By Ainsley Hallenbeck and Kaitlyn Van Dyk
Rendering aid and physically showing up for students and staff in the midst of small challenges or complex crises is ingrained in the work of housing professionals at all levels. Often first on the scene, seasoned staff step up to offset the mental, emotional, and physical toll that these situations would take on less trained staff. Typically, directors tackle large problems in stride, compartmentalize their own emotional response, and always find some kind of solution. What happens after the incident is over? When the incident reports are written, and everyone goes home? As professionals who frequently encounter large- and small-scale traumas, directors have developed strategies that help them individually process the events that unfold before them, and they have learned to normalize their responses as much as possible. They carry heavy loads, and while they may appear to carry them well, this does not mean that these situations have no impact on them as professionals and people. Far too often, they are bandaging themselves – the helpers, who don’t know how to ask for help.
Furthermore, RAs get caught up in the endless bandaging cycle as well. When they seek assistance, the director may be too burned out to fully help them during or after a crisis. While sometimes band-aid solutions are necessary (the director can step in and help the student in distress at 3 a.m. and send the RA home to get some rest, assuming they will check in with them later), they are not always effective. What is needed instead are strategies that provide long-term, consistent support for professional and student staff. The new generation of student affairs professionals must continue developing and pushing for sustainable solutions to support staff and themselves.
When staff are continually subjected to secondary trauma, it is easy to ignore their own feelings, and this may seem to normalize their responses to high-stress situations. But when directors become desensitized to crises and trauma, they cannot adequately support those they supervise, who often have less experience in responding to crises and developing healthy support measures. Therefore, it’s imperative to set the stage for both supervisor and supervisee before they are working together in a crisis. "In order to create the most supportive environment for professionals, a foundational relationship rooted in an understanding of the individual’s emotional capacities and professional boundaries is essential preliminary work,” says Emilee Duffy, assistant director of student engagement for the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University. “Building rapport through intentional conversations about an individual’s strengths, goals, and emotional needs will help create a space where professionals feel seen and heard even through the most difficult situations. Effective ways I’ve seen this done is through 1:1 meetings focused on understanding how individuals receive praise and feedback, through strengths-based team development, and through connecting individuals with the right resources and team members to appropriately manage their feelings around difficult situations. These conversations should be ongoing and expectations should be malleable to manage the flux in emotional labor both individuals are enduring."
The check-in is a common strategy used by directors after a crisis, but it can easily become focused on the situation and not the person. Professionals should adopt the mentality of person-first in these follow-up conversations. Supervisors and supervisees may need different things, and it is essential to create an environment where the conversation and concern focuses on the person experiencing the secondary trauma; feedback should always be welcome and acted on. Some may like an in-person check-in while others may want a phone call or virtual meeting, but whatever the meeting style, they need to be frequent and consistent. Approaching check-ins this way opens the door to create sustainable solutions that meet the needs of each staff member.
Creating a person-first environment during check-ins and supporting student staff are both hallmarks of JoAnna Raucci’s management style. As the assistant director of residential life for diversity, equity, and inclusion at Virginia Commonwealth University, Raucci has supported many student staff through challenging times on campus during recent years and has found that one of the most important steps in working with students is to clearly identify the issue at hand, which opens the door to a deeper conversation about the feelings at hand. “I found that naming an issue directly was a great tool to get into deeper conversations, more so than typical open-ended questions. I was finding that there are often so many overwhelming issues at once that saying them out loud helped students begin to bring those issues into focus and begin processing them.” Raucci also notes that providing a combination of strategies for student staff to process trauma helps them get through it. “I learned from my experiences in 2020 and beyond that often it is a combination of offering breaks, confronting significant issues, building our mental health care, and role-modeling true self care in authentic ways.”
Supervisors and supervisees may need different things, and it is essential to create an environment where the conversation and concern focuses on the person experiencing the secondary trauma; feedback should always be welcome and acted on.
Self-advocacy is an important facet of avoiding long-term band-aid solutions. Staff should check in with themselves and their bodies, identify needs, and vocalize them within their department or institution. Self-advocacy can and should be supported by the department, division, institution, and staff. Departmental staff should seek to understand what may be plausible when it comes to support within their department and identify things that may be within its control. After a late duty night or a critical situation, it may be possible to ask for some flexibility with work hours. What’s important is that they have some down time to process their own reactions and feelings. Campus housing professionals are resilient because they have often trained themselves to be, but suppressing their emotions and continually pouring from an empty cup is not sustainable.
From a divisional perspective, it is important for directors to identify how to best advocate for their staff. Considering the nuances and challenges of these positions, it may be possible to ask human resources and upper management for flexible work schedules. This can take the conversation about paid time off or administrative time off to the next level, but some offices can simply allow their on-call teams a partial day off in the week following their on-call rotation. In addition to this, well-being initiatives at the institutional, state, regional, and national levels often include employee assistance programs, affinity groups, or initiatives to support the physical and mental well-being of staff.
Getting involved in the community off campus, especially for live-on staff, can provide much-needed separation from work and the opportunity to meet more people who can support them through difficult times. Supervisors should encourage this and explain how beneficial this support is to staff. Certainly, community support can be found in family and friends or counselors and therapists who are not affiliated with their campus role, but this support can be expanded to other people by getting involved in community volunteer organizations or activities like art classes, baking classes, or sports leagues.
Asking for help and working for impactful change can be difficult, but professionals will never know the possibilities that may exist if they never start the conversation. All those in management roles need to be a part of the discussion and the solutions in order to create an environment where staff feel encouraged to ask for help and then supported when they make the request. Putting a band-aid on a situation may be the right choice initially, but this is not a good long-term option. Instead, supervisors should build rapport with staff prior to an incident and then follow up with actions that are based on specific information about a staff person’s needs. This is what leads managers to intentional practices that are geared toward someone else’s wellness. These actions are the ones that begin to shape the long-term and sustainable solutions for staff. These actions can help break the damaging cycle of trauma, fatigue, and burnout.
Ainsley Hallenbeck is the hall director for the Honors College at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. Kaitlyn Van Dyk is the assistant director of living-learning programs at the University of Richmond in Virginia.
