In this episode of Roompact’s ResEdChat, join our host Noah Montague and guest, Emily Abrams, Assistant Director of Dow STEM Scholars at Michigan State University, as they talk about crip theory and its implications for Residence Life Staff and for the halls themselves. Student Development Theories give us language through which to understand and implement our work and crip theory is no different, especially for Residence Life Staff. What does it mean for students and staff to be working in inaccessible residence halls? What does it look like for staff to put this theory into practice? In this episode, Emily and Noah explore these questions and examine the impact of ableism on the college student experience while telling stories and providing practical advice for Residence Life Staff navigating these very systems and structures.
Guest: Emily Abrams (she/her/hers), Assistant Director, Dow STEM Scholars, Michigan State University
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, a 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 will be your host.
As you all know, if you’ve been listening to my episodes or watching along with me, I like to say that I am a storyteller by trade, and these stories that I choose to tell are those that center the college student experience, which makes me all the more excited about today’s topic.
So today we’re going to be talking about residential student support through a crip theory lens, where we will unpack and think about students in distress and how residents life departments and staff can be better structured to support students in their access needs. So today we’re going to be joined by a colleague whose research is actually looking at distress through this very lens, which makes me all the more excited to welcome them into this space with us today. So without any further ado, I’m going to begin by letting them introduce themself.
Emily Abrams:
Hi, Noah and listeners. My name is Emily Abrams. I use she/her pronouns. I currently serve as the assistant director for the Dow STEM Scholars Program at Michigan State University. And I’m also a PhD candidate at MSU as well. And my degree is in higher adult and lifelong education. So we’re wrapping up that degree.
Noah Montague:
Almost there.
Emily Abrams:
We’ll be there soon.
Noah Montague:
Almost there.
Emily Abrams:
Yes. Yeah.
Noah Montague:
Cool. Well, I guess then to get us right into this topic, so whenever I have a concept that I want to be talking about, I want to make sure that folks understand a little bit about what we’re actually going to be talking about. So for our viewers who maybe are new to this concept, how would you explain crip theory and why it matters in higher education?
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. Crip theory is one of my very favorite general theories from the disability literature. My favorite student development theory. It’s the one thing that really gave me an understanding for my own disability identity.
Crip theory is a post-structural theory, so it’s a theory that breaks down binaries. So instead of having disabled and non-disabled, it’s looking at it on, I don’t know, bigger than a spectrum, but it’s fluid. There’s a lot to it. And so it’s not just one or the other.
It came out of queer theory. It’s built on that and so a lot of the tenets are very similar. But the big one for crip theory that guides the whole field of study that uses it is the idea of compulsory able-bodiedness. Compulsory able-bodied-ness is this idea that by default, people should be non-disabled or able-bodied, able-minded. I use it as an umbrella to cover the body and mind because the way that I practice and interpret it is that the two can’t really be separated from one another.
And so it’s this idea we are by default able-bodied. And then if we are not that, then we’re diverging from something. There’s something wrong with us, something that needs to be fixed. And so we see it in the ways that buildings are created. So the default building that we see or the thing that we see in buildings a lot is that they are built with stairs. And then it’s not until someone gets an accommodation that we go and retrofit it to be accessible. The same with just any sort of expectations that we have for participating in society, and we can get into that some more.
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
But there are a couple other tenants that I think are really important. So that idea of fluidity, like I mentioned, disability is not one or the other. It can change. Some days we feel perfectly fine. Other days we are experiencing more acute symptoms. Our capacity to engage looks different based on what the context is. It’s not a fixed state. And even when you’re feeling good, that doesn’t make you any less disabled. So we’ve got that.
Interdependence is another one. So the idea that we all need each other and people aren’t meant to have to do everything on their own. I think we all have this idea, especially in American culture, that we are supposed to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. And I think especially for students, it’s like a, “Well, I’m going to get through this program all by myself and I’m not going to ask for help. And it’s going to suck, but I’m going to do it because that’s the way I’m supposed to do it. I shouldn’t have to ask for help.”
