Rafael Rodriguez
And I think what we what I’ve learned is a few things. First, it’s that everyone is really clinging for a sense of connection and belonging, and a need to feel as if they are seen included, and have a space and a process by which they’re hurt. And we quickly learned as we’ve started to do with the restorative practices that our students are, or get and develop a culture around restorative practices within our student that this is a whole organizational model, we’ve learned and I’ve learned that our staff are at their best when they thrive, when they can thrive in a culture where they have a capacity and a willingness and a space to really engage in some meaningful relationship building so that when things get difficult, we have a method and build established sense of trust and care for one another that allows us to get through the difficult parts.

Keith Edwards
Hello, and welcome to Student Affairs NOW, I’m your host Keith Edwards. Today we’re talking about reimagining social justice from a proactive perspective. We have three scholars and leaders who are reimagining leadership for social justice in theory and practice. These folks are living this in their scholarship, work and lives. We’ll be exploring proactive approaches to creating communities that foster equity and justice. Guests will discuss libertarian approaches restorative practices, Healing Justice and strategies to integrate them into the residential experience. Student Affairs NOW is the premier podcast and online learning community for 1000s 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 browser archives, it’s studentaffairsnow.com. Today’s episode is sponsored by Symplicity. A true partner Symplicity supports all aspects of student life and technology platforms that empower institution to make data driven decisions. This episode is also brought to you by Stylus, visit styluspub.com and use their promo code SANow for 30% off and free shipping. Today we’re sharing the third three conversations in a series I hosted for the University of Massachusetts Amherst Residential Life team. The series focused on reimagining Residence Life Work, crisis response and on call and social justice. I invited some of the most innovative thinkers and practitioners I know to share their thoughts, ideas and approaches to generate possibilities for us all to consider. Each conversation we share with you in this series was followed by a q&a with the UMass residence or life folks to discuss this in their particular context. Thanks to UMass Residential Life for making these conversations possible and for allowing us to share them more broadly with you here. As I mentioned, I’m your host, Keith Edwards, my pronouns are he him his I’m a speaker, consultant, and coach. You can find out more about me at keithedwards.com. And I’m broadcasting from Minneapolis, Minnesota at the intersections of the ancestral homelands of the Dakota in the Ojibwe peoples. Let’s bring in our guest for this wonderful conversation.

Rachel Wagner
Awesome, hello, Rachel Wagner, she hers pronouns. I live in work and pray and play on the traditional homelands of the Cherokee Nation, the Eastern Band of Cherokee. And as an uninvited guest, and in Cherokee lands. One of my obligations is to understand the commitments that I need to uphold to care knowledge systems and understandings of relationality. So I invite you to think about your commitments on the lands that you’re occupying. I’m a UMass grad, I did my doctorate in social justice Ed. There at UMass and I also was in residence life, I was an ARD, and an RD. Prior to a couple more trips around the country before I landed at Clemson University, where I’m an associate professor of Higher Education and Student Affairs. I fancied myself a social justice educator. And I love these conversations, and I particularly think that housing is ripe for opportunities to realize some of our emancipatory dreams. So I’m super excited to be here with you today.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful, thank you so much for that. Rachel and Raf let’s go ahead and hear from you and where you are and what you’re doing.

Rafael Rodriguez
Thanks, Keith. Hello, everyone. My name is Rafael Rodriguez. I use he him pronouns. I am in New York right now in New York University. And we are of course located in the essential homelands. Thank you, Rachel, for starting us off and acknowledging where we’re coming from in our history. It’s important as we engage in these conversations to always keep in mind the ways in which we have a lot of work to do, and the ways in which we have to acknowledge our history in order to do better as we move forward. I’m the Dean of Students AVP and Dean of Students at New York University. Most of my time previous to this role was spent in Residential Life and Housing Services. I was the executive director of housing at UVM. Prior to that, I started at University of Vermont as a residence director, climbed up as an assistant director took a pause from the residential education side the on call side and did some time working with our assessment team and our initiatives team and eventually became the executive director. And a lot of our work really revolved around how do we engage in the place that we were at the University of Vermont and the first and or second most why the state depending on the year with a very diverse residential education team and residential life department focusing on how do we engage in very difficult dialogue within the context that we’re set up in. And it was extremely rewarding a group of people that I got to work with, and amount of work that I get to bring along with me in my NYU journey.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. Thank you. And Kaleigh, let’s hear a little bit more about you.

