In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, join our host Noah Montague and guest Pamela Ianiro, Area Coordinator at the University of Cincinnati, as they talk about and explore residence life traditions. From door decs to behind closed doors, Residence Life professionals around the country engage with traditions, but where do these traditions really come from? What was their purpose originally? What is it now? How do these traditions guide our work? In this episode, Pamela and Noah explore these traditions and examine the impact the serve now while telling stories and also providing advice for staff looking to learn from and interact with the traditions we all know and (sometimes) love.
Guest: Pamela Ianiro, M.Ed. (she/her), Area Coordinator; University of Cincinnati- Resident Education & Development
Host: Noah Montague
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Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast is a platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in residence life and college student housing. If you have a topic idea for an episode, let us know!
Transcript:
Noah Montague:
Welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. They platform to showcase people doing great work and talk about hot topics in Residence Life and college student housing. So my name is Noah Montague and I use he/him/his pronouns. And today I’m going to be your host. If you’ve been watching my episodes or listening to my episodes for a while, you know that I like to say that I am a storyteller by trade and the stories that I choose to tell are those that center the college student experience and specifically talking about housing and what that looks like, which is why I’m all the more excited about today’s topic.
So today we’re actually going to be taking a different approach to what we’re talking about today than what I’ve done previously and examine Residence Life traditions. Door decs, bulletin boards, behind closed doors, you name it, and see what value any of these things still bring to the residential experience, if any, and unpack and just talk through those things today.
And today I am joined by a guest that I am actually super-duper excited to have here with us today and introduce to all of you. So I’m going to go ahead and let her introduce herself to you all.
Pamela Ianiro:
Hello, everyone. My name is Pamela Ianiro. I use she/her pronouns and I am an area coordinator at University of Cincinnati. So I am a res lifer through and through. So I am super excited to talk about these traditions and how we’ve seen them change and what they serve nowadays.
Noah Montague:
Definitely. I think then starting right away, Pam, thinking about those traditions, we highlighted a few of them, door decs, bulletin boards, behind closed doors, any of those icebreakers even, and thinking about some of those traditions. Why do you think they stick around year after year?
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. Well, they’re cute, aren’t they? Aren’t they, Noah? But I think a lot of it comes from the nature of student affairs being something that you’re brought up in. And then you come into the field and you have these ideas of what you did when you were a paraprofessional staff. And it feels like you want to pass down those traditions down to the staff that you supervise and want to see them recreate the college experience in the same way that you experienced it. But I think that brings up a good question is what are the other reasons why we’re doing it besides just upholding tradition or is there value in that alone?
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I think that even when I was writing these questions, I was trying to think of reasons that we might do some of these things other than that aspect of tradition, particularly in door decs because thinking about putting door decs on students’ doors functionally serves for us to know who lives in what room for fire departments to know what lives in what room.
And other than that, I don’t know why we decorate them and make them look more fun. Other than that is what I grew up with, entering the field and being an RA and making them and the joy that that had in theming a floor and doing all of that. And I see a lot of the aspect of this is how it was for me, now we’re going to do it again so that you get to have that same experience because I loved it. And I think that that exists in a lot of these traditions, at least on my end. I don’t know if you agree with that.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah, I think that is part of it. But I also think too, with door decs or a school that does floor decorations too, so there’s an expectation to decorate the walls. And I think back to our… Shout-out, Sarah Kennedy at UC who oversees our residential curriculum, she introduced the idea of floor decorations because she walked into one of our residence halls, looked around and said, “This looks like a hospital. This does not look inviting to students.”
So I do think there’s something to be said about seeing when you walk into your residence hall that there was care put into it, that there is presence in another way that isn’t just RA physically being there. You can feel their presence through the effort they’ve put on the walls and just feeling like you’re part of something bigger, that people were excited for your arrival. And I think that there is value there.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I agree. I definitely, because when you walk into a hall and you see a door dec or floor decoration, anything like that nature, students can tell when there wasn’t effort put into that and that then drives the whole year as well. So I suppose there would be a lot of value in that in that students hypothetically, depending on how much they’re looking at it, of course, would see that level of care coming in from their staff ahead of time, depending on what they’re looking at.