And our dependence turns that around and says, “But it’s actually okay to need help. It’s not sustainable to not do that.” Everybody actually will probably be better for it if we lean on each other.
Noah Montague:
If we help each other.
Emily Abrams:
Exactly. Exactly. And so that is one that I really like to talk about. I know in the student development theory classes that I’ve gotten to talk in, that’s the one that sticks out the most for people, I think. And then we’ve also got crip time and there are other things too, but crip time is, I think, one of the bigger pieces that comes into play.
And crip time is really just, it’s an expanded way of thinking about the way that disabled people talk and think about and experience time. So it can be as basic as, I have extended time on tests because I have ADHD and I need extra time. But it can also be if you have PTSD and you experience a flashback, your brain literally goes to the past and you are feeling in your body that it’s not right now. It’s not what the clock in front of me is saying, but it’s whenever this traumatizing experience happened.
It’s very expansive and it’s very unique for each person, but it’s really just the idea that time for disabled people and for people who are not experiencing able-bodiedness in this moment can be nonlinear. So that’s crip theory in a nutshell.
I think in terms of why it matters in higher education, it just gives us another way of understanding our students. We’re not placing them on a model. We’re not asking them to experience different stages. It’s really just a way of describing the things that they experience through a lens that doesn’t just point out systemic inequality, but kind of picks apart how society has made us expect to live this way.
It really, it just breaks down the societal expectation of it all. And it calls out that all of these things are rooted in ableism, in racism, in white supremacy. All of the different isms, they all come together to further marginalize people by way of ableism.
Noah Montague:
For sure. Yeah. And I think that a few … I appreciate that, first of all, and how detailed that you went into describing these different tenets and these different ideas. The things that are really sticking out to me right now is this concept of fluidity and the change that is in that space.
And one of my favorite student development theories is the social change model of leadership development. And it proponents this idea of creating positive change as intrinsic, not only to being a leader, but being a person contributing to society, to helping one another. To another point that you made is this idea of making a more inclusive, better space for folks exists in this idea of what it means to be a leader as well. So I’m enjoying seeing that overlap in what you’re talking about here with creating change for the benefit of the people in our lives being what it means to be a leader, what it means to participate.
Emily Abrams:
Absolutely.
Noah Montague:
I’m enjoying that overlap right now with something I’m reflecting on as you speak.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. And I think the thing that I love about crip theory is I find, at least with my students that I’ve worked with since I’ve been in student affairs, is that a lot of times students don’t even realize that what they’re experiencing-
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
… is rooted in ableism. And students are like, “Oh my God, I’m so stressed out. I don’t feel good right now, but I have to get all these things done.” I’m like, “Baby, you weren’t born to be able to do that.” That’s not a normal, or it shouldn’t be a normal expectation. And being able to point out to students like, “Wait, no, but why don’t you want to ask for help? What’s the root of that?” And a lot of times they don’t have an answer other than, “I just should be able to do it. I should be able to do it by myself.”
Noah Montague:
I probably get told that five times a day from my students.
Emily Abrams:
I’m bad. I do it too. My boss checks me on it all the time. She’s like, “What are you talking about? Just ask for help. It’s fine.” And so I’m learning to be a delegator. It’s very challenging, but students don’t …
And I like to use it in my practice to give students a way to unlearn the things that they’re going through. And it can be so liberating when they’re like, “Oh, you know what? It’s fine.” I supervise some peer mentors and they’re like, “Okay. Well, this actually probably could be a group project. I don’t have to just run the newsletter alone,” or something like that. It’s really exciting to see that, but it’s also very fulfilling on my end to be able to be like, “No, but if we can just crack whatever hard shell is protecting or you’re putting up for protection, we could probably make you feel a whole lot better.”
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
And want to make you want to live more for you and less for the expectations of people.
Noah Montague:
Everyone else.
Emily Abrams:
Yep.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. And I’m actually thinking right now a lot about … I went to a presentation a few years ago at a conference that talked about this idea of when children, then students, then adults, when biases are set in. And when an understanding of what they’re expected to sets in and where that comes into play.
