I was involved in a discussion about use of the “go-to” privilege article “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh for a RA Class. There was debate on if this material, along with a step in the circle exercise, was the best direction for the class. During the discussion someone mentioned that step in the circle experiences often impacted students negatively, and had a tendency to take a bad turn regardless of facilitator skill level. The response to this person’s experience was that they should re-examine the questions that were developed for the class, and that most of the existing questions were not about race or socioeconomic status. I then heard myself say “Isn’t everything about race and socioeconomic status?” I can’t think of a time that I was talking about privilege when you could separate race or talk about the topic without talking about socioeconomic status. This discussion/debate made me think about how we at times get too wrapped up in teaching others that we ourselves forget to do the work that we are teaching about. There is an assumption that when you work in student affairs that you come with a built in appreciation, and beyond surface level understanding of diversity, and today that has been transferred over to social justice. If you are in the field long enough people assume that you are well-versed enough to start teaching others. These assumptions become problematic as you have some that are speaking and supporting topics that they are no longer taking steps to grow and develop in. Just listening to issues or concerns of social justice presented by students does not make us any more socially just. It makes us people who live vicariously through other people’s experiences. It allows us to live in a bubble that says that racism exists but not within our teams, our departments—we are the ones in the white hats as Olivia Pope says on the TV show Scandal. We assume that we are the good guys who support and challenge the inequity and actively try to stomp out its existence. There are times that we in students affairs need to burst our own bubble and get down and do the work again.

I am proud to say that I worked in an environment that worked hard to burst that bubble for me every day and encouraged me to burst others’ bubbles. Twice a month there were social justice in-services provided by the Student Affairs division and my own residence life department for both staff and students. In the course of my time at this institution the value and importance of social justice was clear. It was also clear that if you could not actively engage in your own development then it might not be the best fit-this was something that was a standard for staff and student leaders within the department. As residence life professionals the team of 15 graduate and full time professionals took a full day to do our own unpacking of knapsacks through a facilitated workshop where we talked about our own privileges and biases. If we don’t start with ourselves then how could we expect our RAs or residents to engage in their own journey?

This consistent development has put me in a position to be mindful not to go too long without doing a self-check in, and not to wait for a training to come around so that I can check it off of my beginning of the year to do list. As we are actively engaging in the recruitment and selection process of our colleagues I ask us to think about the social justice questions we are asking and the answers that we are looking for. Is the person really talking about an experience that they were actively engaged with or are they sharing someone else’s story? Talking about issues of social justice is hard, especially when we do self-reflection, but it’s a topic that we as professionals need to continue to discuss in order to push ourselves to grow. We have to talk so that we can continue to challenge and support our students in their ever changing understanding and engagement on this topic.

Thanks to everyone who participated in our #SAchat focused on Serving Undocumented Students in partnership with ACPA Commission of Social Justice Educators. This week’s topic produced 463 tweets from 64 student affairs professionals, graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field!

Full Transcript

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What are some other topics you would like to see us cover? Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong. Until next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to LIKE our Facebook Page. Thanks for your continued support!

The wonderful folks at the Student Affairs Collaborative have agreed to collaborate with some of the folks from the American College Personnel Association’s (ACPA) Commission for Social Justice Educators (CSJE) Directorate this week!

The #sachat on Thursday, December 6 will feature social justice education topics.  The CSJE folks are hoping to develop a twitter chat around social justice education, but want the community to drive that initiative.  We look forward to seeing you for the chat on Thursday and in the future.

To gear up for this week’s social justice chat, three of the CSJE Directorate Body members contributed a short post on what they believe about social justice education.  Inspiration came from This I Believe.

Kayla Nuss (@KaylaJNuss):

“Don’t go past the railroad tracks,” said one of my coworkers. “Oh yeah, I saw a property over there and I was afraid to get out of my car. That’s a really BAD part of town,” responded the other. As I sat listening to my colleagues discuss where they’d looked at homes for sale, I felt it boil up inside me. It was something akin to fury- hot and angry- rising into my throat. I clenched my hands over my keyboard and my nails made marks into my palms. ‘What should I do?” I thought, “I barely know these people. We just started working together What if I ruin the relationship that we’ve just begun building?” As they went on and on about the ‘good parts’ and the ‘bad parts’ of our suburban, mostly white, college town, I just couldn’t stay silent any longer.