Kaleigh Mrowka
Absolutely. Hi, everyone. My name is Kaleigh Mrowka. pronouns are she her hers. And I am coming to you today from Baltimore, Maryland on the ancestral lands of the Piscataway and Pasco, white people’s actually grew up in Massachusetts, so you all are sort of in my homeland a little bit there. But my background has really been in living learning programs and Residence Life. So residential education curricular work. But I’ve recently made a shift. So I now actually worked for the International Institute for sort of practices and working with them to build a collaborative center for restorative practices in higher education, which is really exciting work, and hopefully something that will continue to grow and we’ll be able to dig into. But like, I think my connection to our conversation today is really is really rooted in sort of my not only my professional restorative practices work, but also my research. So I have a lot of research interests around restorative justice and restorative practices, and particularly, the use of restorative as a strategy for relationality. Sometimes effectively, sometimes ineffectively as a way to resist, you know, our dominant cultural ethos and power structures in higher ed. So I’m really interested in looking at, you know, restorative practices and white supremacy and neoliberalism and set our settler colonialism in higher education. So I’m excited to be here for the discussion and also excited to learn from the other panelists.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, I’m so excited to have all three of you here individually. I know each of you and really appreciated what you do and how you think about it. And I’m so excited to be in this kind of collective conversation. So I also know you have so much brilliant, so I’m gonna try and wind you up and get you go. And so, Rachel, we have been co conspiring for two decades now. And you’re one of those people who haunts me in the best of ways as I go about my life living things. I remember things that Rachel said in that one room of 15 years ago, and it still sticks with me. But as you mentioned, you’re a UMass ResLife and Social Justice Education alum. You bring both the criticality and the generativity to your social justice work. You and I have been in conversations and conference presentations around both the what and the how, of social justice work. And I just want to point you to how do we both and both the anti oppression lens and analysis. And the libertarian, as you said earlier, the emancipatory approach to social justice, take it away.

Rachel Wagner
One of my absolutely favorite topics. So yeah, to start, of course, we have to have an analysis of oppression, a robust one, right? And there are all kinds of tools that can help us with that. So I think about Patricia Hill Collins work and the matrix of domination that lets us recognize and anticipate, you know, different domains of power. So whether that be structural or disciplinary, which plays out I think a lot in predominately white institutions, hegemonic and interpersonal that is one framework that can sensitize us to the way that power is functioning and usually functioning asymmetrically. Right. Intersectionality theory grandchild’s work really compels us to understand how power collides and intersects structurally, politically and culturally. I think that critical race theory, queer theory, a lot of the critical theories that we think about today in terms of like critical disability studies and critical trans politics, all sort of invite us to cast our attention to who’s who’s operating at the margins, right, and who have purposefully been placed to their right or relocated or dispossessed to the margins. And, and then, in the case of like, those last couple of critical theories around queer theory and disability studies, really thinking about how they provoke us to not only interrogate the status quo, which I think all critical theory should help us do, but especially to interrogate the kinds of normativity and norms that circumscribe our lives. lives and make some folks lives seem impossible. Right? Make some ways of being in doing in the world, invisible and illegible. As you know, some scholars talk about, think about Z. Nicholas’s work. So, yeah, we need that capacity to kind of root out what is going on? And to see. Okay, where’s business as usual, leaving folks behind? Where does it reduce life chances? How are how are some of these death dealing institutions? Devastating communities? Right? And and to actively look for that, because we have ample evidence that it’s probably present, right. So that’s incredibly important. And I don’t dismiss that, but often I would contend in, in social justice circles, and Equity and Inclusion circles, and certainly in student affairs, we stop at an analysis of oppression. And we don’t really give a concomitant amount of attention to having a vision and an analysis of what we are working to bring about, right, what we’re, what kind of world we all deserve to live in. So I think about Leann Simpsons work, who’s in a feminist, who characterizes this idea of indigenous resurgence, which is a set of generative and emergent practices that foster self determination, foster well being foster community, foster independence, but does it ignite non hierarchical, non exploitive, non extractive, non authoritarian ways, and ways that really center relationships and sensor ethics and reciprocity and mutuality. And if we don’t know, where we are going, and we don’t have some of these engage engaged and collective processes to get us there, then we can critique we can dismantle, we can interrupt, but But have we just not built anything? Have we not created anything? Have we decimated and destroyed and not engaged in the much I would say harder work of creation and generation? And, and, you know, out, you know, I’ll just end with once you take up a liberatory, mindset, one, once you’re down that path, that’s when the real juicy questions surface, right? The ones that I like to use with and experiment with, like, what will we need to know? What will we need to be able to do to build and flourish in an emancipatory world? Right? What values have to be centered? What dispositions and skills must be cultivated? Right? What environments support emancipatory space and what structures have to be implemented? Right to bring it about and, and for this audience, I think about residential communities that are set up explicitly for students to rehearse the kinds of dispositions and skills and ways of relating in the world that are desperately needed to an act liberatory place right. I think that we all have a stake in that and can work to bring it about pretty exciting stuff.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, and in I get so energized around the territory of liberation and emancipation and and what’s possible there and what would the benefits for everyone be not just for those who are marginalized and oppressed? And I think sometimes I think the caution I would offer is, as you said, sometimes we forget, if we don’t also have that anti oppression lens, you can do a lot of harm. That’s where toxic positivity, let’s just pretend things are great without really understanding the roots of it right there. So I love the both and that you’re bringing here we have to have both of those. Otherwise, it’s it’s empty emancipatory it’s just performative or recovering up therapists. The beings done. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you. Well, that’s a great setup for white both I hope our other guests are going to sort of point us to and Raf, you, you’ve learned As you said, at UVM, you were centering restorative practices, not just in restorative justice and when a harm has been done or after a conduct case, but like, how do we build the communities during the first weeks, in a restorative way, so that they’re robust and more equitable, proactively preventing some of this, help us sort of understand what you learned through some of that work, and how we can be proactive not just in addressing harm after it’s done, but creating more equitable communities more liberatory spaces from the very beginning.