I do not work at a school that does floor decorations, but we actually just had a few of my students asked if they could put up snowflakes that they made at an event around the whole building. And that small thing, I walk in, I’m like, “This feels so much homier just in having this up.” So I definitely agree with you there. And I love that floor decorations and door decs have been incorporated into your residential curriculum in that way as well, because that provides that further, “This is an educational thing in these ways,” aspect to that conversation. I think that’s really cool.
Pamela Ianiro:
Right. I also think something that you mentioned that you can tell when effort isn’t put in. And we’re thinking in best case scenario, an RA puts in a lot of work, they really care about it. Maybe they’ve been browsing Pinterest all summer looking for that perfect theme.
Noah Montague:
And I’ve had many like that.
Pamela Ianiro:
Right. But what about the other half? Or I mean, I don’t know what percentage that is that maybe creativity is not their strong suit and what is the experience they’re creating for their residents then if the effort is not put in? I also think about door decs, how it’s increasingly common to not put names on it, which makes a lot of sense. We don’t know what a student’s preferred name is until they get there and you can ask them, “What name do you want on this door dec?” So that also takes away some of the purpose of the door dec, is does that feel like it’s done when it gets put up and there isn’t a name on it?
Noah Montague:
That’s a good point. And I think it gets us pretty perfectly into the next question I have and thinking about what original purpose that some of these traditions even hold. You’re talking about door decs now, and I mentioned it a little bit and just knowing who lives there for that tradition in and of itself is a purpose that we use for door decs. But thinking about all of those things, bulletin boards, icebreakers, what was the original point of some of these traditions in your eyes?
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. Well, I think at least for bulletin boards, when was that originated? Probably way before we had GroupMe and before we communicated via email with our residents. Bulletin board was probably the main way that we could get information out to the residents in one way that wasn’t just talking to them in passing.
So I think it’s interesting because a lot of our bulletin boards get ripped down nowadays. So what information are we really communicating via bulletin board? I think about we’re not really putting the most important stuff on there anymore because we know that it could get ripped down and won’t be as effective anymore.
Noah Montague:
I definitely see a lot of that here too in bulletin boards being more on that side of creativity and welcoming then information, differing from that initial purpose, but still trying to bring community together and keeping with that tradition in and of itself, at least in my halls. I do very much agree with you that I’ve seen that change even over years that I’ve been working in the field of, okay, instead of doing an informational board, let’s do a board where students get to write and interact with one another on that. And I’m seeing that be more common now in that changing the purpose of what it was supposed to be while still having it.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. I’ll offer another perspective that because of the nature of our communities at UC, we have some block leased locations where there are no bulletin boards that property managers don’t allow bulletin boards to go on, which makes sense. They’re leased properties. And those hall directors, our community coordinators really have been advocating for bulletin boards in those communities. So in the absence of them, they’re still wanted. So I think maybe it’s that it needs to look different or things need to change, but it seems that this tradition is one that people are still asking for in some ways.
Noah Montague:
And even one that I do still see interaction with, weirdly enough, even if it is tearing it down, and that’s such a weird thought that I’m having in this moment, but students are still looking at them in some capacity, even if the information is different, at least in my experience and what is happening in them. But I really do like your point of that originally they likely were the main place that people learned about what was happening in the hall. That was probably where things got advertised. That was probably where they learned closing information, anything going on in a hall as a space to learn and come together and how that continued and has altered, I think is really interesting.
Pamela Ianiro:
I wonder if it might come back around with the way that students are just inundated by information now. A lot of times I hear, “Well, I don’t look at my email because I get hundreds of emails a day.” So maybe we’re just coming back around to where bulletin boards are the one thing that you’re like, “Well, I know my RA is putting information here,” or, “I know my hall director will have the information I need here and I don’t have to sort through all the mess that’s coming through my email.”
Noah Montague:
I’ve actually seen a lot of success this year in particular in that in two of my three halls, we have a bulletin board that’s solely for flyers for events that we’re doing, and that’s the whole point of it. And it does seem like that has been pretty effective and they know that is where the RAs will be posting what is happening. And I think you’re right and that it is starting to shift back to that a little bit. I’ll be curious how that continues. But I think that we’ve started talking about this already in bulletin boards and door decs and thinking about what their original purposes were, but what other Res Life traditions come to mind for you and do you think that they are serving their original purpose?
