It is really, really difficult for me to believe that this semester is very quickly coming to a close. In fact, our class on Thursday is my last little bit of this semester that I have left. It is even crazier to me that I am halfway done with my master's degree. Man, time flies. But it definitely has been fun.
Without question the best class I have taken this semester has been this one. And I'm not just saying that. I have learned so much from the real life applications that this class has provided me. That, and Sparky's anecdotes.
Today I spent some time looking back through my old blog entries. The variation of topics is really pretty staggering. I first wrote about the college student today, where I found lots of facts and figures from NASPA that helped me figure out more about who we serve as student affairs professionals. I then wrote about free speech, followed by school shootings. I still remember to this day the effect the UAH shooting had on me personally. Then I wrote about restorative justice, student protest, and spirituality - where I found out students are a lot more spiritual than we thought. After a huge change of gears, I wrote about sex on a college campus, an eco-friendly college campus, and student unions. We pretty much covered the gamut of topics in this class, and because of that, I learned so much.
I will take away many things from this class. First, I kind of feel like we all got to learn at the foot of the master - Sparky has been doing this now for such a long time that if you don't listen to his words of wisdom and pieces of advice, you're really foolish. I enjoyed class most when Sparky just told stories. Secondly, I really liked interacting with the other students in the class. I think we can all say we learned at least one thing from one another. We all come from such a varied set of backgrounds that we all had something to teach one another. Finally, I liked the way the course was set up. We didn't have to fiddle with textbooks or lectures. We just talked to one another. That is actually how I learn the best. We just came in, sat down, and talked. Each one of us got our turn, and we all learned something along the way.
I seriously doubt I will have a class this great again. It will be hard to top. I really need to say thank you for the learning experience. I have learned not only more about our profession but about myself, and the type of professional that I want to be.
Sparky asked in class the other day "are y'all sure you want to do this?" I think he was kidding - he had had a long day of meetings - but in all seriousness, this class has reinforced my belief that yes, I do want to do this, and I am excited to spend my life in this profession.
Thank you for a great semester.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Student Unions Matter
If I had a dollar for every time I heard one of my beloved co-workers - namely you, Sparky! - say that we need a new Student Union (always said in a funnier way than that) than I would probably have enough money to break ground and start construction on the dang building.
The long and short of it is that student unions matter, and most if not all people I have spoken with at Ole Miss think ours is an eyesore.
Shoot, I was even in a meeting with Chancellor Jones today in Room 404 of the Union - a room where the carpet is particularly disturbing - and he mentioned right then and there that we needed a new Student Union. Another dollar in my pocket!
A friend and I love to visit college campuses, and this semester alone we have visited UGA, Auburn, and Mississippi State. (I visited Alabama by myself this semester so I'll count that in there too.) Whenever we visit a college campus we always, always make sure to stop by the Student Union and compare it to ours. All four of the Student Unions at the campuses I just mentioned have been renovated in the past five years, some of them as recently as 2009. I must say, State's Union - and I know how much we all dislike State - puts us at Ole Miss absolutely to shame. It was renovated in 2007 and is truly beautiful and state-of-the-art. At the end of the day, visitors come to Student Unions, not to mention students, faculty, and staff - so yes, Student Unions matter.
A good, functioning Student Union should be the vibrant center and hub of life and activity on any college campus. Student organizations should want to meet there, events should be held there, and people should just want to come there and hang out - it should be a melting pot of students from all different walks. It should be a gathering place, a place of congregation, where both business and fun can be had. Above almost all other buildings on campus, I feel a Student Union should be technologically up-to-date and should be the bright shining beacon on any campus.
Well, as I said before, ours is not.
I truly feel that we need a new Student Union, and I know Sparky feels the same way. To be honest with you, as much as I love our Student Union (these days I might as well be paying rent for as much time as I spend there), we are lacking and it is a bit of an embarrassment. I know the Chancellor and Sparky know this - two of the most powerful men on campus, if not the two most powerful men on campus - so I know it's on their radar.
Let's hope we can get a new Union soon. Until then, I'll keep a little jar for dollar bills every time I hear that we need a new Union. I expect it to fill up pretty soon :)
The long and short of it is that student unions matter, and most if not all people I have spoken with at Ole Miss think ours is an eyesore.
