Student Affairs Is A SHAM.
By: Cody Charles
I’m done femmetoring marginalized students into this field.
We desperately prey on their insecurities, in order to add color and queerness to our profession. Knowing damn well that marginalized students just want to fit in and prove they are good at something, so they can earn their keep- they experience impostor syndrome to the maximum. And here we are entering stage right, only to place value on their ability to produce and maintain respectability- and of course, we only want the good ones. Activist students are too much.
We ask them questions or make comments like:
“Don’t you love being a resident assistant, orientation leader, student ambassador, or president of your organization? You’re so good at it.”
“In this field you can help future students like you. They need you”
“Don’t you like being a student leader? You know you can make this a career?”
“You’re unsure of what you want to do post graduation? You should consider graduate school, I would love to have you as a future colleague”
And don’t get me wrong, the aforementioned comments and questions are explicitly said at times. However, we often make comments or move in ways that imply the above.
Basically, we tell marginalized students that they have done a good job of carving out space for themselves on our classist cisheteronormative ableist white supremacist campuses, through their labor and ability to endure violence. We then make them feel special by inviting them to join the student affairs family- allowing them to labor full time for the marginalized students they once were, as if it is inherently their responsibility to care and create space for other marginalized folk. What? <sigh>
We target students with marginalized identities, often relinquishing the more privileged students of any responsibility to enter student affairs and fix shit.
We sprinkle sorcery in the air, and mask the truth. Eventually, leading up to the big reveal years later.
You’re in debt.
You barely have money to pay your rent.
You must find a side hustle, and still you’ll live paycheck to paycheck.
You can’t afford to get sick.
You can’t afford to have a disability.
You can’t afford to be in need of mental health services.
You can’t afford to be undocumented.
You can’t afford to have a gym membership.
You can’t afford to attend those friendly happy hours that are certainly attached to promotion.
And please, if you can help it, DON’T BE BLACK…and woman, trans, gender non-confirming, and non-binary.
You’re undervalued and underpaid.
You are the receiver of immense institutional violence, and have no skills (or consciousness) to fight back. And if you choose to fight back, you risk being kicked even deeper into the margins.
And after experiencing immense violence, you have no money to take a break or get-a-way, or seek therapy.
And this is where we exit stage left- revoking the support, affirmations, and the familial relationship we once offered- ultimately, siding with institutional violence and tradition.
We may take the literal confederate flag down, but the violence seeps from every rotten tradition we fight to maintain.
Therefore, I will no longer be the recruiter for my oppressor.
We must do and be better. But we’re running out of time, and I am losing hope.
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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 Getting To Know Rosa Lee: An Overdue Conversation With My Mother, Black Joy, We Deserve It, The Night The Moonlight Caught My Eye: Not a Review but a Testimony on the Film Moonlight, 5 Tips For White Folks, As They Engage Jordan Peele’s Get Out. (No Spoilers), A Letter to Black Greeks Who Happen to be Black and Queer, and What Growing Up Black And Poor Taught Me About Resiliency. Join him for more conversation on Twitter (@_codykeith_) and Facebook (Follow Cody Charles). Please visit his blog, Reclaiming Anger, to learn more about him.
