Enter At Your Own Risk: Getting (Radically) Honest About Residence Life And Its Affects on Wellness

Image Description: a well lit bedroom in the evening. Bed seems cozy with a teddy bear and books on top. Above the bed is a window that exposes the night. Photo by Daria Shevtsova

Content Warning: mention of suicide, suicide ideation, rape, sexual assault, ableism, and queer and transantagonism

After being out of housing for almost 8 years, flashing lights and sirens still bring forward specific traumatic residence life memories. These memories remind me of what I endured. At times, I felt like I was in battle and the rest of my colleagues (in various departments around campus) were living the civilian life — still not easy living. I experienced students at their lowest lows which is honorable and beautiful, but it’s not without an intimate price. I responded to suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, suicide completions, rape and sexual assaults, drug overdoses, alcohol abuse, roommate conflicts, parental arguments, queer and transantagonism, depression and anxiety, racism and anti-Blackness, and xenophobia.

I grew up in student housing and residence life — working the front desk of Coleman Hall at the age of 18 to being a complex director at the age of 24. I have been a hall council officer, resident assistant, community adviser, graduate hall director, and an adviser to the Residence Hall Association. In these positions, I learned plenty about how my Black Fat queer body would be perceived, cared for, taxed, and prioritized by residence life departments and the greater institution of higher education. So when I say, I don’t believe you can make a career of residence life and expect to be well, please trust that it is well thought out and personally experienced.

Below I want to offer three places for us to begin critical conversations on the intersection of residence life and wellness — re-imagining month long trainings, the poaching of the most vulnerable students and staff, and sacrificing self to manage 24/7 crisis. To engage this conversation, radical honesty and self-reckoning is necessary for appropriate solutions to be possible. As you read through and ponder this piece, please consider the following:

• Track your body — Take notes. Pay attention to what content spikes your emotions, as this will be a good place to engage self-work.
• Think Intersectionally — Attempt to center poor disabled undocumented queer Black/brown/indigenous trans women in your reflections and discussions of this piece. What’s not a problem for you doesn’t mean it’s not a problem.
• Be honest — Be radically honest in discussion of this piece, not the performance of honesty. Implicate yourself in the mess.

Re-Imagining Month(s) Long Trainings

Image Description: A residence hall room — desk with laptop and microwave on top. A bed with plaid sheet and white minifridge to the right of the desk. A window providing natural light — looks like a rainy day. Photo by Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu

There are levels of housing training — most often starting after the spectacle that is July 4th.

Full-time staff members begin the second week of July, a week later graduate staff join-in, and the following week undergraduate staff arrive. Almost two months of intensive training before the first day of classes.

Please take a moment to sit with this.

The implication is that the majority of residence life staff is exhausted before the commencement of class, but continue to be over-labored throughout the year — summers included. Higher education culture says that residence life staff must participate in every campus program and initiative. To name a few — New Student Orientation, common book programming, fraternity and sorority recruitment, academic advising, faculty in residence, learning communities, and any other random initiative rooted in free labor.

Everyone’s job on campus is also the job of a housing professional. It’s overwhelming.

Moreover, residence life staff train on supervision, crisis management, alcohol and drug abuse, mental wellness, the judicial process, diversity and inclusion, housing and campus policies, and so much more. Often, these are discussions that staff members have yet to work through in their own lives. And to dig deeper, all the trainings center incoming and returning students, never the actual staff members. When I was in housing, this was me taking care of everyone else while I also navigated an anti-Black, queer and trans antagonistic, and ableist department (and greater higher education system) in a Black fat queer body.

Many training schedules begin with breakfast at 7 am and goes beyond dinner. After dinner activities could include many of the following.

• Making door decks for every resident
• Decorating bulletin boards around the hall
• Performing building wide key checks
• Preparing the first floor meeting agenda
• Reading the common book
• Document damages and missing items in every room
• Attend hall specific socials
• Schedule 1-on-1s with supervisors and supervisees
• Create emergency duty schedule

This leaves very little time to take care of personal matters — getting a haircut, attending to spiritual needs, connecting with family, buying groceries, going to the bank, and getting adequate sleep. And if this wasn’t enough, there is more training in the winter and spring for all staff. Residence life folks put up out office messages during training times and have serious conversations with their partners, friends, and family around what life looks like during these times.