Shoot, I was even in a meeting with Chancellor Jones today in Room 404 of the Union - a room where the carpet is particularly disturbing - and he mentioned right then and there that we needed a new Student Union. Another dollar in my pocket!
A friend and I love to visit college campuses, and this semester alone we have visited UGA, Auburn, and Mississippi State. (I visited Alabama by myself this semester so I'll count that in there too.) Whenever we visit a college campus we always, always make sure to stop by the Student Union and compare it to ours. All four of the Student Unions at the campuses I just mentioned have been renovated in the past five years, some of them as recently as 2009. I must say, State's Union - and I know how much we all dislike State - puts us at Ole Miss absolutely to shame. It was renovated in 2007 and is truly beautiful and state-of-the-art. At the end of the day, visitors come to Student Unions, not to mention students, faculty, and staff - so yes, Student Unions matter.
A good, functioning Student Union should be the vibrant center and hub of life and activity on any college campus. Student organizations should want to meet there, events should be held there, and people should just want to come there and hang out - it should be a melting pot of students from all different walks. It should be a gathering place, a place of congregation, where both business and fun can be had. Above almost all other buildings on campus, I feel a Student Union should be technologically up-to-date and should be the bright shining beacon on any campus.
Well, as I said before, ours is not.
I truly feel that we need a new Student Union, and I know Sparky feels the same way. To be honest with you, as much as I love our Student Union (these days I might as well be paying rent for as much time as I spend there), we are lacking and it is a bit of an embarrassment. I know the Chancellor and Sparky know this - two of the most powerful men on campus, if not the two most powerful men on campus - so I know it's on their radar.
Let's hope we can get a new Union soon. Until then, I'll keep a little jar for dollar bills every time I hear that we need a new Union. I expect it to fill up pretty soon :)
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
The Environmentally-Friendly College Campus
Well, apparently, sustainability on college campuses is on the rise, according to an article I read this week called "College Campuses are Going Green" (you can see the link here - http://www.seattlepi.com/local/282232_greencampus23.html).
Now, that said, I have been pretty impressed with Ole Miss' "green" effort since I arrived here in August. One of the first things I did as a part of my job with Greek Life was to plan a Fall Leadership Summit, and one of the speakers on the docket was a man by the name of Jim Morrison with Greeks Going Green. He spoke to our entire group about green efforts, and I was impressed. Now, as I walk out of the Union every day this week, I see a huge banner reading "Red, Blue, and Green Week." It seems as though, at least to my eyes, we care about the environment on this campus.
But could we do better?
Well, of course. We can always do better in everything we do as a university. Nothing's perfect. So that said, if I had to make three environmentally-friendly changes to our university, this is what I would do:
1. Ban smoking on campus. Smoking pollutes the environment, plus smoke is just gross and it gets on my clothes and stuck in my nose and makes me feel like I am at a bar.
2. Install more recycle bins on campus. I think our recycling efforts could be really upped.
3. Keep campus beautiful by not littering. Maybe even make a litter fine for those who are caught. Ole Miss prides itself on being one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation, and we need to keep it that way.
These are just a few ideas of many to help our "green" efforts. While we are not leading the pack by any means, we are definitely running with the bunch and keeping up a good pace. All it takes is a few small changes to set Ole Miss apart as a frontrunner for being an environmentally-friendly campus.
Now, that said, I have been pretty impressed with Ole Miss' "green" effort since I arrived here in August. One of the first things I did as a part of my job with Greek Life was to plan a Fall Leadership Summit, and one of the speakers on the docket was a man by the name of Jim Morrison with Greeks Going Green. He spoke to our entire group about green efforts, and I was impressed. Now, as I walk out of the Union every day this week, I see a huge banner reading "Red, Blue, and Green Week." It seems as though, at least to my eyes, we care about the environment on this campus.
But could we do better?
Well, of course. We can always do better in everything we do as a university. Nothing's perfect. So that said, if I had to make three environmentally-friendly changes to our university, this is what I would do:
1. Ban smoking on campus. Smoking pollutes the environment, plus smoke is just gross and it gets on my clothes and stuck in my nose and makes me feel like I am at a bar.
2. Install more recycle bins on campus. I think our recycling efforts could be really upped.
3. Keep campus beautiful by not littering. Maybe even make a litter fine for those who are caught. Ole Miss prides itself on being one of the most beautiful campuses in the nation, and we need to keep it that way.