And on average across experience, that’s 10 years old is when these biases, when these understandings of what we’re expected to do, how we’re expected to behave, what is expected of us is set by then. And then they have eight more years before they make it to us, eight more years of living with those biases. And that’s sticking with me in what you’re talking about with unlearning and our role being a space to help students unlearn. “No, you can ask for help.”
Emily Abrams:
Yes. That’s a lot of time to cement that.
Noah Montague:
You can look for that, it’s a lot of time to cement that into place for a human being. And I think about that research most days actually.
Emily Abrams:
That’s going to haunt me probably forever. I didn’t experience, or I didn’t learn about crip theory until grad school. And I started grad school a little bit later than the rest of my cohort. I took three gap years, and most of the people in my cohort went straight through.
And I can’t even begin to tell you how much different my life would’ve been if I had learned about it sooner. I’m so jealous of the people that have access to it at 18, because you can do so much for someone’s identity. And I mean, there’s research out there. I can’t remember the scholar off the top of my head, but there’s a study that says the he students that have the opportunity to develop a disability identity tend to have better academic outcomes.
I know for me that my life would’ve been way better and my grades would’ve been a heck of a lot better had I known what my experience was. And so I’ve made it my personal mission and my practice to make sure that wherever possible I’m helping students do that-
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
… if that’s their experience.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, that’s awesome. No, that’s awesome. And I think that sets us pretty well into next point I want to hit on in this conversation. Now that we’ve talked about this idea and student experience a little bit more broadly, thinking about specifically in the residence halls, and you spoke to this already a little bit in talking about physical space and buildings and access in that capacity. But how might crip theory change the way that we think about students and student distress, in particular, thinking about your research as it relates to the residence halls?
Emily Abrams:
Yeah, the residence hall, we talked about this a little before we started recording, that’s home base. At the end of the day, whether or not a student goes to class, home base is going to be their residence hall. And so it can really end up being ground zero for identifying distress, identifying possible distressing factors. It’s also interesting to factor in RAs because that’s both their job and their home base.
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
And not then, of course, our live-in professional staff.
Noah Montague:
And RAs have a different experience. They’re also students.
Emily Abrams:
For sure. Yeah. They’ve got both of those things on their plates. And so I think crip theory, one, gives us an opportunity to think about how can we create a home base and living environment for students to feel just baseline comfortable? A place where they can be their full selves, whether that means they are feeling great or not. And yeah, just experience a safe zone.
I’m thinking the metaphor that’s coming to mind is when you’re playing tag on the playground as elementary kids, but then as soon as you get to the tetherball pole, that’s home-based, that’s safe. No one can touch you, you’re not going to get out, you’re going to be fine there. We can start to have a conversation about what can that look like when we apply these crip theory principles to creating a safe zone, that home base for students.
It also gives us an opportunity to think about how can we teach student staff like RAs how to be professionals. Whether or not they go into student affairs or whatever field they go into, we can start to show them what a supervisory experience can look like, what it doesn’t have to feel like, teach them agency to ask for the things that they need as an employee. And just show them that the workplace doesn’t have to be super rigid. It gives them a possibility model if we as professionals offer that to them.
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
So I think it gives us a bunch of opportunities to do some ground zero work with students.
Noah Montague:
Yeah. I love that you mentioned RAs in this answer because it prompted me to think about an interaction I actually just had with one of my resident assistants where she came to me after a duty test did not happen in the way that it was supposed to, which resulted in … She was terrified of now what was going to happen because something didn’t go exactly the way that it was supposed to.
And instead of having a conversation about, “Well, here’s what you did wrong, here’s this,” it was, “Well, what happened? Help me understand what’s going on. I’ve been noticing that it seems like something is going on in your life and I want to talk about it.”
And I watched that not be how she expected the situation to go at all. She fully expected, “I’m in trouble. I’m getting fired. I made a mistake.” And the pressure of that and asking that why question of, where is this coming from for you? Something that you talked about a little bit earlier and centering the actual student experience and how we are working with people and where is this coming from?