Rafael Rodriguez
I appreciate the question. And I think what we what I’ve learned is a few things. First, it’s that everyone is really clinging for a sense of connection and belonging, and a need to feel as if they are seen included, and have a space and a process by which they’re hurt. And we quickly learned as we’ve started to do with the restorive practices that our students are, or get and develop a culture around restorative practices within our student that this is a whole organizational model, we’ve learned and I’ve learned that our staff are at their best when they thrive, when they can thrive in a culture where they have a capacity and a willingness and a space to really engage in some meaningful relationship building so that when things get difficult, we have a method and build established sense of trust and care for one another that allows us to get through the difficult parts. We often talked about our work as one of building relationships, would send RAS out to build relationships and go build community. And they will say how, and we say, Yeah, building a building they have. And it’s restorative practices, is giving them a template by instead of expectation of, we’re going to create a culture by which we center all voices, we eliminate the person or the hierarchy on top of the room, but really engage in honest and authentic ways to share who we are what we bring, how might that be different, and leverage that early on when the stakes are not as high so that that sustains you through the difficult times that will inevitably come because we’re a people, if you have more than one person in the room, you’re going to have disagreements, sometimes it’s just one person in the room, you might have some disagreement, you may not be in an agreement with yourself. But I’ve also learned that organizations and people and communities thrive when leaders are willing to role model the level of vulnerability of work and engagement that we expect of students that we expect to cultivate in our staff. And without that piece. There’s a missing, there’s a missing chain in the whole process. That on top of the important work of keeping the lights on and making sure that the strategic plan is published by x date and executed by year three, that is incredibly important for an organization to be on task. It’s also critically important for an organization to understand how it does its work. And without really assessing that or building a culture where everyone is in agreement or understanding of how that is done. It becomes difficult to have the difficult conversation, Rachel outlined the real needed conversation, we also learned establishing a proactive sense of how we come together, how we address and celebrate but also how we have the full conversation provided a base foundation for how we did our social justice and intercultural competence work. And a lot of folks understand that this is how we do this. We have spaces where it come together, we’re going to share authentically. And we won’t always agree, and sometimes it may be difficult to hear. Sometimes it can be challenging to do this work. But this is the platform and allow folks to understand and know how we engaged at least in our department. What we also learned was not on the side and how we engage, we’re complementing what Rachel shared was the understanding of what we needed to do beyond analysis. That analysis of power is critical. And we quickly learned that the skills of engaging were even much more critical. And a lot of my doctoral work followed Catherine Searles work and Amir Ahmed, are we looking at intercultural competence, or sorry, intercultural praxis, which is the blending of intercultural competence, which has some challenges and social justice. Moving Beyond analysis and thinking about how do we blend both approaches? How do we do a analysis of skills or an understanding of skills that are needed to work across difference, while not always looking at power, as abstract, but as always multifaceted and present across all cultures. So how do we bridge those two ways of engaging together so that we’re always doing a complex analysis of power while developing skills to work across difference? And what was difficult was we often I using I statements. In doing that work, I found it difficult to get beyond my marginalized identities. And where I found the most traction was, well, what am I focused on? The skills I need to work across difference, and a concrete analysis of power if I focus on my dominant identities, and if that’s the basis by which we engage, and we found that work to be transformational, so that those circles were not just circles where people of color were inevitably sharing their trauma, their pain and hurt yet again. But instead, I had an opportunity and the responsibility to work around how am I maleness, and my privilege, as in my maleness, what come up and show up in those spaces and what I needed to do, and how I engage in how understood systems of oppression are understood and engaged in everyday life, to have a different way of framing of engaging of thinking. And we find that to be transformational, difficult, hard, but ultimately, so rewarding.

