleague from NASPA, Jill Creighton, kind of giving this idea. So I’m gonna ask all of you this question, and if you can give me sort of like your elevator pitch response to this, but if you can share with the listeners, tell me one thing or tell me an innovative thing that you have seen as it relates to pandemic recovery response. It can be a policy or practice a program, a new position, whatnot. I’d like to hear your response and eeny meeny miny, Amber, you’re up.

Amber Ulmer:
Yeah. You know, I think there are lots of great examples. And I think that a lot of things have gone across the country. I think one of the things really early on that, that we decided was that we wanted a separate staff or isolation quarantine team and our residential life team. Again, not understanding fully the infectiousness and how that happened. We wanted to make sure we had separate teams. And I think because of that, we were able to repurpose the, the incredible experience and efforts of people who’ve never worked in residential life into that program. And it really made it better. And, you know, they came from food service, they came from our rec and fitness team. They came from our events team. And so they really came together and brought their superpowers together to make an isolation and quarantine area that really almost fully mirrored what was happening in the residence halls up in isolation and quarantine obviously highly modified lots of staff oversight and, and whatnot, but it really came together. And it’s a really cool program for anyone who’s gotten to see it right.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Shout out to you and refer that and also to the isolation coring team at UC Berkeley. Kim.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
Gosh. All right. So when I think about like innovation during this time I think back to the phone calls, so we made fine, we made kindness, kindness, kindness. We made kindness phone calls to our students. You know, one semester we reached out to seniors because that was not the senior experience that they thought that they would have. Other moments we reached out to first-year students, you know, just saying, we care about you and we are not a small private school. So that took a lot of hands on deck. And some of those phone calls really lifted a lot of our staffs just day and, you know, filled the cup because again, we were virtual for so long. So to have those conversations was really meaningful.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Kudos to Ohio State for that. That’s, that’s a big lift. Wonderful Dr. Stacey. Okay.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
Two things that pop up for me the first is one of the things that happened with food. So we know how complicated feeding people and quarantine and isolation was. And so initially we were using this worksheet where we could go in and say I’m vegan or vegetarian or gluten intolerant, whatever. But in the end, by the time we were in the middle, maybe even early in that, the second semester, there was an app developed that every student in quarantine could go in and order their own food and that we did not. So it was a game changer for us because no longer were there those kinds of complaints, at least if they, as long as they got their food, they were good. I mean the normal things that people say about that are developmentally appropriate about campus dining of course, but that, it really kind of took some the stress out of making sure that we got it right.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And then if we didn’t get it right, but remediating the problem. And so that was something that I was particularly proud of that happened on our campus. And I also remain pretty curious about the school. And unfortunately, I am not able to remember it, although it feels like maybe Minnesota, Wisconsin the program around bringing people together to debrief and normalize and people’s reactions around COVID. I think that that there’s some power in, because really let’s face it. We all have a collective trauma as it relates both to COVID and to the wildfires and just all of the things right now, but we’re talking specifically about COVID today and the racial reckoning and the killing of trans women. I mean, just like so many things that, that we’re sharing this collective trauma. And I think that there’s power in being able to sit together and talk about it, but also power in naming it. And it has sometimes the propensity to take some of the heat off of it when we can get it from, in us to outside and then have that collective experience together.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Those are definitely wonderful ideas. And also just sort of like making me think also indirectly, like shout out to, and love to our peers and colleagues who are impacted by the hurricane. That’s hitting this out so wonderful. So we are almost out of time and this podcast is called Student Affairs Now. So we always close with this question, but if you can take a minute or two and summarize sort of one thought maybe what you’re pondering, what you’re questioning, what’s exciting, you, something that maybe you heard on this panel that you would like to reflect on. If you could share that. And then also, if you can also tell folks how to connect with you w whether it’s Twitter or LinkedIn, or your email who wants to go first. It’s like popcorn.

Amber Ulmer:
Yeah. So what, some of the things I’m thinking about now are, you know, we’ve just spent the last 18 months with our heads down, really focusing on COVID. And, and I know I’ve got housing projects that are barreling towards breaking ground and soon to be completed. And so how do you, in our exhaustion? Figure out how to continuously figure out how to start raising our heads up higher and higher towards the, the horizon, and also honor that we need rest and honor that we’re humans and honor that it’s not all going to get done. And I think that that’s really hard because of how exhausted we all are. And I, you know, a new school school year is not the finish line. You know, the, the opening day is not the finish line. It’s actually the starting line. And so everything we just did this summer was just to get to the starting line.

Amber Ulmer:
And so how do we, how do we figure out, especially for our, our more senior leadership on campus, how, how to get them the ability to have enough brain space to start thinking about 2024, 2027, and, and making sure that we’ve laid plans that that after this pandemic, we, we are going to be able to have that financial solvency and, and have a really great student experience.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you, Amber Kim.