Which then became a conversation about her parents and about past employment and expectations that have been ingrained and ingrained. And her own experience with disability came up in this conversation in a lot of different ways. And I watched her piece things together that I don’t know that she had previously, which that’s really coming to mind for me in this moment is that question of, “Well, why? What is your experience? Are you willing to talk to me about that? Let me be there for you and have that conversation.”
And I think that that is a way that I’ve tried to put this into place in my practice is working to center that actual student experience rather than thinking about, okay, here is the rigidity of these expectations. Here’s the rigidity of how this is supposed to work. Residence life should also be a learning experience because students are living on their own for the first time, and there are going to be hiccups in that. And I think we forget about that sometimes.
Emily Abrams:
It’s also likely that that’s a student’s very first job ever.
Noah Montague:
Yes.
Emily Abrams:
And it has so much pressure to it. And not only is it a job, it’s also like that’s a lot of money that they don’t have to pay to go here. And so-
Noah Montague:
And depending on the school, it might be their room and board. And if they don’t have it might mean, “Oh, I don’t have anywhere to live.”
Emily Abrams:
Right. I’m going to experience homelessness. I am going to have to pay $10,000. I have students that are RAs that they wouldn’t be here if they didn’t have their housing covered.
Noah Montague:
That was me.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. Of course you’re going to be scared. That pressure is way too much for any one person, especially when you’re so young or traditionally so young.
Noah Montague:
For sure.
Emily Abrams:
That’s so much to carry. And then also to link it to distress, that’s breeding ground for students to see the beginnings or go fully into a mental health crisis.
Noah Montague:
And that is this situation that is what it became as well.
Emily Abrams:
And there’s no universe in which we should feel okay about that being the outcome.
Noah Montague:
No.
Emily Abrams:
Not that I think that … I would hope that nobody is okay with that, but I think folks end up … And for a number of reasons such as our own capacity, our resources, we just have to be like, “Well, okay, I guess that happened. We’ll figure it out.” But if we can help it, why should we allow it? You know what I mean?
Noah Montague:
Yeah. And why are we allowing it to be the norm of what we expect?
Emily Abrams:
Right. Yeah. I don’t want you to be scared of me.
Noah Montague:
I don’t want you to be scared of me, and I think that we need to spend time unpacking why you are.
Emily Abrams:
Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s not just a situation where they’re always on edge, but you’re a nice person to them. And so they don’t have anything to end up actually panicking about, but they shouldn’t feel uneasy around their supervisor. And I try really hard to model that with my students.
And I got some, and I would say more often than not, the students that feel those things most acutely are students of color and especially women of color, because that’s just how they’ve been socialized. And recognizing my own positionality as a white person, a white woman, understandably, it’s very understandable why they might be uneasy around me as a supervisor, regardless of how nice to them I am or how understanding and flexible of an environment that I offer them. But the ones who always end up apologizing the most for things that I wouldn’t even bat an eye at are my most marginalized staff members. And I mean, that’s just further demonstrating how tied together ableism and racism are.
Noah Montague:
100%.
Emily Abrams:
And how well they uphold each other to come out with students experiencing these things without even realizing what’s actually happening inside.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, for sure. And I think that with all of that and what we’ve been talking about so far, and speaking of the actual physicality and inside and thinking about the halls themselves, I’m reflecting on a lot of ways that the halls are also a part of this conversation, the physical nature of the spaces that we’re in. We spend a lot of time talking about staff right now.
Emily Abrams:
Sure.
Noah Montague:
But what do you think about how these environments, the physical spaces of these residents hall environments might unintentionally contribute to some of this distress for disabled or chronically ill students?
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. Well, I’m sure there are so many different ways. I think a lot about sound and just audible stimuli. I know at least for neurodivergent folks, it’s going to get rowdy on a weekend in a residence hall. And people are going to come back from doing whatever, and they’re going to still be having a great time. And that’s awesome. I love that for them, but I can very much imagine that just that, which it’s hard to control that. We tell them quiet hours and you can only do so much, but that can be incredibly overstimulating.