These are just a few ideas of many to help our "green" efforts. While we are not leading the pack by any means, we are definitely running with the bunch and keeping up a good pace. All it takes is a few small changes to set Ole Miss apart as a frontrunner for being an environmentally-friendly campus.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
Let's Talk About Sex
I have got to admit this to you - this is a difficult, and slightly awkward, blog for me to write.
I am the type of person who doesn't really discuss sex with anyone - unless they're my close friends. So when it came time to write this blog, I just had no idea where to begin.
And then I realized where I worked, and how I had college students at my disposal all the time in the Greek Life Office. So to write this blog about sex on a college campus, I decided to talk to some college students about the topic - to go straight to the source.
We talked about so much in our conversation, but one topic stood out to me as especially pertinent, especially for women - and especially in the South. Women are expected to be pure, virginal, and wholesome on the outside to appease other women, but have sex behind closed doors to appease men. It is a consistent and constant double standard that is impossible for Southern women to live up to, these students say. The worst offense is to be known as "promiscuous," but the combination of college-aged desires and the hope of pleasing members of the opposite sex lead women to lead a double life that is impossible to keep up.
A student I spoke to said that sex at another SEC school was spoken about freely, but at Ole Miss, sex was never discussed, as it was considered taboo. This student said sex was criticized on our campus and that "everyone does it - but no one talks about it." It is another example of how students at Ole Miss and other schools in the South lead a bit of a double life about sex.
It is a difficult predicament to be in. Other than practicing abstinence (which is, quite honestly, difficult to do if a college-aged woman hopes to keep most college-aged men but is completely acceptable and admirable if a student chooses to do so), it is hard to practice sex on a college campus without dealing with potential social repercussions.
For women especially, the double bind of having sex in college and trying to maintain a reputation is difficult, according to the students I spoke to. It is just one more pressure added to the list of the many pressures college students already face.
I am just happy that I got the chance to talk to college students who really know the score about what is going on with sex on a college campus. It provided me with good insight, which is always needed as a student affairs professional.
I am the type of person who doesn't really discuss sex with anyone - unless they're my close friends. So when it came time to write this blog, I just had no idea where to begin.
And then I realized where I worked, and how I had college students at my disposal all the time in the Greek Life Office. So to write this blog about sex on a college campus, I decided to talk to some college students about the topic - to go straight to the source.
We talked about so much in our conversation, but one topic stood out to me as especially pertinent, especially for women - and especially in the South. Women are expected to be pure, virginal, and wholesome on the outside to appease other women, but have sex behind closed doors to appease men. It is a consistent and constant double standard that is impossible for Southern women to live up to, these students say. The worst offense is to be known as "promiscuous," but the combination of college-aged desires and the hope of pleasing members of the opposite sex lead women to lead a double life that is impossible to keep up.
A student I spoke to said that sex at another SEC school was spoken about freely, but at Ole Miss, sex was never discussed, as it was considered taboo. This student said sex was criticized on our campus and that "everyone does it - but no one talks about it." It is another example of how students at Ole Miss and other schools in the South lead a bit of a double life about sex.
It is a difficult predicament to be in. Other than practicing abstinence (which is, quite honestly, difficult to do if a college-aged woman hopes to keep most college-aged men but is completely acceptable and admirable if a student chooses to do so), it is hard to practice sex on a college campus without dealing with potential social repercussions.
For women especially, the double bind of having sex in college and trying to maintain a reputation is difficult, according to the students I spoke to. It is just one more pressure added to the list of the many pressures college students already face.
I am just happy that I got the chance to talk to college students who really know the score about what is going on with sex on a college campus. It provided me with good insight, which is always needed as a student affairs professional.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Who Knew?
Recent data from UCLA "suggests not only that undergraduates are far more spiritual than was widely believed, but also that they're seeking help with their seeking from their colleges - mostly in vain," according to an article called "Adding Spirituality" by Elizabeth Redden from one of my favorite websites, insidehighered.com.
Who knew?
In a country that I see more and more turning away from God and from spirituality, it came as quite a shock to me to come across this article, which suggests that college students are becoming more spiritual and looking to us, as student affairs professionals, to help them cultivate that part of themselves. If you would have asked me the last age group I thought would be turning more towards spirituality, I probably would have said college students. I guess you learn something new every day.