Amber Ulmer:
And I was going to say, and you can get ahold of me through my dog. My dog has an Instagram. Her name is awesome.thedog. And, and she’ll pass along any messages.

Glenn DeGuzman:
That’s phenomenal. We will put, we’ll put that in our website so people can go and check out, check that link out later.

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
Awesome. So as I said, your dog’s name Amber really, you know, was on the same thought path as me. I’m just thinking about how a lot of members on my staff and my colleagues are already tired. And I’m also going to name that. It seems like every other day, a colleague of mine is leaving higher education and that’s worrisome to me. It’s also worrisome that I have colleagues that are struggling to hire student employees right now. So thinking about like, how are we going to offer these experiences? Whether that’s, you know, the normal coffee shop that’s in your, you know, your building on campus, if you can’t hire enough students to make it run during those hours, how is that impacting the staff that will now be learning how to make coffee? So that’s on my mind. I also have to name because you’ll know where I work. I’m thinking about how the football season is going to impact many of our institutions I’m thinking about that, you know, thinking about the sorority fraternity community and obviously our larger community too, around our campus.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Those are very real points. Thank you, Kim.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
So I think there are two things that are on my mind. I worried about the acuity or the severity of the pathology or the struggles or distress. There we go, that students are coming back to campus with and how that is going to play out. Will it mean more hospitalizations? Will it mean an increase in suicidal behavior? Will it like, what is that going to look like and how do we disrupt it? And this is the thing that it’s keeping me up at night, not literally, but, you know, and and so that is really heavy on my mind and trying, I mean, I think part of my desire, like a heart’s desire is to get out in front of it. Like nobody has to say students are coming to campus in more distress. Like we know that. And so let’s, so I’ve been trying to do my best to just try to get in front of it as much as possible, but not being sure that’s enough, quite frankly.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And so that, that is that’s in my head. And I think the other thing is how is this going to change or how has it changed our profession and what will it mean for us in the longterm? You know, I’m struck, I’m struck by Kim by the the amount of people that are leaving our field as well. Like when you said that, like, yeah, that part that just in trying to make meaning of that, but just really struck by how, how I believe I work will be forever changed. And, and not knowing what that will be, even in the context of this very divisive way that we’re living right now as a, as a country and how things that seem to be this innocent objects, like a face mask is a lightning rod and, and the elections.

Stacey Pearson Wharton:
And what’s gonna happen now that people are here in this country who helped us, are they going to be okay? And so I I am concerned about COVID and all that is attached to it, but how that work plays into ours impacted by everything else, all of the instability that we are currently experiencing right now in the world, I want to say in our country, but really in the world. And so that’s the other thing that’s on my mind, sorry the long answer you can find me. I actually host a podcast called being the dot where interviewed people of color, who are thriving in white spaces. And so you can find me there at being the dot. And I actually have a couple of episodes on COVID, including like around brown people and the vaccine and a few other things. But also on all of the social media places at Dr. Stacey. So Dr. StaceyPW is another place to find me.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And we will put that in the website for sure. Kim, did you share your contact?

Kim Monteaux De Freitas:
I did not. Thank you for reminding me. You can find me on LinkedIn, obviously I’m Kim Monteaux De Freitas, or you can email me. My email is defreitas.twelve@osu.edu.

Glenn DeGuzman:
And if you go to our listeners or those who are watching on YouTube if you go to our website, Student Affairs Now.com their information will also be there. So you can listen to Dr. Stacey’s podcasts you know visit Kim’s LinkedIn, or check out some cool photos of Amber dog. Awesome. So this is it. I just want to say to you that this was an incredible episode. I really appreciate it. I really love your, your closing statements as well. And thank you for being guests today. I know that this episode is going to be airing really quickly. And so I’m going to think in advance Nat Ambrosey who does our behind the scenes production work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Nat, for turning this episode around and again, thank our sponsors EverFi and Anthology.

Glenn DeGuzman:
Thank you for continuing to support allowing us to put this this topic and other topics out into social media. These shows for sure, would not be possible without their support and then to our audience and to our listeners. Thank you for joining us again. As you listen today, if you found this content to be useful for you, for your student affairs practice and scholarship, we’d love it. If you’d share this episode with your social media networks, the more we can share on how we are maneuvering this pandemic, the better we are as a profession. Again, my name is Glenn DeGuzman. Thank you for spending time with us today. Listening, watching, hope you enjoyed the episode, wherever you are, go out and make it a good day and be safe. Thank you everybody. Thank you for having us.

Websites: 

Center for Disease Control

UC Berkeley Coronavirus Response & Resources

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