Image Description: Three different schedules of staff training — highlighting that trainings often are all day, and heavily scheduled.

Recommendations/Research:

• Explore research on trainings and the retention of information
• Drill down to training priorities, and transition from all day training to mostly half days. The other half of the day is up to individual discretion
• Divorce rate of housing professionals — just curious

Residence Life Poaches Black and Brown Queer and Trans People at Dynamic Intersections

Image Description: A bedroom with all lights off, except for a purplish neon sign. The room appears to be a combination of purples and blacks. A bed can be seen, along with a fan, a window, a desk, and a lamp. Photo by Joshua Rawson-Harris

I made $29,000 in my first year as a hall director — barely enough money to pay bills and send money home, and zero money to do fun things and repay student loans. However, I spent every waking moment responding to the job, so I could not afford vacations and had no convenient time to request off.

I’m not sure if research exist on who chooses to work in residence life, but I have a hunch race and racialized ethnicities and socio-economic status play a significant role. Residence life makes the most vulnerable folks within our community their staff members. This is a function of the system –

As student staff we’re told that other students with our shared identities need to see us in leadership positions around campus, and that we’re the only ones who can help them navigate the roadblocks they may encounter.

We’re told the resident assistant position is fun and life changing. However, what’s not said is that the bulk of the fun will be bonding over trauma. Student staff are told to put on their oxygen mask first, but in practice there are consequences for choosing self over the residence life community. For instance, deadlines are supreme in residence life, and missing them could include a letter in your file, placed on probation, or even being fired. This is an overwhelming reason to prioritize the job over self, as risking the financial benefits will leave you back at home still owing money to the government.

As a professional staff member, while being recruited, we’re told that we can improve the lives of the students we joined the field to center. We quickly find out this is untrue, and that as a field we’re committed to status quo and performing helpfulness more than actually being helpful and identifying ways to be equitable and just. Moreover, when you’re in residence life, you are so exhausted from the mental and emotional acrobatics that fighting for helpful and equitable practices becomes too much.

In the end, many of us are unhappy with our jobs and departments, labeled aggressive and not a team player, unable to make a career change because no one actually looks at these skills as transferable, and making monthly payments to our good sis, Sallie.

Here are a few questions to consider –

• What were the circumstances around you entering college? Residence life career?
• How did you get tracked into housing in particular?
• Do you come from a single parent household? Foster care? Inter-generational?
• Did your parents/guardians attend college? One or all?
• Do you come from a poor or working class background?
• Were you a resident assistant or community adviser in your undergraduate experience?
• Did you enter your undergraduate experience with several marginalized identities?
• Were you made to feel okay about your marginalized identities by people in this field?
• Beyond niceties, does residence life value and prioritize your marginalized identities?

Recommendations/research –

• Commit to challenging all the –isms within your department — spell it out on paper and be honest — creating a safer space for Black and brown queer and trans people
• Institute grants throughout higher education that helps the most vulnerable pay off loans
• Research on the ways Black women are scapegoated in residence life (and greater higher education)
• Research on Black and brown folks happiness/satisfaction in residence life

Sacrificing Self to Manage Crisis 24/7

Image Description: A hallway (looks like a residence hall). A line of rooms can be seen on both the right and left sides of the hallway — all leading to an exit door. Exit signs and lights hang from the wall. Photo by Obed Hernández

It was a little past 8 pm before I heard the knock on my residence hall apartment door. I remember the knock because I was watching an episode of Big Brother as part of my Wednesday evening routine. I lived in a two-bed room apartment with a number of windows on both the east and west side of the building — the natural light in the apartment was exquisite. I had a spacious kitchen, good size restroom, and squash yellow furniture. At times, living and working in student housing provides nice accommodations, but it comes at a cost.