I am a woman of faith, and at my undergraduate institution (which I hate to keep bringing up, but it is a very interesting point of reference to life at Ole Miss) spirituality was never discussed on campus. In fact, it was taboo. KU is so incredibly "separation between church and state (aka college)" driven that you never, ever would hear student affairs professionals discussing their faith with a student, and there is just no way you would ever open a meeting in prayer. Not that I agreed with the way spirituality was dealt with at KU - but that's just the way that it was. There were not many religious or spiritual organizations at KU, and most people just didn't discuss their faith in everyday conversation. Now, this is by no means saying KU was an athiest campus or anything. Quite the opposite, I'm sure, but it just never really came up. KU was such a liberal campus - which is ironic, because it is in such a conservative state.
Since I have been at Ole Miss, I have been impressed and amazed really at how strong my faith has grown. At one meeting I attend weekly, we open in prayer. I talk about my faith almost every day, either with students or with fellow staff members. I don't know if it is just Ole Miss or if it is the South, but God is very present on this campus, anywhere from daily conversation to student organizations. If I would have read the insidehighered.com article while still at KU, I would have never believed it. But now, I can see the gist of that article being true.
Responding to the data UCLA found, the lead researchers for the Spirituality in Higher Education Project "invited representatives from 10 non-sectarian institutions to Los Angeles in November to develop individual plans to better address matters of spirituality on campus." Check out the article for what schools like Carnegie Mellon, Florida State, and Miami are doing to help students with spirituality issues - http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/08/spirituality
We tend to often forget that when we work with students, we are working with the student as a whole, not as the sum of his or her parts. To many students - and, according to this article, apparently even more than we thought - spirituality is important, and anything that is important to students is something we as student affairs professionals need to know much about. Therefore, being able to handle issues of spirituality is crucial. As the article says, we need not be priests or pastors or rabbis - but we do need to know how to handle issues of spirituality with our students.
Who knew?
In a country that I see more and more turning away from God and from spirituality, it came as quite a shock to me to come across this article, which suggests that college students are becoming more spiritual and looking to us, as student affairs professionals, to help them cultivate that part of themselves. If you would have asked me the last age group I thought would be turning more towards spirituality, I probably would have said college students. I guess you learn something new every day.
I am a woman of faith, and at my undergraduate institution (which I hate to keep bringing up, but it is a very interesting point of reference to life at Ole Miss) spirituality was never discussed on campus. In fact, it was taboo. KU is so incredibly "separation between church and state (aka college)" driven that you never, ever would hear student affairs professionals discussing their faith with a student, and there is just no way you would ever open a meeting in prayer. Not that I agreed with the way spirituality was dealt with at KU - but that's just the way that it was. There were not many religious or spiritual organizations at KU, and most people just didn't discuss their faith in everyday conversation. Now, this is by no means saying KU was an athiest campus or anything. Quite the opposite, I'm sure, but it just never really came up. KU was such a liberal campus - which is ironic, because it is in such a conservative state.
Since I have been at Ole Miss, I have been impressed and amazed really at how strong my faith has grown. At one meeting I attend weekly, we open in prayer. I talk about my faith almost every day, either with students or with fellow staff members. I don't know if it is just Ole Miss or if it is the South, but God is very present on this campus, anywhere from daily conversation to student organizations. If I would have read the insidehighered.com article while still at KU, I would have never believed it. But now, I can see the gist of that article being true.
Responding to the data UCLA found, the lead researchers for the Spirituality in Higher Education Project "invited representatives from 10 non-sectarian institutions to Los Angeles in November to develop individual plans to better address matters of spirituality on campus." Check out the article for what schools like Carnegie Mellon, Florida State, and Miami are doing to help students with spirituality issues - http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/05/08/spirituality
We tend to often forget that when we work with students, we are working with the student as a whole, not as the sum of his or her parts. To many students - and, according to this article, apparently even more than we thought - spirituality is important, and anything that is important to students is something we as student affairs professionals need to know much about. Therefore, being able to handle issues of spirituality is crucial. As the article says, we need not be priests or pastors or rabbis - but we do need to know how to handle issues of spirituality with our students.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Student Protest On College Campuses
When I was an undergraduate, I can remember absolutely dreading the days that the Students for Life were going to be protesting on campus. Though personally I am pro-life, I absolutely, completely, and totally dreaded the days that the Students for Life - the pro-life group on campus - would hit campus and inevitably spark a firestorm of controversy.