Keith Edwards
I’d love to hear about some of the practices or the skills that you’re mentioning. I know we don’t have a lot of time, but there are some that just easily pop to your mind.

Rafael Rodriguez
Yes, the first one is trust, trust is foundational. And it’s, it’s it does, nothing happens beyond trust. So if you think about folks in polarization, we think about world today, a lot of our time in sessions, which will often it’s also one of the earlier developmental processes of intercultural competence, they would often frustrates folks who are ready to like dig in, we often spent our first few weeks in our first few sessions around departmental wide diversity series, building trust, because that’s foundational. Another one is flexibility and thought, right, the the ability to not finish a story when we see a person, and that is a practice that is difficult to do, right to see a student coming in. To see their colleague coming in, is presenting in any way that they present and not trying to finish the script. Before we had the capacity, the opportunity to hear the story is huge. And empathy. As a later stage skill. We often think about empathy as something that we have right away. Empathy often gets conflated with guilt. Empathy is a high order thinking, which is I can see myself and my humanity and your humanity, which is different than Oh, goodness, I feel so bad about what this is happening. That’s guilt. Guilt does very little. Empathy is tranformational.

Keith Edwards
Just hearing the connection is coming through there. Right? The the connection with trust, the connection, and you know, I am assuming this about you. But I don’t want to make that assumption, or I might be wrong. I think Jess Pettit talks about, you know, our assumptions, making sure they’re, they’re human that we’re going to make those assumptions. But how are you keep that a good first draft and being really open to how might I be wrong? And how might I be doing this? And then the empathy as a connection as well? Great. Well take it from here, Kaleigh, you have worked with restorative practices. And now we’re expanding that and higher ed and sort of leading this and offering so much you mentioned your research. But I’m really interested because you’ve worked with two different institutions, to different curricular approaches, using restorative practice as both the what teaching about restorative practices, but also the how and how you’re doing that? These folks are using a curricular approach as well, I’d love to hear and I always find that folks who have done this at two different institutions have a different level of understanding the multiple contexts really hones that in. So So help us with restorative practices to build communities?