Pamela Ianiro:
Well, you mentioned BCDs, and that is a huge one because I think that’s one that we get a lot of positive feedback on. So I chair our training committee here at UC. So we have been talking a lot about BCDs and almost talking about shifting to do we do all BCDs? That’s what students are really liking. And I think the experiential component of learning is really big for them. These are hands-on learners we’re starting to realize. And yeah, is training just BCDs every day with some information beforehand? I don’t know. I think it could be something helpful.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. So your school is talking about taking that a step further and further incorporating that tradition.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. Yeah.
Noah Montague:
Okay, that’s really interesting. I’ve not heard of schools trying to do that before.
Pamela Ianiro:
But yeah, it’s what we get the best feedback on. I know on the other hand, there’s also talk of it being hazing. I think that is something some people are starting to realize, especially when we don’t train our returner RAs in the best way to act in those scenarios. And when we talk about passing down traditions, they feel that they’re passing down this tradition of feeling scared in their BCDs and nervous, and maybe they’re feeling nervous just because it’s nerve-wracking to put your skills on display, not necessarily because the actors are scarring you in that moment.
Noah Montague:
Because that is most certainly not the point.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yes.
Noah Montague:
But I see that as well and thinking about… I love that we’re focusing on BCDs in this moment because I agree with you that that is the tradition that I see year after year that RAs in particular are like, “This is the one that is the most beneficial for me. This is the best part of training. This is where I actually got to learn and practice.” And that is both the point that has both always been the point of BCDs, and I see it continuing to be that.
So that’s one of the traditions that maybe has the most… It is what it was when it began in Residence Life, and it’s continued in that capacity. But thinking about serving original purpose, that truly is the example that I have of something that I feel continues to do that. And I love hearing about how your school is trying to further incorporate and expand on that idea a little bit more. I think that’s so cool.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. Yeah. Some of our staff went to the ACUHO-I Conference and just heard so many great things about other schools that are further developing BCDs. So I think it’s cool that it can continue to evolve while still maintaining the main purpose of it. The other thing I think I really like about it is something that just makes my educator heart happy is I don’t think the RAs always realize the bigger tradition that they’re participating when it comes to BCDs.
Noah Montague:
No, they do not.
Pamela Ianiro:
Where sometimes I’ll tell them, this is something that I did when I was an RA that if any of the other staff here, the other professional staff here who have been RAs, they likely did it and they’re just so shocked like, “What? This isn’t just something that our specific school came up with. This is something that RAs around the country are participating in.” And I just think that’s pretty cool and just funny for them to realize that they’re a part of something so much bigger.
Noah Montague:
And even thinking about the community aspect of that, because BCDs, some schools don’t have door decs, some schools don’t do bulletin boards, and BCDs seems to be the thing that every RA, every full-time staff member in Residence Life knows and has experienced and goes through. And I think that you’re right in the RAs don’t typically understand the larger culture of that space and what they’re becoming a part of, unless they go into the field themself and then they get more of a taste of that.
But that is a tradition that just getting that small in in that learning and even thinking about that learning component in of itself, we know through studies and research that students learn best from hands-on work and not from that lecture space. So that continuing to be a part of training, I think continues to be a good thing, both for the culture and the tradition and for the learning aspect of it.
Pamela Ianiro:
I totally agree. And something that we’re trying to do is making sure that we have solid facilitation guides for each BCD so that we are still centering learning, that it is not just each staff member’s interpretation of policy and what is shared in that space, that there is a specific way to teach through it to really convey that this is learning, this isn’t just improv for RAs.
Noah Montague:
Improv, you’re not trying to make your fellow RAs struggle. You’re not trying to make them cry. That’s not the purpose.
Pamela Ianiro:
Oh gosh, no. No.
Noah Montague:
I think that centering learning in that capacity and make sure that the students who are helping with the process go through it, I think that’s the best way to go about it.
Pamela Ianiro:
You mentioned schools not doing door decs anymore, and that made me think of something that I wanted to bring up is what do you think of door decs that are pre-made by a department? So maybe they’re mass-produced for those who may not be as creative, here’s a creative version and you just pick them up. Do we think that that fulfills the same purpose as the homemade ones?
Noah Montague:
Yeah. I love this question. So one could argue, of course, that by having uniform door decs, and uniform has such a negative connotation to it, but every student having the same door decs around an entire campus or an entire building, one could argue that the purpose of door decs is to bring people together. And in my hall, I have student-created communities, so it’s small groups of students that they form their own community. And I do make them themed door decs for those communities that are all the same and very specifically to bring them together. They all get the same door dec, and then the RAs also make the more traditional, more handmade door decs for them separately from what I did. And I very purposely did that to create community.
