FIRST PERSON
by Ashley Unmacht
Back in the fall of 2020, when the world was deep in the trenches of the COVID-19 pandemic, I remember campus housing colleagues around the world sharing that their communities felt quiet, empty, and eerie. My experience could not have been more different. While others had the sounds of silence, I was strategically muting myself in virtual meetings because students were warming up their singing voices in the courtyard outside my University of Arizona office window. When I walked through the common areas of my hall, I had to be careful lest I end up in the background of a Zoom ballet class. Such was life when you’re the director of a living-learning community dedicated to the arts.
I’m not exactly sure how I found myself overseeing an upbeat, active, and exciting population of fine arts students. Four years of middle school band, a sculpture elective, and a “World of the Arts” gen ed course were my only previous first-hand experiences with the arts. But after three years in my current role, I’ve developed a much deeper appreciation for performers, their craft, and the additional support they may sometimes require.
Some of my first memories of working with fine arts students include their facing unique challenges during those earliest, most restrictive pandemic days. Among these obstacles were transforming their tiny rooms into art studios, belting out high notes while wearing a mask, and navigating major delays in senior film project productions due to COVID exposures. Ultimately, I witnessed students trying to figure out how to properly fit their inherently collaborative disciplines into much more restrictive boxes. And, yes, sometimes this included literal boxes, like when students were expected to dance in designated blue-tape squares to uphold physical distancing requirements. Learning about these limitations was surprising, but for me the jarring part of those stories is how long these obstacles remained unknown to me. It is clear to me now that the students’ lack of complaints, comparisons, and needs to process these hardships with me were due to the quiet hustle tendencies of student artists.
While I understood that many college students face challenges like lacking sleep, lacking access to basic needs, and struggling with various mental health issues, I quickly learned how and why these challenges could be exacerbated for the artistic students I worked with. Moving through doubts about one’s career and self-worth looks a bit different when people – loved ones included – may believe the arts are more a hobby than a career. Surely, disordered eating, depression, and anxiety can be intensified when a performer’s classroom environment regularly includes competition and pushing the limits of one's body. Certainly, taking 21 credit hours a semester feels like the norm when there is high pressure to double- and triple-major to maintain a “realistic” alternative plan to a career in the arts. As harsh as these realities are for all my student residents, I learned that they are often more intensified for students with marginalized identities, especially considering the historically elitist tendencies of the arts.
I am constantly evaluating what my role in student development looks like for this unique student population. For example, what protocol makes sense for students practicing stage combat in a common area? To most anyone passing by, it will look like a real physical altercation. Or how might a person best address an anxious student preparing for their symphonic band audition in the building basement at 6 a.m. and, unbeknownst to them, waking up dozens of residents? And what is a helpful response when a dance major RA calls after breaking their foot in class, knowing that the setback of their injury would go far beyond work accommodations for someone in the performing arts? I’d be disingenuous if I said my responses to these nuanced situations didn’t keep me up some nights.
Alongside these conundrums, there also are some inherent truths I’ve come to learn about supporting fine arts students. I’ve learned that support may mean attending recitals, concerts, performances, and shows as a cheerleader and number one fan. It means modeling that unconditional support does not have to be earned but instead is given freely. It means upholding the truth that artistic talents are labor, and that exposure is not a substitute for real compensation. Support means making space for creative freedom, like staff-bonding “jam seshes” and staff meeting team builders modeled after the riff-off in the movie Pitch Perfect. It is affirming that the excitement and energy that performers bring to spaces is not too much for this world. It means reminding students that their efforts, in the best way possible, are not those of a typical student. And sometimes support is simply trying not to dread the already tense environment of duty scheduling that feels even more escalated with the restrictions of rigorous rehearsal timelines.
Overall, this journey alongside these fine arts students has shaped me into becoming a more supportive, present, and fulfilled housing professional. Perhaps most valuable, though, has been the fact that working with fine arts students has reminded me how to have fun. My vault of kooky stories includes enthusiastically participating in musical numbers for TikTok, singing my heart out to the 10-minute karaoke version of Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well,” and acting in a student’s short film. If I were to tell my graduate school self (let alone my middle school self) about these endeavors, she would not believe I’d have worked up the courage to not take myself so seriously at work, a transformation for which I am incredibly grateful. As Ms. Darbus, the infamous theater teacher in Disney’s High School Musical, put it, “proximity to the arts is cleansing for the soul.”
Ashley Unmacht is a community director at the University of Arizona in Tucson. She received the 2023 ACUHO-I Outstanding New Professional Award.