Kaleigh Mrowka
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think it really for me has boiled down to the fact that oftentimes we hold on to the what we know, right, we we hold on to the what, when we’re building our curriculum, our process, and I think, oftentimes, we need to take a step back and think a lot more sort of about the how and about about the background, I think, you know, there’s so many ways I think we can talk about content and process and pedagogy. But from a really personal level level, whenever I’ve leaned away from centering community and relationships and process in my work, I found that that’s really where I get pulled away from being able to do the personal work around social justice, and also sort of that larger systemic work around building just communities, right. So I think if we’re trying to center social justice, we’re trying to center relationships in our curriculum work. This has to become a much more personal process than we sometimes make the curricular work right. And restorative practices has been really powerful for me because it’s not just a way to transform can unities and challenge power structures like it is that. But it’s also really been a way to transform myself, and challengemy own way of thinking, come to terms with my own privileges come to ways terms with the ways that I uphold unjust systems sometimes in my work. And so I think that self knowledge is really what’s been foundational for me to even, you know, start to think about that pedagogy level, when you’re thinking about relationships, you really have to take the time to sort of build that personal Foundation. And I mean, when we’re talking about content building, we’re talking about curriculum. And we want to do that in a relational way in a way that’s in alignment with the the top of our conversation today. And what Rachel and Raf have shared, I think, it takes a lot of time for reflection, it takes a lot of time for focusing on relationships instead of tasks, I think it takes a lot of time for us to consider feelings and emotions and not just what we’re thinking about. You know, Rachel mentioned reciprocity, that’s a huge part of the process that we have to consider. It takes time to learn and think about the larger systems that we’re working within. And it takes time to focus on the process. And you’ll hear me keep repeating the word time, because I don’t think there’s anybody that’s ever worked in Residence Life that doesn’t know that time is the thing that it feels like we don’t have enough of right or extremely task oriented, folks are oftentimes managing multiple positions, with vacancies and without vacancies in departments. And I think, you know, time is one resource that we don’t always have. But I think that’s like a really important thing to stop and talk about, right? So as you’re building your curriculum, you’re thinking about how you’re spending your time when you’re balancing priorities of managing students. Because that efficiency mindset, or that sense of urgency mindset that we have in student affairs, is really actively working against our ability to be relational, right. And that has to do with a lot of things, right. It’s intentional the systems that we work within the institutions of higher ed that we work within, you know, the, the norms, and the ways we’ve been socialized into that work are so deeply rooted in these oppressive systems, right, and these neoliberal systems and these systems, white supremacy. And sometimes we can’t even serve our see or sort of see our way out of them, in some ways. So when we’re, you know, too busy to think critically about building relationality into our work, when we don’t have time to think about how we’re contributing to systems of injustice, we can’t even think about it, because we’re running from tasks that past, we sort of turn into being these like little curricular ResLife worker robots, right. And, you know, we implement the strategies to assess our learning outcomes, and we write the report. And we’re completely missing an opportunity, right to connect and to learn and, and that’s the piece of this that really transforms our communities. And so I just think, what the biggest thing I’ve learned and doing curriculum work is that if we want to really be able to effectively focus on social justice work within curriculum and within processes, we have to, we have to think about how we’re managing our time and our position, how we’re structuring time for folks that work in the field. Because, you know, I think we’re doing our students and we’re doing ourselves a disservice when we let our interactions and our implementations be really just transactional, instead of relational. And we can talk all we want about ways of knowing and epistemologies and social justice. But I think if we can’t really hit that, hit that low hanging fruit of like, how do we be more relational and more collective and start to move back into the spaces that Rachel talks about right of reciprocity and relationality and mutuality? You know, we’re not really going to be able to move this work forward in a really effective way. We can’t write learning outcomes, our way out of the problems that we haven’t seen the bears, right, that’s not going to work. And so I think the biggest thing I’ve learned is just you have to take a step back, you have to think about the how you have to think about how we’re using our time, how we’re building and processing and focusing on relationships. And I feel like that sounds like a really simple answer. But I think it’s actually a lot harder than it sounds, but can be really transformative.

Keith Edwards
I mean, it’s the middle of December, think time. Making time doesn’t seem so easy, right? But you’re talking about relationality being so central. And the key to that is time to do it to reflect to be together being so important. And then you’re outlining a lot of the obstacles right efficiency, white supremacy, culture, task oriented, transactional, all of these things. What have you seen, maybe experienced yourself or seen in the teams that you’ve led? What is sort of the breakthrough moment where we sort of have this like, Oh, now I see you get some of the rewards, some of the benefits, and it starts to self propel. Beyond that this is hard. This is not what we’re doing. What have you seen as kind of a breakthrough there?

Kaleigh Mrowka
Yeah, I mean, I’ve also worked in organizations, especially, you know, restorative practices. Restorative justice was sort of used as a, as a foundation for building community both in residence halls and in the places that I’ve worked, like the offices and the teams. And I think the transformative moment for me was actually, when we stopped just training what people needed to Do so we stopped just teaching tools, and learning outcomes and strategies. And we started and actually sitting down and having a conversation about, like how we were doing that and the principles behind the work that we were doing. I remember, sitting with a group of students and being like, really all you have to think in any situation is we want you to focus on the connection before you think about the content, right? You have a lesson plan. And it’s, you know, you want to get to those learning outcomes. But at the end of the day, that connection is always more important. You know, that’s the piece of this that we really want to hold you accountable to. And there’s just this moment of like, oh, like, that’s how I’m supposed to show up with my residents, which is so powerful. So again, I think it’s sometimes just about shifting from a focus on the outcomes to focus on the process, and focus on the connection, which feels sometimes counterintuitive to the way we’re, we’re at least the way I was raised in the field.

Keith Edwards
Well, I think we oftentimes make that adversarial connection versus outcomes, when in reality connections is the pathway to the outcomes, right, if you want to, and, you know, learning in community is adversarial or processes doesn’t make sense, the way you’re going to learn the things we want you to learn is by being in an authentic community with all the joys and celebrate and struggle in conflict, that’s going to be the path to that. So I really appreciate bringing, while I’ve had an opportunity to ask each of you the question to sort of bring out the brilliance that I know about, let’s put you in conversation. So what is the three of you see as the potential of liberation of restorative justice of Healing Justice, which we’ve been talking about, but not specifically, transformative, justice, and building communities of well being belonging and liberation, these folks that UMass are really focused on well being, they’re also really focused on belonging. And UMass has a great history of social justice. Also, what are the risks or points of caution here? I know you all want to get in, we’re gonna start with Raf.