Although, I was provided a fairly nice apartment as a part of my compensation package, I did not have a washer and dryer in the apartment — implication — I had to walk through the community to get to the laundry area, which means more likely to get caught up in work matters outside of my hours; no bath tub in the spacious restroom — implication — can never use the bath salts gifted to me to soak my Black fat queer body after a violent day; and the apartment was designated an alcohol free space — implication — forced to break rules and sneak around for my comfort and the comfort of visiting friends and family. Moreover, the apartment was (not so) conveniently situated on the northern side of the residence hall building, near administrative offices and the entrance to the building. Often, I heard loud fire trucks and police sirens, door alarms, drunk students fumbling keys, car horns, and random screams of laughter and tears; however, this evening it was a lingering knock.

My heart instinctively begin to beat faster.

I looked through my peep hole to see a staff member alongside an unknown person in tears. They both appear to be white women. Now some anxiety sitting in, as I considered power and identities. Me, a Black fat queer man answering my apartment door to two white women in crisis.

I opened the door and listened to them both struggle to tell me they were sexually assaulted by a resident on their floor. I was sad and angry for the two women now sitting in front of me. This assault is not just a solemn college memory, but a life altering moment. And I knew this was going to be a complex situation that would require lots of my energy for the next few weeks, on top of unfairly asking for the women’s patience.

Additionally, I was angry as I considered boundaries, work-life balance, and my mental wellness — all topics covered in housing training in language, but never action.

In a matter of seconds, this apartment changed from my home to an office, from an office to a triage, and from a triage to a place that could never center my wellness.

Recommendations/Research –

• 24 hrs on call mental health and wellness professional available to the residence halls (for residence hall staff as well)
• Consider sabbaticals for staff and administrators
• Get-a-ways — weekend housing options outside of your community

In Conclusion

Image Description: A room with two beds with white, orange, and red comforters. A person wearing all black sits on the far bed while a luggage bag sits on the bed closest in image. A window shines natural light into the room. Photo by Erik Mclean

We are a profession of well-intentioned people who love to talk about a glorious goodness that supposedly exist within this field. However, we conveniently forget we’ve solved very few issues within Higher Education because we refuse to commit to honest conversation. And because we’ve normalized the performance of honest conversation, I have to add the word radical (before honest) to invoke a new spirit.

We have to talk about the journey of student housing staff and the price of the ticket. And we must speak honestly about the work we ask residence life professionals to do.

I asked, using my social media platforms, for thoughts on residence life at the intersection of wellness. Below are a list of comments from residence life staff at a variety of places in their career. I honor their stories.

I used to be such a heavy sleeper and always wake up well rested. After 5 years of being on call and being so paranoid about missing duty calls I wake up at the slightest noises, typically panicked, and have such a hard time going back to sleep. Paranoid sleeping has been so hard to break and I haven’t been on call now for over 3 years.

Financially, I’m in an amazing position and I’m able to live a lifestyle a lot of my peers are not.

I had to go on fmla due to trauma from housing (responding to a student death). Lots of other pieces and that was the most acute. I’ve also had great things occur… I had lovely mentors that helped me make meaning of my identities.

I feel like working in residence life really made me recognize and live in my blackness. I had floors of majority-white young women who were of a higher socioeconomic status than myself and my family, and I was made aware of it a lot. Just tons of privilege around me and I wasn’t respected. It definitely took a toll on my mental health as well as being seen as being intimidating because of my mood and demeanor sometimes but I was literally just being there. Being me. And being black. I’ve had an RA friend who was harassed by their residents with them drawing hanging black stick figures on their whiteboard and a queer Co-RA’s residents carving very hurtful slurs into his door and it wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been.

Working in housing amplified all of my feelings of unwellness. Every facet of capitalistic exploitation is lifted up as some ideal that we should all be striving for. Sacrificing ourselves for. Simultaneously, housing only wants us to advocate for students so long as it doesn’t implicate the institution. No ones humanity is as important as the maintenance of power structures and systems. I was actively harassed by students in my building for gender identity stuff. Like, shit was slashed with knives and I would get a half-hearted apology and no actual help or work toward making me feel safer in my home. Which ultimately culminated in me being the most actively unwell mentally that I have ever been.