And somehow I don’t like when the whole building has just one door dec. It feels… And this might be my brain being steeped in the tradition of you sit there and you make 60 pokeball door decs before training opens. That might be my brain steeped in that. But a student walking in and it’s the logo of the school on their door or something similar to that, because that’s typically what universities do, that to me doesn’t feel as welcoming for whatever reason. Even though I understand the point of that would be to bring people together, would be to continue that tradition while also acknowledging that we do not ask RAs about their arts and craft skills when we hire them. That is not a thing that we hire based on, and then it is a part of the job.
So I think that it feels like a yes and answer to me in that I understand why schools are doing that and I don’t like it. And I think it is the tradition in my head of it all. I don’t know if you have additional thoughts there, but that’s such a cool question.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. Well, this might be me getting too deep into it, but I’ve been reading a lot about the flattening of culture through algorithms. And again, I might be applying something that doesn’t apply here, but I think about how so much of this world is starting to get flat and just you’re seeing the same things everywhere because everyone wants to be the same. Everyone wants to buy into the same things that everyone else is buying. And there’s something cool.
I mean, you can see behind me, I’m a big fan of door decs, so you can see my bias here. But there’s something cool about having all these different things that maybe it’s the RA’s personal interest. I had an RA who really love shoes, so they had a bunch of different shoes as the door dec. It’s a way to get to know the RA too and just understand the culture of the floor. I had an RA who did watermelon juice as their door decs because they loved watermelon juice and it was an inside joke with the floor.
So things like that, you can’t get those fun and welcoming things, the things that make it feel like home with just a uniform door decoration. But I mean, there’s something to say, does that mean that a department provides one at the beginning of the year when that culture hasn’t been formed and then the RA is free to decorate through the year? And again, if an RA doesn’t have those skills, is that better than nothing?
Noah Montague:
Yeah. And I don’t know.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
I really don’t. I think that for me, I continue to go back to the point where we are expecting students to do something that we don’t interview them for and we don’t train them on, and that would create… Because at least we don’t have a training session on making door decs, but then they have to do it. We don’t have a training session on making bulletin boards, but then they have to go and do it. We actually, thinking about these traditions, we only have a training session on doing BCDs, and that is the thing that we do incorporate into their jobs despite the other things also being a part of their jobs. And yet the university printed, cut out, perfect door decs don’t feel as personalized to me.
And I think that goes into the purpose of all of these things, is creating community as we talk about, and we have talked about some of these traditions, the main goal being to do that, I think begs the question of what does it look like to redesign some of these old traditions? You’re doing that a little bit in your work as well. And we’ve been talking about some ways schools are redesigning these traditions, but what does it look like to do that to contribute to that learning and belonging while not losing what that tradition means to us as staff, having gone through it, because it does matter to us. Even in this conversation, I’m like, “Ooh, I don’t like them,” even though I understand why we’re doing it.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yes.
Noah Montague:
But what does that look like to redesign those traditions?
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah. Well, I’ll offer one that I can see the students are doing on their own, and this is definitely where my bias comes in and my wanting to see the same thing that I saw is the transition of door decs being from something that you cut out and glue pieces of paper together to create an image to a lot of our door decs being printed and cut out.
So even if they’re not the uniform one, it’s students maybe designing them on Canva or just finding a collection of images, printing that out and to still fulfill our requirements, they’ll print something out and then put it on a piece of construction paper. So they’re gluing something together, making it just a little more than just a piece of paper glued on the door. So it’s fulfilling all the requirements. They’re still gluing two pieces of paper together, but it might look much nicer for a student who doesn’t have the artistic chops and they can easily find an image and they can make that look nice, but they wouldn’t be able to make it look nice if it was just then some scissors and some construction paper.
But that’s something that my heart sings whenever I get a traditional one where it is cut out, just makes me so happy. But I mean, there’s no reason why they can’t do a printed one. It’s fulfilling all of our expectations. It’s personalized. They’ll put their name on it when they arrive and it has all the technical expectations.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. And I agree with you, I am seeing that a bit more. I’ve done it myself, especially in those small communities of trying to… When the purpose was very specifically to unify within a space, I made them exactly the same with their name, and that was pretty purposeful. And that served a learning outcome, at least in my mind, was to make these, okay, these are the same thing. These eight students have the same door dec because they’re in this small group, cool, fine, cool. And that was one way that I think with that tradition, I’ve sought to continue it, but change it.