Rafael Rodriguez
Thank you. And thinking about the rewards before you think about the risk, and Kaleigh was mentioning, the moment, the aha moment and many times I’ve seen, the aha moment is knowing that you will be utilizing the time anyway. And what you’re shifting is not dedicating more time is really shifting how you’re spending your time. And it’s much more productive. And thinking about well being it is so much well rounded and holistic to come to a workplace where you’re more focused on building versus responding. I mean, all of our work is responding to have a culture where we at least balance it a lot better, where we are focusing on actively proactively building a sense of trust, a sense of connection, and leveraging that when moments get difficult versus starting from, you know, zero deposits, that account gets overdrawn quickly, when there is no trust, no sense of connection or relationship. So you’re spending so much time just responding and de escalating with very little success. And that is just, I think, for me a reward that I would think outweighs many of the of the risks, the risks, it’s it can be fearful, it can be scary to shift because the pressing structures of organizations and white supremacy are often rooted in compliance and execution and production. And thinking and slowing down and shifting how one approaches how one engages, shifting from a task and services sort of checkbox approach to a more relational approach takes time and energy a mentally has we all can imagine, but also organizationally, and that’s a risk. That’s a risk that staff and leaders have to be willing to take.

Kaleigh Mrowka
Yeah, thanks for that Raf. I, you know, I’m sitting here thinking about, you know, Keith, you mentioned while being being really important to folks that UMass and I feel like folks in our sort of practices world have been making the argument that community wellbeing or social well being needs to be more focused on. And I’m not sure that that has ever become more clear than coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, right? The way that our social relationships in our networks really inform our experience of well being, I think, you know, it’s just really coming to the forefront of our experiences. And I think it’s just really important that we’re taking the time to think about how we’re doing that well, for our students and for ourselves. You know, it’s a tough time for people working in higher education to people feel disconnected. You know, they are struggling to figure out if they can see themselves in the field and in the future. And I think that uh, lot of those things centered around this same issue, right? How, how can we build communities, as Raf was talking about where trusts where there’s, you know, where there’s trust, where there’s community where people, you know, feel connected to their work? And so I think I think that that connection is there. And I think it’s really powerful, and has a lot of potential. I mean, I do also think, you know, you asked Keith, about sort of the the risk points, doing restorative work, I think, you know, and Raf would probably agree with me on this, there are ways to do use restorative tools to create additional harm, right. And so I think, one point of caution to think about as we’re as we’re approaching this work, is that it’s possible, you know, for for good efforts within this work for ways to move social justice work forward, to continue to sort of perpetuate the systems that already exist, right to be co opted by those systems and continue to sort of be a space of of harm. And so that causes us and cause us to really examine the work we’re doing critically, I think it calls us to, as I talked about before, really take the time to do that. And to make sure, you know that we’re that we’re getting feedback, that we’re that we’re involving people who are impacted by our decisions and the things that we’re doing. And, you know, carefully moving forward in that way as well.