And when a student is in their room in what’s supposed to be their safe zone, when you’re then having to deal with things that are going to be overstimulating, that can be really challenging. And I know I’ve had students be like, “I don’t want to be in my room. I don’t want to be in my room. It’s too loud. My suitemates always have their music on,” or whatever. It’s too much. And I’m sure anyone that’s lived in an apartment can attest to. But most apartments don’t have 100 people on the same floor-
Noah Montague:
Very, very few.
Emily Abrams:
… with those very thin walls and they’re literally right next door. You don’t have kitchens and bathrooms in between you, just room after room.
Noah Montague:
It is bed, wall, bed right after each other.
Emily Abrams:
Exactly. Exactly. And so there’s that, I think in a physical sense, we again talked about this before recording also, is the building physically accessible. If you’re a wheelchair user or you use any sort of mobility aid or you have any number of chronic illnesses that makes going upstairs really challenging.
I have POTS and my heart will freak out a lot based on the way that I’m standing or sitting or lying. It doesn’t really matter. But going up and down the stairs can be really challenging. And so when you get done with classes for the day and you’re already exhausted and you’re like, “Oh, God, I live on the third floor. I have to climb all these stairs. It’s just a nightmare. There’s that extra burden just based on the physicality of the hall.
Yeah, the physical space can be really overwhelming. It can also be really nice though when things work out and things are just inherently accessible. Whatever that means for you as an individual, that is a game changer. So yeah, the halls can definitely be a distressing experience in and of themselves.
I know something that students at MSU are having to deal with now. Well, most of them have graduated by now, but back in 2023, we had a school shooting and our students were barricaded in their halls because it was nighttime. Most of them were in their halls. Others were in classrooms and whatnot, but most of the students on campus were at home. And so we had a huge influx of students requesting to live off campus the next year.
And we were very much saying, “Absolutely, we will exempt you from year two of your housing contract. That’s absolutely fine.” But that space just by association with a traumatic experience is now not safe for them anymore. The same with the classrooms and whatnot that is associated with the event. Those are also not safe spaces, but to have your living space be a site of trauma can be its own level of distress. So that’s another way that the physical environment can be particularly distressing.
Noah Montague:
And I can only imagine that specifically with that example. I think that what I’m thinking about in this moment as someone also living in the halls and that Res Life staff also are living in the very hall that they’re supervising. And we have that unique experience of also then having to navigate the physicality of the space. We’re also living there. The conversations about noise and being able to live in the space comfortably also play a part. I know that my apartment is designed to have … It’s some kind of mechanical box for the entire building is in my apartment.
So when the air conditioning kicks on in the summer, I can’t live in my space and I’m very sensitive to noise and loud noises. And being in my living room, I can’t be there because that’s where this mechanical box is. And when the air conditioning comes on, it’s too loud to actually exist in the space that I’m a part of.
And I think that’s a design choice. That is a way that a physical space is designed that I don’t know was ever really thought about in a lot of those different ways. I enjoyed your inclusion of this conversation about the physicality of access needs for students and buildings as well. And I run a leadership program in residents’ halls, as many of the folks listening know, because I talk about it often in this space, but that leadership program is in a building that do not have elevators at all. And this residence hall is actually federally protected, so it never can have an elevator. We can never legally add anything onto it because that federal protection for a historical building is more important than students having proper access to a leadership program.
And what does that say? We’ve been talking a lot about mindset and understanding and the norm and accepting this idea as what it always will be and that perpetrating a lot of these isms that we’re talking about. And what does it say if this idea of leadership development is attached and always will be attached to ableism in access? And some students will have to live on the third floor of this building that was built in 1820. And they built stairs steep in the 1800s-
Emily Abrams:
Yeah, they did.
Noah Montague:
… as well. And it’s the same stairs. So I think I’m thinking about that a lot in this moment is we have to operate within the physical space that somebody else gave us in that residence life professionals did not build these spaces. So how do we then actually make them accessible when we’re limited in what we can physically do in the buildings? And I’ve seen that come in a lot in our programming and how we choose to engage in making sure to have multiple ways to participate in things. And asking students again what they actually want from their experience.
