by J.C. Stoner
There’s no question that higher education institutions are political environments, and, as a subset of those institutions, student housing departments and those who work in them must consider the internal and external factors that accompany them. As staff progress through their careers and navigate those potentially treacherous journeys, they do so by accruing and exchanging that fundamental intangible currency: capital.
Learning to work within political environments and wielding capital can be difficult, especially considering that there are limited courses or training on the topic. Compounding the complexity, “Navigating politics is a reality that is often outside your sphere of influence,” says Drew Jahr, senior associate director for facilities at Texas Tech University. Furthermore, there are countless layers of nuance and subtlety associated with developing a political savviness, which takes time, patience, and experience to grow. The necessity of understanding departmental or campus politics is underscored by Adonis Thompson, a former associate director of residence life at Arkansas State University and current StarRez project consultant. “It is important to know if the politics will align or cause major issues with personal and professional values that an employee may hold.”
The application and necessity of political capital are often thought of as concerns for those whose jobs are higher on the organizational chart. However, accruing and spending political capital is not exclusive to high-level, complex situations. Molly Albart, assistant vice president for student affairs at The University of Texas at Arlington, remembers how a mid-level housing professional acquired capital solely based on an elevated knowledge of spreadsheet formulas. "It was not directly related to his role, but when others in the division needed help with a data set, he was the person to call."
Such is the nature of capital. Capital exchanges do not have to be convoluted, mysterious, or steeped in subtlety and nuance. One key takeaway from Pierre Bourdieu's seminal article, “The Forms of Capital,” is how capital is valuable because it is scarce. That statement is perhaps even more true today than when it was originally published in 1986. While Bourdieu specifically wrote about converting cultural and social capital into financial capital, the same concept of scarcity applies to political capital in housing departments and throughout institutions of higher education.
Consider, for instance, a job title as a form of political capital. The further one moves up in the organizational hierarchy, the scarcer job titles become; housing departments have countless resident assistants but only one director. The scarcity of the director title, by default, provides some amount of political capital not afforded to the masses. But job title alone is not a sufficient source of continuously accrued capital. As Tanya Massey, senior managing director at Texas Tech University, acknowledges, “You see a lot of committees with lots of high-ranking titles, but not a lot of output.” Having the capital of an elevated job title may get a professional a seat at the table, “but the title does not matter as much as the ability to accomplish the goal,” Massey adds.
Similarly, an employee's longevity can provide political capital because of how few people have a tenure that extends, for example, through three different directors or two different vice presidents. “One would assume a staff member with longevity has a more robust network of connections around campus,” Albart notes, and “Knowledge is the most obvious capital that exists for those with longevity,” adds Kevin Cook, director of communications and parent engagement at Kansas State University, suggesting that historical knowledge can be a valuable supplement to accruing capital due to having additional context that others do not have.
Having expertise is also a form of political capital. Expertise can be simplified to general experience because one does not have to be a leading scholar or someone regularly hired for public speaking engagements to convert expertise capital. “Niche skills do add to one’s capital, especially when it is a topic that can increase value within the department,” says Thompson. For example, staff with even the slightest aptitude for assessment maintain a trove of capital due to the scarcity of command and confidence in this area that is projected by many student affairs professionals. Personnel who can write well and convey ideas succinctly have capital solely based on the fundamental skill of writing and may find that capital leveraged when asked to write influential departmental documents.
Access to various resources is another form of political capital. Housing departments, for example, are frequently called upon by other departments for help in ensuring successful participation in a signature program because of their access to and influence over a large volume of the student population that other departments lack. In this example, the resource being accessed is physical bodies, but there is also access to other resources, like auxiliary-funded money, physical spaces, or personnel. Capital can be accrued in this area most obviously by sharing those resources with others who have a deficit of resources, like one large public institution in the Southwest where the housing department allowed access to housing classrooms while several academically owned educational spaces were under renovation. On the other hand, according to Albart, having an abundance of a particular resource can also mean a person or a department may be less reliant on others, so they don’t have to spend their capital to accrue those unneeded resources.