“Hey, could you two please come into my office? I need to speak to you both,” I said, my voice trembling and cracking. “I’m worried about the words you’re choosing to use to describe parts of town. Things like ‘good’ or ‘bad’ are pretty loaded terms. Could you tell me why you chose those?” My colleagues stared back at me blankly. I wasn’t sure if it was surprise, horror, embarrassment, or something else on their faces. One finally said, “I guess I never thought about why I’d chosen those words. I just looked around at the houses and cars around some of those neighborhoods and they look run down and old.” I explained that it sounded like they were making huge assumptions about groups of people based on where they lived. I explained that they never knew which one of the students we served lived in the very neighborhood they were describing.

What I believe is that the students I work with and the people in my community deserve my voice. They deserve it because I am in a position of power and privilege. I never earned this power but, based on what I look like, who my parents are, and where I grew up, I have it. And I need to, no, I HAVE to use it- as anxiety provoking as that can be, it’s my responsibility to muster the courage, and care, to use it. It’s my job and that’s what I believe.

Sarah Glassman (@slglassman):

I see it everywhere, it’s systemic; on billboards and in magazines, images of violence against women – images of patriarchy, power and oppression. I hear it on the radio, in song lyrics and spoken by the DJ. It’s on TV, not just on Lifetime, but primetime. Am I the only one who sees it?

It is big and I feel small.

And then I heard it in the hallway near my office “dude, I totally just raped that exam!” It took me more than a minute to realize what I’d heard. With my office door cluttered with ‘Safe Space’ stickers and information about campus resources, it’s rare that I hear students acting so much like…themselves. I peeked out into the hallway to find who was speaking, a student I know. As their friends left I asked if we could talk. We sat in my office and I said, “what did you mean when you said you ‘raped your exam?’” The student explained that it’s “just something people say” and that he “didn’t mean it like that.” We had a conversation about understanding one’s intent versus their impact; we talked about violence against women. Our culture normalizes violence through phrases like the one he had said moments before; and if he’d said that comment in the presence of just a few others it’s likely that one of them has been sexually assaulted.

It may have seemed like an ordinary weekday to him, he may not reflect on the conversation for months or at all. But I believe it’s important to promote a culture that reflects knowledge and awareness through vocabulary and actions.

It wasn’t a long conversation but it’s a drop in the bucket that wouldn’t be there without me.

The language of our rape culture is bigger than any one individual but all of us have the power to do something. I believe I can interrupt and change it. I believe my simple action, my voice, move us toward a more just world.

Erica Thompson (@EricaKThompson):

I remember sitting on the bus, on my way to school in the seventh grade.  I had become old enough to sit at the back of the bus, where the “cool” kids sat, and really enjoyed that half hour or so every morning.  At the time, blonde jokes were all the rage; being naturally blonde, these always made me uncomfortable.  I considered myself smart and capable, something those jokes never portrayed.  I couldn’t see myself in the (almost always) women who received the brunt of the so-called humor.  There were whole books devoted to the concept that women born blonde were inherently stupid, incapable, ditzy, and promiscuous.  I hated them.  Every single day.

Then it got worse.  The blond jokes turned to cultural offenses that I feel ashamed to even discuss.  My young peers cracked up over indecent descriptions of our fellow humans of Polish and Jewish descent.  There are probably other populations whom were struck down with similar obscenities, but I have repressed which specific groups they were.  What I can recall with distinct shame, sadness, and discomfort is how I felt inside when those jokes were rattled off without a second thought.  My heart broke for the people who were the subject – even though my small town Iowan roots had never met anyone like them.