And to your own point, with that aspect of not every RA is artistically inclined, they’re meeting the requirement. That is one place I have seen that tradition evolve and change. Thinking about BCDs specifically with behind closed doors, one way that I have seen that get redesigned at my school is we actually have two different versions of it at my institution being behind closed doors and then what we’re calling campus climate circles.
So very specifically behind closed doors, acting out in a residence hall room, how do you handle a party? How do you handle a roommate mediation, going through those things. And then campus climate circles are separate from that. We do it in circles. They circle up and somebody has to act, but it is specifically related to bias incidents, to responding to different incidents on campus, and making sure that our staff have a safe place to practice how they would support a student through something related to climate on the campus.
And that’s one place that we’ve seen that get evolved a little bit more. And that has been incredibly successful over years to a point that you made a couple of minutes ago in that students learn the best and we continue to see that students are learning the best when they get to act it out and when they get to actually practice it. So after we do Title IX training and that reporting and how to do that or how to report bias incidents, then students act out scenarios where they have to respond to stuff like that getting brought up in a separate space. And we’ve seen that be a very helpful thing at our institution.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah, I love that because it really does center the learning and removes all the theatrics. And I think that is really important with very important and serious topics like those where the focus really is just on learning and what would you do and what do you need to be able to support a student through this? So that’s really cool.
Noah Montague:
And it’s done in these small groups of other RAs, so they get to then give their feedback, talk about it together, ask the professional staff, because we’re the actors in that space. We don’t have student actors for those types of situations to ask us directly, “Okay, did I do this right? How should I have changed how I went about this?” And then we turn it over to the group before we even ask to get those ideas from that space.
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah, that’s cool. That sounds similar, but different to something that we’re trying here of, we’re going to try table talk BCDs. So talking through the BCDs and not quite acting, but providing all of the information and the students then talking through how they would respond to scaffold BCDs so that They’re understanding what kind of situations they might have to respond to, making sure they really understand the protocol first before they then have to act it out. Which when we think about just learning, that makes sense. Being able to first recite the process, be able to recall what that protocol is, and then applying that skill. So just really scaffolding that learning throughout.
Noah Montague:
That makes a lot of sense. And I love how you’ve centered learning to that extent in it as well. But I think then going into our last question for today and ending, we’ve talked very theoretically and got really big, so I want to bring it a little bit back. And what might be a piece of tangible advice that you might give to new Residents Life staff, new professionals trying to figure out how to engage with tradition?
Pamela Ianiro:
Yeah, I feel like I always go back to don’t start with no. So I think a lot of these ideas that the RAs bring up are really good ones, and they’re the ones who understand the current culture and the needs of the community a lot of the time. So I think when they start to question certain traditions, of course there’s some questioning and sometimes known has to be said, but don’t start there.
I think if you start with curiosity, you can really be open to changing these traditions and making sure that they really do still serve their purpose. And I think what we’ve been coming back to just, and you mentioned this earlier, can we connect what we’re doing to learning outcomes? That’s the core of our work. So if we are struggling to do that, then maybe there needs to be a change to either our approach or what we want to get out of it.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. I don’t know that I could have said that better myself and that would also be a version of my answer, but thinking about listening to staff, to your own point, our RAs know the culture better than we do, of the halls, of the school, of the space that we’re in. And of course, I love your answer of not starting with no, and listening and being a part of that space and asking those questions.
I lean very heavily into, I want my staff to understand why we do things because that why is very helpful for me. So I’ll talk about the purpose of door decs is to build community in these ways. The purpose of bulletin boards is to give them this information. My staff struggles with icebreakers despite how often I explain it to them, but I think that explaining it, listening and hearing them out as you kind of figure out what the culture of your building is going to look like is the advice that I would give.
With that, Pam, that wraps up our time together today. Thank you so much for joining me. I hope you had a fun time. I really enjoyed this conversation. And thank you all for joining us on today’s episode of ResEdChat. If you have an idea for a topic or a person that you would like us to have on the show, please feel free to let us know by reaching out to Roompact. But for now, keep taking care of yourselves and have a great rest of your day.
Bye, folks.