Most housing professionals know the value of being visible to residents, but visibility within a department or a division can be considered another form of capital. According to a senior housing officer (SHO) in Texas, “When you are visible, it usually means you have stepped up, taken on responsibilities, and taken risks. When successful, this can build powerful capital.” Visible professionals may also be top-of-mind to people in positions of authority, appearing to have all their affairs in order, so they have additional availability to support the department in different ways. But this form of capital can involve a difficult balancing act because what about a professional who is too visible? Do they not have work they should be doing? For instance, as Massey reflects, “I spend a lot of time walking buildings and getting out of my office and attending events I know are important to be visible at, but there also comes a point where the work still needs to get done. If you are always out and about, you can’t get to the report on your desk or the project you need to turn in this week.”
Understanding the core aspect of capital having value due to scarcity helps break down a political environment into small-scale tangible actions for individual professionals to consider. Such a mindset can demystify the complexity of the existing environment while also reducing the feeling that navigating political environments is a dirty game. Still, it is all in how an individual accrues and leverages their capital. An assistant vice president in the Southwest shared observations on how, when a new campus leader comes on board, some staff try to take advantage of the capital held in the new leader’s job title but, in the process, “circumvent current supervisors in an attempt to align themselves closely with the new leader who is presumed to have political capital.” Such efforts can be messy and aren’t always advisable. Still, as Cook explains, “many folks equate engaging in campus politics with something disreputable,” but “understanding the political landscape on campus is vital to success and, most importantly, serving students.”
Understanding the core aspect of capital having value due to scarcity helps break down a political environment into small-scale tangible actions for individual professionals to consider. Such a mindset can demystify the complexity of the existing environment while also reducing the feeling that navigating political environments is a dirty game.
The basic forms of capital presented do not exist in isolation. Not only do they interplay, but they are best supplemented with strong job performance. That strength only works with a positive work history because, as an SHO in the Southwest emphasized, “Treating people poorly, not being effective, and failing to move the needle on your mission will lower your capital.” Adding to previous examples, the former Midwestern SHO recalled being tasked by the chancellor to conduct the cleanup of a chemical spill in a non-housing facility despite the fact that the task should have been assigned to campus facilities. “The chancellor trusted my work performance but had little faith in the director of campus facilities,” the former SHO remarked. Jahr concurs: “Capital may get you a seat at the table, but your proven track record keeps you there.”
But it is also important to recognize that, by nature, systems are designed to replicate themselves. Experience capital is a prime example of how capital replicates itself for the benefit of those who already have it, therefore creating and amplifying inequities. To illustrate how capital reproduction can exacerbate capital inequity, consider what happened during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Staff who had already accrued unique capital in concise, clear, and procedural writing – an experience skillset that is relatively scarce under any circumstance – were likely called upon almost daily to document procedures for moveouts, meal deliveries, or any number of other important and substantial process changes. In this scenario, the person with the capital is given further opportunities to not only leverage that capital but is also allowed to reproduce that same capital by being involved in important and influential processes, when others who lack that capital cannot reproduce it for future benefit or exchange.
It then becomes the onus of supervisors to use their capital to engineer ways for staff who may not possess a specific form of capital to have opportunities to develop a skillset when deadlines are not urgent, provide visibility to staff when possible, or find other ways to develop capital in scarce but tangible areas. There is also an inherent benefit to business continuity in spreading the wealth of capital. As Thompson reflects, staff with capital “are also looking to teach others these skills, as one problem that can arise is once the person with capital leaves, the knowledge and skills they have is also gone.”
These suggested forms of capital are simplified in order to be relevant and tangible to individual staff, but, as some examples suggested, they can also easily be scaled up and translated to a department’s capital within their division or the entire campus. What department typically has the most personnel who can be leveraged as resources to support another departmental or institutional signature initiative? When there is a campus-wide emergency, what department is often relied upon for its unique crisis management experiences? What department has the most visibility to one of the largest subsets of students? The answer is housing, housing, and housing. Just as individuals can gain capital through their value, so departments can facilitate capital exchanges on a broader scale with a larger impact.
If capital transactions can be oversimplified as exchanging favors, housing departments and successful professionals generally have favors in the bank awaiting future use. The issue then becomes determining under what circumstances and with whom to leverage that capital, or even whether or not to do so. As one associate vice president puts it, “Sometimes it is nice to know the president of the university owes you a favor you have no intention of ever calling in.”
J.C. Stoner is the associate director for housing operations at The University of Texas at Dallas. He also is an associate editor for The Journal of College and University Student Housing.