Even as a young teenager, I could feel at my core the injustices in our world because of race, gender, religion, and even appearances.   Those years ago, I didn’t have the knowledge and information to understand those injustices at a societal and academic level nor the tools to address my peers.  Now I have some knowledge and a few tools to do what is referred to as social justice work.  More than ever, though, I have that feeling – deep down inside – that it is my responsibility to work for justice.  This I believe – without working for justice, I will not find peace in my heart.  And I know more than ever before how much work I have to do, both internally and externally.

What do you believe?  Why do you do social justice work (if you do)?

We look forward to connecting with you.

Follow the CSJE Blog – new posts every Tuesday morning at 8 am CST: http://acpacsje.wordpress.com/

I find one of the most daunting things with doing diversity/social justice work is the pressure to not mess up.  The work centers on being able to create inclusive environments for different communities and teaching others to do the same. This means educating ourselves on theories, policies, and trends and becoming ‘experts’ on that information. Often we get tested, disagreed with, and outright challenged. Equipped with our air-tight suit of armor we head into numerous battles determined to camouflage our weakness and present an unmoving force of righteousness.

But what I have learned in my now 8 years in the field is that I mess up. I suck actually. I know that sounds radical, but let me break it down a little more.  I know my sucky-ness isn’t constant but I do know that I am not perfect. I find that when we do social justice work it becomes easy to get a big head. We think we are doing great educating and are able to articulate to others the process of identity, oppression, power and intersectionality; which is much needed work. However, I’ve seen this turn into this elitism that perpetuates this ‘I can do no wrong’ attitude. But we can offend, too.  And really there can be some equal opportunity offending.  Once I recognized this, the easier it was for me to be okay with my mess-ups.

Messing up is natural really. If I have trouble understanding all the complexity of my multiple identities, how could I completely understand the complexity of others?  In essence then, there is going to be something I don’t “get” and probably don’t even know is out there in the first place. That’s the epitome of privilege, not knowing what you don’t know.  Admitting your privilege is always tough no matter how or why you do it. However, I have found there’s this struggle to do so in the field of social justice. Well, at least admit it publicly, because we want to present this idea that we can get it too. It’s like there is this imaginary scale of social justice supremacy that we are trying to progress along.  On this scale, those who educate on the issues have reached the space that others should aspire to. If we admit that we aren’t as far along that scale as others believe we are, we think the world as we know it will come to an end.

I believe when we admit our privilege, that we don’t really ‘get’ it, we not only provide the space for others to do the same, but we truly support targeted identities as well. At times when I have shared my story and my sharing was met with “explain-it-away syndrome” or the proverbial ‘you’re being too sensitive’ comment, all I really wanted to hear was “I don’t understand, I’ve never had to experience that, thank you for sharing.” In those moments of vulnerability, admitting your privilege in ‘not knowing’ provides support that speaks volumes.

The real challenge comes in how we chose to respond in times where we offend. Responding with a simple ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t enough. We must commit to really hearing how we were offensive and how we impacted that person. Then acknowledge that we didn’t understand, and communicate our commitment to continue learning. Lastly, we must follow through with that commitment. That, too, is part of the real work of social justice educators. We are both the teachers and the learners. Just like our work is never done, nor can be our continued growth in understanding others.

Cherjanét Lenzy has worked as the Director of Diversity Affairs at Allegheny College, and most recently served as the Living Learning Coordinator for Intercultural Competency and Diversity with Semester at Sea.

Bill Gates and I don’t often disagree. However, at the recent Techonomy conference, Bill was predicting the future of higher education. I took umbrage with some of his comments. Per his usual rhetoric, Bill positioned technology as the panacea for the future of higher education.

Here are some of Bill’s comments:

“The self-motivated [college] learner will be on the web and there will be far less place-based things.”
“College, except for the parties…. needs to be less place-based.”
“Place-based activity in that ‘college thing’ will be 5 times less important than it is today.”
“The room for innovation, thank God for charters, there’s no room for innovation in the standard system.”

Bill’s commentary at the conference was picked up by TechCrunch and posted as “Bill Gates: In Five Years The Best Education Will Come From The Web.”