Emily Abrams:
It’s surprising how simple that seems, but how little that actually happens.
Noah Montague:
And it happens so sparingly.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s so tricky. And I get the urge. As someone who does programming as part of my job, I fully understand the urge to just make a decision because we have to know what we’re doing soon because we have to make the purchases or we have to give a decision to somebody else who needs it yesterday. I get the urge.
But then we wonder why students never show up to our events. And it’s like, “Well, maybe they don’t actually want to do a movie night with popcorn, even though I thought it would be a good idea because it’s low cost.” I mean, to be fair, I did have a movie night in October and it was very well attended, but-
Noah Montague:
Sometimes they work.
Emily Abrams:
… you never know. You never know. There’s so many programs where I’m like, “This is a brilliant idea.” And then nobody comes and I’m like, “Is there something wrong with my brain? Do I know anything?” The answer to that is that’s not true. No, it’s just that I probably didn’t ask the right question.
Noah Montague:
I hear your boss and Yuri are telling you to give yourself grace there too.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. She is shouting at me. Right. And I appreciate her for that, for sure. Yeah, I get the urge because it’s tiring. It’s hard to do big things with paperclips and shoestrings as your budget, but it’s definitely worth it.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, I agree. Yeah. But I think to wrap us up then and to get into, we’ve talked a lot about theoretical and student experience and where all these things lie in our specific work, but what might be a practical piece of advice, a practical change that you would give to Residence Life staff in your experience thinking about your work to create a more inclusive and supportive environment in the halls?
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. So one, ask your students what they want. I think that goes without saying, now we’ve-
Noah Montague:
I think we’ve honed that one in.
Emily Abrams:
… we’ve established that. Something that I’m learning from my dissertation is that a lot of students don’t engage with counseling services because they don’t want to do therapy in a traditional way. They’re like, “This feels weird. I don’t want to sit and be looked at and analyzed. And I don’t want to deal with that.”
And then my follow-up is to those responses, because majority of my participants have said that and unprompted by me, they bring it up themselves. And my follow-up has always been, what would’ve made you want to engage with counseling services? Here we call it CAPS. So if you hear that come out, that’s what it is.
Noah Montague:
That’s the acronym.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah. Yeah. And they’re like, I wish that there was a way that I could meet staff from that office in a casual, no strings attached social setting. And so one, in the spirit of meeting students where they are, I think that goes for obviously the residence halls. I know you all program. What could it look like to bring in your counseling staff for an evening program to just hang out and do a craft night?
And they can just meet students. They don’t have to be there with an ulterior motive. They can sit and paint too. But students, based on what I’ve learned, might be more likely to seek out support in a counseling setting if they’re able to know counseling staff as real whole people.
And the field of counseling and mental healthcare will say that that’s a huge no-no, that as a therapist, you’re not supposed to share information. Your clients aren’t supposed to know things about you. And I know that there are some awesome therapists out there that say that that’s nonsense. But if you want students to engage and we want to give them ways to seek out support, that’s a good starting point. Give them a low barrier entry.
I think that that can be really helpful. I think also, I don’t know the details of this. I have not thought it through a lot, but I also am curious about what we could do differently with students. I think about roommate conflicts. And people have roommate conflicts for all sorts of reasons, whether someone’s not picking up their laundry or it goes to your student is being harassed by their roommate. It could be any number of things.
But I’m curious about, and maybe you have some thoughts on this, how could we go about handling roommate conflicts differently, whether that means … I know so many students that have had issues with roommates and then they’ve been told, “Well, you should talk to them. You need to have a conversation with them and you’re just going to have to deal.”
And I get that there’s capacity issues and all of those things. But then as a staff member, if we’re telling them to, one, talk to the roommate, if that roommate is making them feel actually unsafe. And unsafe doesn’t mean equal uncomfortable.
Noah Montague:
Yeah, actually unsafe.
Emily Abrams:
But actually unsafe, are they actually going to come back and ask us for help? They’re going to be in a distressing environment that we’ve created. So I’m curious. I’m curious about how that process could look different. And I’m sure the answer is it depends.