Keith Edwards
Rachel, I saw you taking notes over there, that always makes

Rachel Wagner
Because my brain is firing these folks are fantastic. So I have probably two levels of responses to this question. One level is on the sort of Thinkery contemplative side, which is, my I think my biggest caution is for us to not get stuck in the trap that liberatory and emancipatory microclimates don’t already exist, right? That we that we really need to be humble about how we look to folks who are leading the way in terms of engaging in community care and mutual aid, right, that that is a very, I think, illuminating. Approach to liberation. How is indigenous resurgence and land repatriation? Or black prophetic traditions and Afrofuturism or prison abolition movements already doing? The work of liberation and healing? Right, and I think about queer under worlding, right? Refugee placemaking these like, really, very, not business as usual, very, not dominant forms of resistance and world making and being alongside one one another, as we create the world that we deserve, that’s already taking place. And can that compel us? Can that can those practices, those examples, those lived experiences that aren’t necessarily under the auspice of, you know, I believe in social justice or I believe in healing so I’m gonna practice indigenous resurgence, it’s a way of living and being and doing that prison abolition or abolitionist politics is a way of orienting yourself to the world. And there are folks who are already modeling and manifesting that and Can I can I be compelled to entangle my own energies and my resources and the resources within the community that I’m working into that space? And, and maybe extend place a little bit farther than the boundaries of my residential community. Right. So I think about that on one level, and then and then sort of, you know, the concrete practical, I think about my own kind of everyday practices. I, I had a colleague this year who is in another department, but like, you know, there’s like four indigenous faculty on campus and so he was a new an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation who came to campus and like, of course, I met him, right like that’s just that happened. And he was like, on a one year contract and, and he’s in I was staying at an Airbnb and then like, and then that one was up. And so then he would have like two days in a hotel, and he would have to, like, juggle another Airbnb long term stay. And this was going on, and I was like, it was into November, and I was like, just come stay at our house. Like we have a guest room. You know, you have to navigate the obnoxious boxer puppy, but I swear, it’ll be okay. Right? Like, just come stay with us. And, um, and ostensively, like, so many of my colleagues across the campus because he’s in a different college. He’s a poet. We’re like, oh, my god, that was so generous of you. That was so amazing that you open up your house, and I was like, like, that’s kind of the bare effing minimum, right? Like, so welcome someone else into my house. Like my grandmother taught me better than that. Yeah, he’s a colleague. He’s, he’s literally an enrolled member of the nation whose lands were occupying here. But you know, got taken through military and diplomatic incursions in the 18th century. So like, it’s really minimal. But the fact that folk solid as so huge, and it really, I think, you know, what, struck home for me is Santi is a delight. And he’s also I was trained as a professional cook, he was trained as a professional cook. And so and we both did stunts and like, country clubs and restaurants. And so like, we get together, we cook, he, he’s, we feed my family. And like, we stayed up late into the night talking about possibilities of pedagogy and teaching or what is education and, like, we had these amazing conversations around my dining room table, and like that investment in someone else, who’s, you know, ostensibly, new to my community. Yeah, it helped him out, he got to save, you know, a couple 100 Or maybe 1000 bucks, over like the six weeks he was here. But it gave me so much more. And when we think about orienting our, our work, like he and I would have conversations about, what does it mean to invest in the well being of your colleagues? What does that look like? How do you know what’s happening? Here’s some things I see. Right like, that. People want, you know, he was saying people walk into the administrative coordinator, office, and my department only when they need her to do something for them. I never hear folks start a conversation with, Hey, would you do last weekend? It’s all always, hey, can you get me a copy of can you help me figure out this reimbursement? Can you do this? Can I do that? And he’s like, I think that that’s a sign right, of how people are invested or not, and one another’s well being. And like, I think that that’s something we each can do from our particular location. Is inquire doesn’t even have to be an interrogation. Like you don’t have to, like, subject yourself to like self flagellation, but to like, be curious about, Well, how am I showing up, you know, in terms of demonstrating my investment, and the folks that I get to work alongside, whether that be students or peers or colleagues or their families or what have you? So one of the things I was thinking about.

Keith Edwards
Yeah, it’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful story, Rachel. And I said earlier, you all are your all dissertaters, one of you is a new associate professor. And you’re brilliant scholars. But you also do this practically, right? You’ve all led Residential Life teams, you’ve all been in that role. And I said, you live this in your lives. And that’s a beautiful story. And the story that you just told makes me teary with joy. And that’s a great way to bring this because that’s the liberation right? It’s not just all grind. It’s not just all misery. That’s the liberation that’s the joy. It’s the fulfillment is the meaning. It’s the connection. And you saying how much that brought to your life. That to me is where we’re headed, and that’s where we’re headed with well being and belonging. injustice. And if we don’t also have that analysis of what is wrong, those systems of power and white supremacy and patriarchy, then we can miss some things and do some harm along the way. Well, we’re just about out of time as we knew we would be. But, you know, the podcast is Student Affairs NOW. So I always like to end with a question about what are you pondering or thinking about, or troubling now? So, Rachel, what is with you now?

Rachel Wagner
I think the thing that I, I’m the most engaged with right now is around who constitutes my sphere? And, and how am I showing up with those folks in ways that, like, enhances their well being, and, and serves the greater organization. So like, I’m taking a teaching sabbatical next semester, because I have, I’ve agreed to do some administrative work, basically, helping our faculty realize elements of our inclusive excellence strategic plan. And it’s a lot like herding cats. And I, it doesn’t bring me joy, it does not bring me joy to do this administrative work, I would much rather teach a social justice and inclusion class that I had slated for the spring. But I believe in its potential, I believe in its long term impact in terms of how it’s going to recruit and retain minoritized faculty and staff and students. And so I’m investing in this semester, I’m knowing that it’s not going to be personally fulfilling, but that it’s serving the organizational good. And that’s not a decision I make every semester. But it is one that I do make occasionally and with, with the consultation of the folks around me who keep me on the path towards, you know, the world I aspire to.