The post quickly spread like a wildfire throughout Twitter:

The interesting thing is that the quote that’s being passed around on Twitter as originating from Bill Gates seems to have been actually just the post title from TechCrunch. I wasn’t able to find video or text where Bill Gates actually said what is being attributed to him by a lot of folks on Twitter.

The disturbing aspects of Bill’s quotes from the video are that he seems to have a negative attitude toward the physical spaces of higher education. Bill constructs his arguments around cost and access, but fails to adequately critique his own points. “Self-motivated learners” generally do not include students from traditionally marginalized groups. Bill Gates went to an exclusive preparatory high school and attended Harvard College. His is not a story of overcoming obstacles. Access issues are pervasive in higher education. Socioeconomic status catapulted Gates to where he is today. His arguments around access fail to include awareness of the digital divide in terms of both class and disability. Simply offering more web-based opportunities for learning will not improve access issues. And don’t get me started about the bit about “parties” being the only rationale for “place-based” institutions.

Bill’s rhetoric is consistently anti-student-involvement. Gates approaches his arguments from the position that every student is coming out of an innovative charter school and where self-motivated learners roam the higher education sphere. What Bill is forgetting is that involvement is crucial to student success. Can a student be successful when there primary involvement opportunities take place via the web — absolutely. However, most of our students benefit tremendously from their involvement and interactions within the brick and mortar activities of their educational institution.

Student involvement theory is a foundational element for student affairs professionals. Research has shown that increased involvement leads to higher amounts of persistence and greater academic success.

According to Alexander Astin (1984) [pdf]:

[S]tudent involvement refers to the amount of physical and psycho- logical energy that the student devotes to the academic experience. Thus, a highly involved student is one who, for example, devotes considerable energy to studying, spends much time on campus, participates actively in student organizations, and interacts frequently with faculty members and other students.

Astin (1984) concluded that “the greater the student’s involvement in college, the greater will be the amount of student learning and personal development.”

I wish that Bill Gates would offer a blended approach. Why can’t we have both? Amazing opportunities can be created to support students in both the virtual and physical spheres.

References
Astin, A. (1984). Student involvement: a developmental theory for higher education. Journal of College Student Personnel, 25(4), 297-308.

I am thrilled to announce that I’m going to be blogging about Student Affairs and Technology for Inside Higher Ed (IHE). As an avid reader of IHE, I am very excited to join the IHE blogging team. I think that my posts on student affairs + technology will complement Joshua Kim’s blog on Technology and Learning.

Recently, I held a contest via Twitter to name my new blog. The incentive — a $100 Amazon gift card — courtesy of Inside Higher Ed. Several folks came up with interesting/creative blog names. I think the #SAChat Community provided the majority of ideas. Student Affairs folks are uber creative.

Here are my 3 favorite submissions:

• Jeff Jackson: The Stoller Strikes Back, Return of the Blogosphere, Student Affairs….I am Your Blogger
• Zack Ford: Challenge and Tech Support
• ACUHO-I (sent via DM): Binary Code of Conduct

Choosing a winner from these 3 has been extremely challenging. Star Wars references, Sanford, and an entire Association…how cool is that?!! After more than a week of deliberate (intentional ) deliberating I have decided that the winner of the gift card is:

Zack Ford’s submission made me laugh. It’s subtle….and I love subtlety. The obvious nod / homage to Nevitt Sanford warms the heart. Challenge and Support is one of my all-time favorite, and oft-used, student development theories.

It should be noted that Julie Larsen was correct…the official name of my new blog is going to be: Student Affairs and Technology. The name needed to be something that would be simple enough that any IHE reader would know exactly what it was about. The blog also needed to be search engine friendly…”Students Affairs + Technology” is simple and searchable.

Stay tuned for my first official post on Inside Higher Ed!

