questions by Camille Perlman
Creating living-learning communities (LLCs) for marginalized students can be exciting work. It’s an opportunity to make a student’s life better and enhance their campus and academic experience. However, this work has become a bit harder today because of shrinking staff sizes and budgets. How do you create an LLC that is both meaningful for students and feasible for the campus to offer?
To gain a better understanding of how members are creating these LLCs, the Talking Stick posed this question to the membership via the online community. Additionally, the Talking Stick reached out to one of the authors of a recent article in The Journal of College and University Student Housing for more perspective on this topic. Here to share how they developed their LLCs are Allie Wisker, assistant director for residence life at Southeast Missouri State University; Scott Helfrich, director of university housing and conference services at Millersville University; and Chester Miller, Jr., director of residential learning at North Carolina State University and coauthor of “What Do Students Want? Designing a Living-Learning Community for LGBTQ+ Students” in The Journal of College and University Student Housing, Vol. 49, No. 1.
Allie Wisker: We met with a wide range of folks when developing this community. Specifically, the people we interacted with the most during its development were the then-graduate assistant for our LGBTQ+ Resource Center and the dean of students/assistant to the president for equity and diversity. We shared the direction in which we wanted to go, got feedback from them on what we were proposing, and listened to any concerns and thoughts they had. They were integral in ensuring that a well-planned and well-thought-out community was brought forward.
Scott Helfrich: I initially reached out to the director of our multicultural center to start a conversation about my department sponsoring an LGBTQ+ & Allies LLC with the residence halls. I felt there could be a natural collaboration between this new LLC and the Social Advocacy LLC (social work, psychology, sociology) that already existed in the residence hall where I planned to host the new LLC. I knew that faculty and staff partners would be supportive of the initiative, given the commitment to DEI efforts here at Millersville University.
Chester Miller, Jr.: The idea to establish an LGBTQ+ LLC was initiated by student government resolutions. Once this legislation was passed, campus partners in the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity, the campus GLBT Center, and housing convened for a series of meetings to discuss this legislation and our formal process for onboarding a new LLC. Our campus used the framework provided by the text Living-Learning Communities That Work: A Research-Based Model for Design, Delivery, and Assessment to formalize a process and timeline for LLC creation that works for our institution. The process includes a detailed checklist with checkpoints along the way for campus partners to meet with housing to ensure that they are on track to successfully onboard the LLC.
Wisker: Students were very involved in the process. We had several students on the committee that finalized the plan. This included the president of PRIDE, our LGBTQ+ organization, and the president of the Residence Hall Association. RHA wrote and passed a resolution in support of the initiative. I went to speak to PRIDE about the plan to get feedback, answer any questions that students had, and promote the community. We also conducted surveys and tabling events. We wanted to make sure that students supported the direction we were going and that all questions were answered. We continue to engage with students in the community each year to see if there are any changes needed.
Helfrich: Honestly, I didn’t have to ask students for feedback, as I already knew that there was a need and desire from them to have a living-learning experience for those identifying as LGBTQ+. Given the broad DEI dialogue on campus (as well as nationally) and successful programmatic efforts by our campus community at large, I was confident that any student-centered initiatives within the residence halls would be supported by our students. I wanted to implement something as soon as possible and not spend a lot of time with committee discussion and other dialogue. There is always the ability to refine a program along the way with student leadership.
Miller: Because legislation was passed by the student government, for the sake of transparency it was important to have student leaders at the table to discuss the process for creating a new LLC and determine what our next steps were. We also wanted to learn more about where the legislation originated and about some of the driving factors that led to the idea that an LLC was the best solution. LLCs cannot be successful without student buy-in and interest. It is important to include formalized assessment strategies to capture student feedback during the exploration phase of LLC creation. In this instance, we advertised a number of focus groups across campus in residential communities, multicultural student affairs, the GLBT Center, and the African American Cultural Center to attract a wide variety of voices.
Wisker: Like many campuses, we do not have a lot of staff, but we worked to make sure that this was a priority during development. This included having the director of our office involved in every step of the process.
Helfrich: Luckily, we are blessed to have the resources and staff to dedicate to our living-learning communities in general. I always encourage faculty and staff collaborators to crowdsource opportunities for engagement in addition to what they create on their own. There are many avenues to utilize already existing campus activities as part of any LLC program while also reaching out to the university community and the broader local community to create new engagement opportunities.
Miller: For the LGBTQ+ LLC, our partners were challenged both with the staffing and funding needed to support an LLC. Partners from the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity and Campus Community Centers came to the table expecting housing to fund and staff the LLC while they play a supporting role. When we shared what it would take not just to onboard the LLC, but also to sustain it yearly, it was eye-opening for our campus partners. We provided a typical budget for a new LLC, using as a model the smallest LLC currently established, including the staffing model (professional and paraprofessional staff), salaries, and programming budgets.