I would like to center that my high level of stress denial contributed to my lack of stress awareness or management until the very end of my time in housing. The ending was where most of the stress and ill-being was a point of desperation. My ill-being began emotionally and mentally, as well as financially because I started housing before salaries were adjusted for FMLA. This over time led to my mental wellness being sacrificed and eventually showing up in my physical ability to do simple tasks or uphold basic commitments. I did not realize how much residence life impacted my wellness until I was out of it. It was then that I was able to acknowledge and address just how my housing experience had conditioned me to function in dysfunction, clutter and chaos, and that because of this, I had developed some unhealthy life habits and some ineffective work ethics.

I hate the phone, when it rings — I still panic. It is legitimately awful. Even on anxiety meds daily — still awful panic and absolute dread.

The above response helped me identify why I can’t cope very well with covering front desk phones, when needed, in my current role. I feel very anxious and overwhelmed.

Petty drama in the dept used to take a toll on my happiness. We spend so much time with each other, it’s hard to just “stay out of it”. Vibes and bad energy have an effect on your spirit and it takes a toll

There is not wellness. There is not thriving. There is dismantling oneself to save someone else’s face and/or procedure. The impact on relationships? We want a piece of you, part of your family, and we’ll let you all live here to steep in it.

As an RA, it was like a reality show…they could have made one. I had some trauma occur, and some other things/threats from a couple of male residents that may not have been addressed by housing had it not not been for the privilege I had, and the intervention of multiple professors in my professional school at KU who made a direct demand to the head of housing on my behalf.

As someone who came (to KU) from 1500 miles away, it helped me to become more independent. When I was recommended to become an RA by my RA, I was on the verge of transferring back east because of the culture shock. But it’s why I ultimately stayed at KU, which changed the trajectory of my career. I learned many life lessons and skills that I still use today, like conflict resolution and I made some lifelong friends.

There were 3+ suicides during my time as an RA/HR. Some duty nights were so hard I had to miss class because I was so tired. I had to teach white boys to do laundry, found students passed out sometimes assaulted, sometimes just drunk in hallways, be the 1st responder to domestic violence.

So much gaslighting!! I remember bringing up legitimate concerns and being constantly told that I must be burnt out. When I didn’t enjoy sitting in hours of training and forced to do some degrading ice breaker, I was told I had a bad attitude. My weight was constantly held against me as I didn’t feel comfortable doing a trust fall and thus wasn’t a team player. Basically if I didn’t put on the happy, fake smile, I wasn’t a team player, I had a bad attitude, and I was made to feel that there was something wrong with me. After my housing experience I also learned just how exploited I was. If I calculate the number of hours that I spent working, even at minimum hourly wage, I should have made a ton of money. Instead my RA salary was $35 every 2 weeks plus room and board. My assistant director pay wasn’t much better. Housing props itself up on so much unpaid labor. Also, what business did I as an untrained young person have dealing with the crises and mental health issues I did. Then there was no support when my mental health suffered from dealing with so many residents and all their issues.

While I made many friends in housing, my relationships with people outside housing suffered. It is almost like you are isolated from non-housing folks because the job demands are so high. I remember missing so many typical college experiences because all staff was expected to stay in the building in case of issues. I think the experience also instilled a police like mentality of enforcing rules and punishing rather than helping or encouraging responsible behavior. We also were constantly thrown in as the “bad cops” told to enforce rules, catch residents, and testify against them at judicial board hearings, only then to have housing upper admin not back us up. The message was go be police and enforce our rules and then we will come in and be good cop. Being in housing took a toll on my school work, on my relationships outside of housing, and on my mental health. You are made to feel ungrateful and selfish if you point out any injustices. There were so many good experiences I had and I made some great friends, but being outside the higher ed admin field painted me as an outsider. It was definitely a mixed bag for me.