Noah Montague:
And it is going to be my answer.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah, as most student affairs answers are, it depends.
Noah Montague:
But I also think that answer lends itself to this conversation very specifically as well, and that every student needs something different from us. And that does create a lot of, especially when we’re talking about roommate conflicts, that creates complications and that every single one of them looks a little bit different.
I think that for me in going through these, and if we’re operating in a situation where a student is quite literally unsafe with their roommate for whatever reason that is being brought to me, that is no longer a safe living environment. And then I have to question as a Residence Life staff member, well, will a conversation between the two of them cause more harm?
And if someone is telling me they are unsafe for these reasons and that is actually unsafe, because sometimes students will say they feel unsafe when it is not a safety issue per se, I’m just going to move that student. I’m likely not going to put that student in an unsafe environment to have a conversation, but that then does beg the question of, is that the right course of action? Because does that eliminate any chance for learning from both students? Because one could argue that it does, but it also does then put the other student who is in an unsafe space into a safer one.
So I don’t know. I don’t know what the better solution in those particular spaces is. I like to center it again in, well, what would you like me to do? Here’s what I can do. Here are the options that we have. What would make you feel more comfortable? What would make you feel safe? Giving that control back over the situation i something that I try to do.
And that, again, depends. It depends on the situation, the student. I might have two options. It might be, okay, your only option right now is that I move your room. And I’ve been there. I’ve been in every version of that. When a conversation is safe, Residence Life staff might typically be like, “Well, have you talked to them already?” 90% of the time they haven’t. I then usually like to take that a step further.
And I think that might be the advice that I would want to offer as far as tangible things. Well, instead of, “Well, okay, go do that,” is, “How can I help you prepare for this conversation? What would be helpful for me in making you feel more comfortable having it?” Because in the same way we talked earlier about RAs, this is maybe their first time having a job. Students, maybe this is their first time living with anyone or living with anyone not related to them. Or for some of our students going to school in person.
There are a lot of things that could be playing into that. And well, how can I help you navigate this? Can we talk about your experience with conflict? What has that looked like in your life? What might be guiding you towards this being scary? Because it sounds like talking to your roommate about this problem you’re having is terrifying. And I’d love to understand why so I can help you. And I think that that would be the tangible advice I would offer and my best attempt at answering your question as well, because it is so nuanced.
Emily Abrams:
Right. It’s something that I do with my students too when they’re feeling particularly anxious about communication. And this is, again, pulling from crip theories. I love practicing interdependence. I think what you just described is a way of doing that, but even if the student’s like, “I can’t just sit down and have a conversation with them. That’s too much. It’s too overwhelming.”
“Can I help you write a text? Let me help you write it out in a way that feels like you can put it out there. You’re not going to get interrupted. You can say what you need to say.” And then you can use that as your vehicle to have a follow-up actual talking conversation. Whether or not that involves you as a staff member sitting with them or your RA sitting with them, which again, that could be also really challenging as an RA in your very first job to navigate other people’s conflict with them. It’s a very funky power dynamic.
Noah Montague:
It always is.
Emily Abrams:
The harder I think about the role of an RA, the more I’m like, oh, I don’t even know what to do with this. But yeah, can I help you write the text? Can I help you write an email? I write emails with my students all the time. I write emails for my students all the time. If we’re in an appointment and I have time, “All right, let’s do it.”
Noah Montague:
Which I think that example goes back to really everything we’ve been talking about and meeting a student in their prescribed need and helping as things come up with the fluidity of everything and being there is an underrepresented role in what Res Life staff and student affairs practitioners are here to do to begin with.
Emily Abrams:
Yeah.
Noah Montague:
But yeah. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. That just about wraps up our time on a really good note as well, so I appreciate that. But Emily, thank you so much for joining me. I hope you had a good time.
Emily Abrams:
I did. This was wonderful.
Noah Montague:
Yay. I’m so glad. 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’d like us to have on the show, please let us know by reaching out to Roompact. And as always, please keep taking care of each other. Have a great rest of your day. Bye.