Staffing structure and resources are critical elements for creating LLCs. They provide the strong foundation needed to fuel their success. Within the formalized process for LLC creation, we require a commitment from campus partners for resources they will be able to provide to sustain the LLC long term. We use the term resources in this instance instead of budgets because not all partners have the financial resources readily available. A mixture of staffing, in-kind support, and financial resources can all contribute to the long-term sustainability of an LLC. We use a memorandum of understanding between housing and campus partners to negotiate and outline what support looks like for the LLC. This helps to hold all parties accountable to the partnership, clarifies who will be responsible for what, and sets the LLC up for success.
Wisker: We continue to promote the community during our orientation events (it is included when discussing all of our special interest housing), share information with our LGBTQ+ Resource Center, and share information about it with new folks as they join the institution.
Helfrich: We equally promote all our LLCs and encourage our staff and faculty collaborators to market their respective programs as well. We enjoy sharing LLC opportunities with current and prospective students and their families. We do this through a variety of channels, including our website, blog, social media, and during open house events and orientation. Students are encouraged to participate at any point during their academic career if they reside within the residence halls. For the LGBTQ+ & Allies LLC specifically, we emphasize the welcoming, inclusive, engaging, and safe environment that students can expect from the program.
Miller: We shape the awareness of the community through intentional conversations with everyone on campus. These conversations drive the marketing plan for recruitment and advertisement, messaging to the campus community, and determination of any potential for risk. For an identity-based LLC, you really want to explore an institutional approach for awareness. We worked with student leadership, student organizations, admissions, campus partners, and academic units to clarify both positive and negative perspectives, the need the community will serve, and how we might address any negative implications connected to its creation. This serves as the groundwork for a risk management plan and requires additional conversations with bias impact response teams, counseling services, prevention services, the Office of Student Conduct, the Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity, and, most importantly, the GLBT Center for a concrete risk mitigation strategy.
Wisker: We were lucky to have great support from leaders at our institution. We made sure to keep the necessary parties informed about the direction we were going. We were mindful that there were probably people that don’t support the creation of this community, but we were prepared and continue to be prepared to address those concerns. Overall, feedback and thoughts have been overwhelmingly positive.
Helfrich: Our campus prides itself on fostering multiple DEI efforts on campus and within the larger community, so I was confident that an LGBTQ+ & Allies LLC could be easily developed. There are many structures in place at our institution, including the Office of Diversity and Inclusion and three associated President’s Commissions (Status of Women, Cultural Diversity and Inclusion, Gender and Sexual Diversity) that aim to foster a university climate that promotes equity, inclusion, mutual respect, civility, and affirmation. There are multiple DEI-related program opportunities here for students, including Pridefest, Rainbow Graduation, affinity meetups, and numerous other student engagement opportunities.
Miller: Having conversations about an LGBTQ+ LLC was very challenging for our institution, which is located in a historically conservative state with conservative ideals and values and where the HB2 anti-LGBTQ law was established. Students from underserved communities and our LGBTQ+ students often do not feel welcomed in community spaces on our campus. Our campus climate studies often indicate that the residential community is not safe for LGBTQ+ students. They are targets of all sorts of aggressions from faculty, staff, and students. Even more alarming was feedback from our focus group data, which indicated that queer and trans students of color were even being targeted by other LGBTQ+ students within the GLBT Center. Not surprising were concerns that having an LGBTQ+ LLC would expose students to their families and friends, which could create an incredibly harmful environment for them.
Wisker: Luckily none! Overall, it has been such a great experience to be involved in the development and implementation of this community. Students have enjoyed the experience, and some of them continue to return to the community year after year.
Helfrich: I am proud to say that there were no institutional challenges when creating our LGBTQ+ & Allies LLC. One of the biggest reasons that I chose to work at Millersville University was that there was a specific objective in the university’s strategic plan to enhance living-learning communities for students. I wanted to work at an institution that truly understood the power of the LLC experience. I did not want to be somewhere where LLCs were merely a “housing and residence life thing” and not viewed as part of the larger institutional context. The creation of this LLC would directly tie into our strategic direction of transforming student experiences and fostering innovation.
Miller: During this process, three distinct challenges were becoming clear. Identity development and intersectionality within the LGBTQ+ community warranted further review. Themes from focus groups revealed that trans and queer students of color did not feel a sense of belonging or included in community center spaces on campus, which created significant concerns about the potential of an LLC to be a welcoming space for all students. A second challenge was the campus climate in general. Institutional campus climate surveys highlighted concerns about harassment and discrimination in residence halls, lack of support from faculty who refused to use preferred pronouns and thus created hostile learning environments, and the increasing lack of adequate mental health support for students. Last, but certainly not least, we were challenged by local and state policies that seek to minoritize sexual orientations and/or gender identities. Faculty, staff, and administrators in executive leadership are concerned about the support provided by alumni, donors, boards of trustees, and legislators for the institution. Once the pandemic started, we paused conversations on a new LLC to serve LGBTQ+ students, but these concerns led to the submission of a research grant to study this further.
Camille Perlman is the managing editor of Talking Stick.