Honorable mention:

Julie P-Kirchmeier: Stoller: Resistance is Futile

Niki Rudolph: Epic Stoller

Justine Carpenter: Tech Tips for SAPs

Christopher Conzen: The Stoller Coaster

Summer is in full-swing and we’re all busy bees, getting ready for the start of another new academic year. If you’re like me, this means preparing for leadership training opportunities. And for some of you, this is synonymous with Resident Assistant Training. While you’re putting this beast together, I ask how much emphasis have you and/or your institution placed on training for diversity issues? Although diversity is nothing new to us in Student Affairs, I still find that its emphasis is not on par with our students’ needs.

Yes, we may require a diversity program or two for our RAs, Hall Council, and Residence Hall Association, but how much affect do these programs have? Is open support for the various religions, abilities, races, socioeconomic status, genders, and sexual orientations of our increasingly diverse resident student body enough? And more importantly, how well versed are our student leaders? Is the RA ready to handle a student coming out to them? What would they do when faced with a roommate conflict fueled by religious differences? Could they confidently approach the needs of a wheel-chair dependent resident? The more we think about it, the more nervous it may make us.

Fret not, there’s a solution! An easy way to tackle this concern is introducing (if you have not already) diversity training into your leadership curriculum such as RA Training. As professionals and (pre)-professionals, many of us are ready to tackle these difficult situations, and we do. Nevertheless, it’s paramount that our student leaders are able to face these situations with just as much ease since they are the ones who usually are first confronted with these situations. Below are some Diversity “Behind Closed Doors” or BCD scenarios that I wrote for my department’s Fall Training. If you think it’s time your department tackles diversity training, these may provide you with a good start:

Behind Closed Doors – Diversity-based Situations

Scene 1

Type: Race Relations (Not to be disclosed to RA-in-training)

Prompt Read to RA-in-training:

It is Move-in Day and your residents are really excited to finally get to college! You notice two residents arranging their room and decide to stop by to see them.

Actors:

(Resident 1, Resident 1’s Parent, Resident 2)

Scene to be enacted:

Move-in Day:  Two residents are arranging their room. One resident has a parent with him/her. The RA stops by to see how move-in is going and the parent begins aggressively complaining about how his/her son was put with someone of a different race and that he/she will not have his/her student picking up drugs and becoming promiscuous because of his/her roommate.

RHD: Processing:

1. What did the RA do well?
2. What could the RA have done better?
3. How has training taught us to do in this situation?
4. Is there specific protocol for approaching this situation?
5. Veteran RAs: What advice can you give Rookie RAs?

RHD: Points to make:

1. Ask the parent to join you in the hallway.
2. Explain to the parent that roommates are required to live together for the first two weeks before they can be moved.
3. Explain that being moved will be the choice of the students involved once the two-week waiting period has elapsed.
4. Speak to the students, individually, later to see how they feel about their living situation.
5. If the situation escalates more, send the parent to the RHD.

Behind Closed Doors – Diversity-based Situations

Scene 2

Type: GLBT Coming-Out (Not to be disclosed to RA-in-training)

Prompt Read to RA-in-training:

Two of your residents came to VSU as lifelong best friends and have maintained their friendship despite rooming together. They’re inseparable and never fight. As you’re doing a round, you hear screaming coming from their end of the hall.

Actors:

(Resident 1, Resident 2)

Scene to be enacted:

Two roommates are best friends and are inseparable. They’ve known each other their entire lives and have no secrets—or so one of them thought. After rooming together for almost a semester, one roommate decides to tell the other his/her one secret: he/she is Gay. Roommate 1 is completely flabbergasted and the surprise of it all erupts in homophobic rage. Roommate 1 screams at the other roommate, calling him/her a faggot/dyke and proceeds to run out the door, slamming it behind him/her. The RA calls for your attention but you keep going. The RA stops in to ask Roommate 2 what had just happened. Roommate 2 is in tears and states that he/she just came out to Roommate 1 and doesn’t understand his/her reaction.

RHD: Processing:

1. What did the RA do well?
2. What could the RA have done better?
3. How has training taught us to do in this situation?
4. Is there specific protocol for approaching this situation?
5. Veteran RAs: What advice can you give Rookie RAs?

