compiled by Tina Tormey
Read any professional publication, and you’re sure to find an article about student engagement changes post-pandemic. Some of us expected that the return to normal would result in a Roaring '20s-esque sense of engagement as we all filled our social buckets, but it seems like the quiet time during the months of lockdown and remote engagement actually resulted in more students questioning over-involvement, crafting more time for wellness and independent activities, and resisting engagement in some ways. As a result, many schools have struggled to rebuild Residence Hall Associations (RHAs), which previously had a longstanding tradition of providing critical student advocacy in the residence halls and supplementing social and community engagement programming. A number of schools are discussing and testing out methods to rebuild engagement or considering alternative models that better align with the targeted experiences that residents are seeking.
Back in March, dozens of housing professionals got together on an informal Zoom call to discuss the challenges and solutions they are experiencing with re-establishing those advocacy and social engagement opportunities on their campuses. We reached out to a handful of colleagues who have been having similar conversations to find out how they are navigating these challenges: Tomás Sanchez, director of residence life at the University of North Texas; John (Jack) Bushell, assistant director of residence life at the University of Hartford; and Lisa Weston, associate director of residence life at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.
Lisa Weston: We had moved away from a traditional RHA before 2020. But one of the largest pressure points during and immediately after was a call from students for transparency and communication. As we all know, this was a difficult ask as we were often building the plane while flying and couldn't always communicate what was coming quickly enough for students. Some students asked for a more formal student leader organization that would grant them more access in communication with our director or leadership staff.
Tomás Sanchez: Our RHA became defunct by the end of fall 2020. Not being able to interact with a community in person was enough to have those officers leave the organization and campus. When campus went back to normal (as normal as campus gets) in the fall of 2021, we had made the decision to hold off on starting up an RHA since there wasn’t a pool to recruit from in the spring semester, given only a 60% occupancy rate and COVID-era programming guidelines.
John (Jack) Bushell: We had students throughout the pandemic, and a lot of our student organizations became more active again in 2021-22. Our hall council system did not resurface, and our RHA had fewer students interested in being part of the organization. We noticed that students did not want to participate much in the organization but wanted to really enjoy events and time with each other. With changing leadership, there was no professional staff member who really understood the organization and could continue to lead it. While talking with the executive board, they were more focused on wanting to plan events and continue to have a place on campus in the programming world.
Weston: We have altered a hall council model so that it is purely about student engagement and each residence hall has a core team. We've removed as many barriers as possible. No elections. If you want to craft your experience, join the core team! The goal of that group is purely social, so they create various events, small or large, for residents of the hall. Our senior staff/lead RA advises this group in collaboration with the residence director. The output of the group varies greatly. Some years a residence hall may have 26 core team members and may offer very few events. Other years the core team in that hall may have five members who create elaborate and highly attended events. We are comfortable with both.
Sanchez: For hall councils and CCE (Community Connections Experience, our version of RHA), we started from scratch in how we recruit and select students. For hall councils starting in fall of 2021, we began using the philosophies from Democracy in Practice that executive board members are selected via lottery and are clarified to be volunteers. We collected data for that year and are running information for 2022-23. We found that students were more likely to stay in their position (91%) when selected via lottery in 2021-22 as opposed to being selected via interviews (anywhere from 60% to 80% for academic years 2015-20). We are starting a similar approach for CCE with a more selective lottery process, one that requires experience. We filled two positions with returning students and left other positions open for first-year students. Those working in CCE positions are clarified as employees and receive free housing.
Bushell: We have focused our group on more expansive programming. We are still working on what the advocacy looks like for the residential students on our campus. Currently our student government association is a strong advocate for students on campus, including residential and commuters. Our RHA has morphed into the Residential Life Programming Committee (RLPC) to plan bigger events.
Weston: In the final few years of RHA on our campus, advocacy was difficult. I think it was difficult for advisors to coach them through effective advocacy practices. Students found themselves writing resolutions that the popcorn ceilings in our residence hall rooms be removed. Every professional involved knew something like that wasn't feasible based on cost, ongoing projects, timeline, etc., even though we agreed with the sentiment. Honestly, in part, some of our say in how we do our work has also changed. Asking students to advocate on things like cost, COVID protocols, or needing elevators leads them to a dead end and a lot of feelings of discouragement. Instead, we've found pockets of invested students and challenged them in ways where we can make movement. We ask our RA staff class to complete a project called "Improving What We Do in Residence Life." We gain incredible insight and ideas from students in that assignment. Likewise, we might empower the National Residence Hall Honorary (NRHH) to consider ways to repurpose a courtyard with a pre-allocated budget. These are ways for us to help students feel a win in the interest of advocacy, and they develop tools to advocate in their own future lives.
Sanchez: I think many students don’t feel like they have agency in decision-making processes. COVID had a significant impact on that, as many folks looked at leaders within organizations to make decisions, often in crisis mode.
Bushell: When talking to students, it seems as though they are not sure where to start and do not know what they want to advocate for. Students at the University of Hartford are very focused on their academic program, which leads to an uphill process when it comes to engagement in advocacy.
Weston: The largest burden I have noticed is the request for more transparency and communication from our professional leadership team. Our shift has been to empower our residence directors (RDs) to have more information and share it. There is a lot less frustration on teams where the director is highly communicative and open to conversations with students. Interestingly, our students have had a variety of open opportunities to speak with the director or associate directors, and most do not take us up on that offer. The more we create relationships with students in other ways, the more comfortable they are with an informal approach to communication, and that seems to resolve some of the angst.
Sanchez: When our RHA went away, some campus partners and offices didn’t notice until we returned to “normal” in fall of 2021. In that regard, there was no impact. For the ones that did rely on RHA more consistently, we tapped our full-time and student employees to step in, compensating them for their time in those roles.
Bushell: After having one year away from an RHA, there is not much stress on other student leaders or staff. Our students were not typically using all of the resources that were at their disposal in an RHA. This made the transition to a programming board easier on our campus.
Weston: We need to start by defining engagement and then decide why that's important. We are great at providing opportunities. We also need to be humble enough to acknowledge that many students can be quite successful without ever engaging in our expected and measured ways. When we talk about community engagement, we do so through a lens that likely benefited us as students. But how many of us have moved off campus and don't know our own neighbors? Let's remember that some of our students come from a similar experience growing up. If they are connected to a different community on campus (marching band, religious org, intramurals, etc.), that has to be okay too! Who else on campus is already doing the work you hope RHA is doing?
Sanchez: Cut back on barriers to participation, and create easier forms of access. Our election processes often get folks good at running for office but not necessarily running an office. Our interview processes can be time-consuming for students and staff, and we’re just as likely to get things wrong as we are right in those processes. It’s all right to eliminate things like reference checks, group interviews, essay questions, and election campaigns. Our students got this far – why are we putting barriers in place for them possibly going farther?
Bushell: We need to focus on having students know each other and have a sense of belonging to their communities. The communities can be different, but helping foster those creations is important. We need to get back to helping students re-learn how to talk to one another in person by teaching them how to listen and talk to one another. Once those skills are learned, it will be easier to get students involved in campus events and groups.
Tina Tormey is the director of residential education and housing at The College of New Jersey in Ewing.