The impact on my relationship was significant. It was expected that I was on campus even when not on-call and to always be around for extra events, so never leaving for the weekends was hard. It also meant that my partner always had to come to me and our weekends were often interrupted by issues that came up. If I ever did leave for the weekend or possibly take the day off, there was significant judgement from my coworkers for “not being dedicated.” I also would say that work/life balance was talked about, but not actually supported. It was a lot of talk about how important mental health was, but no action to it. One of the main positives to residence life for me was what it did for me financially. Not having to pay rent or buy (much) food, allowed me to take my stipend and pay my way through grad school and then professionally it allowed me to start saving right away.

I really loved working in residence life as an undergraduate student but when I became a professional and the lifestyle transitioned to being 50 or 60 hours a week, I really struggled to find myself and find time to take care of myself. I prioritized everything before myself and I ultimately left residence life because it was affecting both my mental and physical health. The constant “go-go” mentality of residence life was difficult to overcome; I constantly felt like I needed to do everything in order to advance or for people to view me as successful.

Working in housing has not only affected my wellness but my partner’s as well. She handles being a Res Life Wife pretty well but sometimes gets frustrated or drained because I am in that head space as well.

I love my flawed institution but this portion of the field, and SA in general, has caused me to develop stress-induced anxiety and PTSD from past experiences that I never experienced prior to being an SA Pro.

I am very passionate about working with students, and I know that passion came from my time working in res life. I served alongside so many amazing students and staff and made some of my very best friends, and favorite memories, but I often question if the impact on my wellness was truly worth it. As a person who was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression while working as an RA, I think my now 10+ years in housing was debilitating for my wellness. The apathy that I developed after dealing with so much crisis was probably one of the things that worried me the most. Things would happen, still do happen, that I know I should be sad about, but I have been trained to compartmentalize those emotions and respond to the situation that I can almost be robotic in times of serious trauma. The chronic insomnia caused from being on call and being expected to handle any crisis at any time was exhausting to say the least. Even if the phone never rang throughout the night the possibility that it might triggered my anxiety and often lead to sleepless nights, and then of course there were the nights when it did ring. Standing in rooms overwhelmed by the smell of marijuana that set my allergies off, and caused sinus infections, while I waited for UPD to finish their search. Being the first responder to crisis that sometime triggered personal traumas, but not being given an option to opt out, or simply say, I can’t handle this. Unhealthy eating habits after working 10 to 12 hour days with a never ending to do list because housing became a catch all for so many responsibilities on campus, conduct, programming, marketing, facilities, etc. The challenge of dating or maintaining a social life while living on campus. The financial instability of being paid an incredibly low salary, not having the option to work another job because of on-call and late night responsibilities, but being told that it is actually a reasonable salary when you add in the room and board you receive. I have taken a ton of transferable skills from my time in housing. My ability to stay calm, remain flexible, and make even the most stressful situations fun are some things that I love. However, I was given the advice, that once you leave housing, seek counseling. There is so much unpacked trauma that I am still working to process through.

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This is the work of Cody Charles; claiming my work does not make me selfish or ego-driven, instead radical and in solidarity with the folk who came before me and have been betrayed by history books and storytellers. Historically, their words have been stolen and reworked without consent. This is the work of Cody Charles. Please discuss, share, and cite properly.

Bio:

Cody Charles is the author of ’RuPaul’s Drag Race’: On BeBe Zahara Benet And Pushing Back Against The Anti-Black Sentiment In Drag, 6 Scenes from ‘Moonlight’ That I Still Dream About, College Advice for Students of Marginalized Identities, The Vixen Is The Queen We Deserve, Radical Friendship Contract: 10 Expectations for Loving People Fully, 10 Common Things Well-Intentioned Allies Do That Are Actually Counterproductive, Black Joy, We Deserve It, and What Growing Up Black And Poor Taught Me About Resiliency. Join them for more conversation on Twitter (@_codykeith_) and Facebook (Follow Cody Charles). Please visit their blog, Reclaiming Anger, to learn more about him.