RHD: Points to make:

1. Both roommates are very emotional right now and it’s your task to sift through their emotions to reestablish their common bond.
2. Have Roommate 2 recount the incident.
3. Locate Roommate 1 and discuss his/her feelings (they’re important, too!).
4. Suggest taking both roommates to a GSA meeting, or inform them of GSA and their services.
5. Discuss the situation with your RHD.
6. Check up on residents to see if their relationship is rebuilding or further deteriorating.

Behind Closed Doors – Diversity-based Situations

Scene 3

Type: Religious Differences (Not to be disclosed to RA-in-training)

Prompt Read to RA-in-training:

Two of your residents are roommates but not friends. You know that they coexist without much communication, but neither of them have explained why. While doing a round, you hear a bunch of commotion followed by screaming and the slamming of a door.

Actors:

(Resident 1, Resident 2, Friends of Resident 2 [if possible])

Scene to be enacted:

Resident 1 is of a traditional, conservative Christian religion. Roommate 2 is a Neo-Pagan (define). Despite Resident 1’s intolerance towards Roommate 2’s beliefs, both residents manage to remain roommates since they have conflicting schedules that keep them separated. Tonight, however, Resident 1 walks in on Resident 2 and his/her friends performing a ritual that involves them sitting in the form of a circle with lit candles and incents amongst them and a religious text in the center of their formed circle. Resident 2 and his/her friends appear to be chanting. Resident 1 bursts into anger and kicks the candles, incents, and text; screams at them and crashes out the door, slamming it behind him/her. Resident 1 sees his/her RA and charges towards him/her demanding a room change.

RHD: Processing:

1. What did the RA do well?
2. What could the RA have done better?
3. How has training taught us to do in this situation?
4. Is there specific protocol for approaching this situation?
5. Veteran RAs: What advice can you give Rookie RAs?

RHD: Points to make:

1. Lead Resident 1 back into his/her room and have all non-residents leave the room.
2. Point out the policy violations with the candles and incents, but do not make the situation about the policy violations, but rather the roommates situation.
3. Emotions are high right now, separating the roommates and speaking to them individually may be a good idea. Start with Roommate 1 since he/she came to you first.
4. Bring the roommates together and use the Talking Stick and Roommate Mediation skills.
5. Be aware that some situations are above your skill set and that is OKAY.
6. If you feel that the situation will only become worse, contact your RHD or the RHD on duty so he/she may investigate and decide on any further action.

Behind Closed Doors – Diversity-based Situations

Scene 4

Type: Socio-economic Status/ First-gen College Student (Not to be disclosed to RA-in-training)

Prompt Read to RA-in-training:

You love community building activities. In fact, you’ve managed to get your entire floor to regularly see movies on opening nights, go off-campus to eat, and they even designed and purchased several floor pride shirts! One of your residents, who used to be just as active as the rest of your floor, has recently stopped going to the movies and off-campus to eat. Tonight, you decide to stop by and see if he/she’s okay and find out why he/she’s changed.

Actors:

(Resident 1)

Scene to be enacted:

Resident 1 hails from a family of low socio-economic status and is a first-generation college student. Although the HOPE Scholarship and his/her Financial Aid covers most of the cost for college, he/she still had to take out a loan for some books and living expenses. Resident 1’s floor is very engaged and regularly sees movies on opening nights, goes off-campus to eat, and even designs and purchases several floor pride shirts. Even though Resident 1 has really enjoyed this, he/she’s realized that continuing this will deplete his/her fixed finances. The RA has noticed that Resident 1 has stopped attending the movies and no longer goes out to eat with the floor. He/she stops by tonight to ask Resident 1 why. Despite Resident 1’s embarrassment, he/she places pride aside and explains his/her situation.

RHD: Processing:

1. What did the RA do well? What could the RA have done better?
2. How has training taught us to do in this situation?
3. Is there specific protocol for approaching this situation?
4. Veteran RAs: What advice can you give Rookie RAs?