Keith Edwards
Wonderful. I love that you’re pointing to the the sustainability, right? It’s not always giving right and where things returning so that I can give Kaleigh, what is with you now?

Kaleigh Mrowka
Yeah, I’m thinking a lot about Rachel’s story and her question around why we don’t inquire right and why our our, our workspaces are the way they are, I have that really unique opportunity to work for a, you know, small institution that prides itself on being founded and restorative practices. And on my first day of work, I think the President said to me, I just need you to know here, we, we make good decisions, but we make good decisions based on the people not always the data. So if the people and the data are in conflict, we might, we’re going to make a decision for the people. And that is really just stuck with me. Because, you know, we the organization, everybody shows up at 9am, every Monday morning, to do a check in circle and say hi, and see how everybody’s weekend was. And I, when I was told that I thought of every awful teambuilder I had been in in the career, honestly, and I was like that there is absolutely no way. And people show up and they care. And they have real conversations, and they spend the first half an hour of everybody. Most of us are working completely remotely, they spend the first half an hour of the week together, and you know, like their hair and a messy bun and their coffee. And then everybody, you know, goes and does good work for the rest of the week in a way that’s really powerful. So I think I’m thinking about the ways that we control, right, we control the way that we can bring this work, and we can center relationships. You know, I talked a lot about time. But the truth is, I think that we all have control over the way that we spend our time. And so I’m I’m challenged and thinking a lot about how to how to do more of that in the work that I’m doing.

Rafael Rodriguez
I’m pondering a few things I’m pondering organization are kind of already that we talked about earlier, and I shared how important it is for that to be role modeled. And in full disclosure, I serve on the Board of Trustees for the institution carries and start our board meetings in a circle really talking again, Rachel’s point around a ways of being versus join, which is what I’ve been mostly pondering about is really, really resonates because it is important we may learning as we may learn it as a tool, but how does this become a way of practice and just how we are how we engage and that organization accountability is just so powerful. I’m thinking as a practitioner a lot about sense of belonging as a as a concept that has been around is really merging and taking quote and and really focusing on how do we resist the urge urge to do what we do in student affairs, but in organizations broadly of ill defining, or having so much definition creep to where the concept becomes the next project for amassing funding, amassing new offices or units, but not really doing the work of living out what it means to understand sense of belonging, and to make spaces where all of our students and everyone who was included in the organization, those who have been left out of our organization can see themselves reflected as if they belong in that space. And that requires some more liberatory radical ways of thinking and understanding and unpacking by really centering experiences and stories, not just outcomes.

Keith Edwards
Yeah. Well, and you know, well, being belonging, justice, these can all be jargony buzzwords that are empty and have no meaning. But they don’t have to be right. And so I think sometimes people will use that as a criticism. How did you let justice become a buzzword? How did you lose the grounding of that? And really tying into that, and I’m I’m pondering, you all have me thinking about Adrienne Maree, Brown’s work, emergent strategies, what I’m thinking about, but just, every time I hear her speak, she gives me a role model for these micro cultures of liberation and mastery, which might just be her might be her community might be this. And Rachel gave a lot of other examples of that. But it’s always such a great reminder that this is absolutely impossible, possible. In spite of everything, sometimes the everything makes me think it’s not. And people are doing this. And if I’m not in my microculture, because of the things around me. How do I move more toward that? So I think that’s a great connection that I’m making.

Keith Edwards
Thanks to the University of Massachusetts Amherst Residential Life for hosting today’s conversation into our sponsors of today’s episode Symplicity and Stylus. Symplicity is the global leader in student services technology platforms a state of the art technology that empowers institutions to make data driven decisions specific to their goals. A true partner to the institution’s Symplicity supports all aspects of student life including but not limited to Career Services and Development, Student Conduct and well being student success and accessibility services. To learn more, visit symplicity.com or connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. And Stylus is proud to be a sponsor of the Student Affairs now podcast, browse their archives browse their student affairs, diversity and professional development titles at styluspub.com. Use their promo code SANowfor 30% off all books, plus free shipping. You can also find stylists on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter @styluspub. A huge shout out to our producer Nat Ambroseywho does all the behind the scenes work to make us look and sound good. If you’re listening today and not already receiving our newsletter, please visit our website at studentaffairsnow.com. Scroll to the bottom of the homepage to add your email to our MailChimp list. While you’re there, check out the archives. I’m Keith Edwards. Thanks again to the fabulous guests today. Everyone who’s watching and listening. Make it a great week.