RHD: Points to make:

1. Finances can be a sensitive subject to students, so approach them with diligence.
2. Do not hesitate to use the programming budget—designing low-cost and free programs is very simple. Be sure to utilize CAB, RHA and general University events as programs!
3. All students need to understand finances: program a Budgeting/Finance 101 program.
4. Be aware that First Gen students may need more assistance than other students. Plan for this by knowing basic questions to University services and guide them to the resources/services/offices that may help them.
5. Praise your residents’ academic success through programs and conversation: ask residents how they want to be recognized (some wish to be, others do not).

Behind Closed Doors – Diversity-based Situations

Scene 5

Type: Students with Disabilities (Not to be disclosed to RA-in-training)

Prompt Read to RA-in-training:

One of your residents uses a wheelchair for mobility. This resident has been very social and active all semester—coming to hall events and spends a lot of time in the lobby being chummy with other residents. Recently, however, you’ve not seen this resident around. Being concerned, you stop by why the resident is out and ask his/her roommate if everything is okay.

Actors:

(Resident 1)

Scene to be enacted:

Resident 1’s roommate uses a wheelchair for mobility. Lately, Resident 1 has noticed that his/her roommate has become frustrated with the way other residents are treating his/her disability. Resident 1 has seen other residents walk around his/her roommate as he/she is leaving the building since he/she uses a proxy card that automatically opens the doors. Resident 1 has also seen residents make faces, gestures, and comments about his/her roommate being slow and taking up the whole hallway as he/she navigates the building. Resident 1 knows that his/her roommate has become aware of the ignorance/intolerance of other residents has become less active in the hall and is now spending most of his/her time outside the resident hall. When the RA stops by to ask about Resident 1’s roommate, Resident 1 explains the situation.

RHD: Processing:

1. What did the RA do well? What could the RA have done better?
2. How has training taught us to do in this situation?
3. Is there specific protocol for approaching this situation?
4. Veteran RAs: What advice can you give Rookie RAs?

RHD: Points to make:

1. Start the year by discussing a climate of acceptance and expecting diversity. This will set the tone for the year and make residents more aware of one another initially.
2. Talk to the resident experiencing the issue to assess his/her feelings and sentiments.
3. Ask the resident if he/she would be interesting in creating an ability-based program (some residents with disabilities are more than willing, while others would rather not).
4. Become acquainted with the Access Office (aka Disabled Student Development)—they will be glad to help you understand your resident and his/her needs.
5. Do not tolerate any intolerance of any diversity element: treat it as you would any other inconsiderate behavior.

Thanks to everyone who participated in today’s #SAchat focusing on Social Justice in Student Affairs. This week, our numbers were down due to the crazy time of year many of our Student Affairs friends are in!  Today’s chats produced over 600 comments from over 50 student affairs professionals,  graduate students and undergraduates interested or working in the Student Affairs field!

In case you missed it, below is a quick recap. If you haven’t yet participated in an #sachat, learn more here.

Full Transcripts
(You’ll notice that I’ve changed the formatting of the Transcript.  Feel free to add your own comments if you missed the entire chat, a few questions, or comments today!)

DAYTIME:  View as a Google Document

EVENING:  View as a Google Document

Today’s Top Contributors

@jpkirch
@ChrisMacDen
@m_s_nelson
@MikeJHamilton
@NASPAtweets
@JGinese23
@BeccaFick
@reyjunco

Thanks to Stacy Oliver, we now also have Student Affairs links and resources related to the chats! Thanks Stacy!

Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity
A People’s History of the United States
Thinking Class: Sketches from a Cultural Worker
White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son
Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights
The Fire Next Time
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief
The Opening of the American Mind
Catholic Social Justice Teaching

Here’s to another successful set of #sachats!  What are some other topics you would like to see us cover?  Please let us know your ideas and feedback to keep #sachat growing strong.

Until we next week, (if you haven’t already done so) please make sure to join our growing Facebook Page, currently over 2,800 and adding new #studentaffairs friends every day!  Thanks for your continued support!