I worked in the Student Involvement and Leadership Center all four of my years on campus at the University of Kansas, and that was the office at KU that housed the University Events Committee. The University Events Committee had to approve any event that any of KU's 500 plus clubs or organizations wanted to put on, and no event could take place on campus without UEC's approval. This often caused a lot of headaches for our office, because it was UEC's duty to regulate any event - including protests - that happened on campus. As a right of the first amendment and the right of free speech, we had to let students protest - but it didn't mean we enjoyed it.
The Students for Life's protest was absolutely the worst one. Once a semester, the group would descend like hawks on campus, armed with picket signs with offensive messages and large, billboard-like posters with dead or dying fetuses on them, showing exactly what happened to the unborn child in the process of an abortion. These posters were so large that they were almost as tall of some of our campus buildings. This means, basically, that you could not avoid seeing bloody and disfigured fetuses as you walked to class on the days when they were protesting. It was, in a word, disgusting. The last image I wanted to see as I trudged up the hill to class at eight o'clock in the morning was that. I could hardly stand it.
Members of Students for Life were mulling about on days that they were protesting, holding picket signs and passing out pamphlets on the topic of pro-life issues. As disturbing as those images were to see while I was just minding my own business on campus - and as disturbing as some of the words spoken by the protesters were to innocent bystanders walking on campus - I had to keep continually reminding myself that these students had the right to do this.
Student protest is a tricky issue. It can sometimes be a huge headache and a huge hassle, but we as student affairs professionals have to remember that these students have a Constitutional right to do this. As much as I dreaded the days when Students for Life were on campus, I had to remember - as did all members of UEC - that if I wanted to protest an issue, I had the right to just as much as they did.
One of the best parts about our country is that we are allowed to have whatever opinion we want about whatever we want. We have to respect that and allow that to be true on our college campuses. We can dictate time, place, and manner but we cannot dictate what student protesters are protesting about. This may be frustrating at times, but the roots of this issue go as deep as our fundamental American beliefs.
I know that I will have to deal with this issue as a student affairs professional, and thankfully I am ready for it because of my prior experience with UEC. I have to continually and constantly keep in mind that everyone deserves a fair shake, and I will give all students that as a student affairs professional.
I worked in the Student Involvement and Leadership Center all four of my years on campus at the University of Kansas, and that was the office at KU that housed the University Events Committee. The University Events Committee had to approve any event that any of KU's 500 plus clubs or organizations wanted to put on, and no event could take place on campus without UEC's approval. This often caused a lot of headaches for our office, because it was UEC's duty to regulate any event - including protests - that happened on campus. As a right of the first amendment and the right of free speech, we had to let students protest - but it didn't mean we enjoyed it.
The Students for Life's protest was absolutely the worst one. Once a semester, the group would descend like hawks on campus, armed with picket signs with offensive messages and large, billboard-like posters with dead or dying fetuses on them, showing exactly what happened to the unborn child in the process of an abortion. These posters were so large that they were almost as tall of some of our campus buildings. This means, basically, that you could not avoid seeing bloody and disfigured fetuses as you walked to class on the days when they were protesting. It was, in a word, disgusting. The last image I wanted to see as I trudged up the hill to class at eight o'clock in the morning was that. I could hardly stand it.
Members of Students for Life were mulling about on days that they were protesting, holding picket signs and passing out pamphlets on the topic of pro-life issues. As disturbing as those images were to see while I was just minding my own business on campus - and as disturbing as some of the words spoken by the protesters were to innocent bystanders walking on campus - I had to keep continually reminding myself that these students had the right to do this.
Student protest is a tricky issue. It can sometimes be a huge headache and a huge hassle, but we as student affairs professionals have to remember that these students have a Constitutional right to do this. As much as I dreaded the days when Students for Life were on campus, I had to remember - as did all members of UEC - that if I wanted to protest an issue, I had the right to just as much as they did.
One of the best parts about our country is that we are allowed to have whatever opinion we want about whatever we want. We have to respect that and allow that to be true on our college campuses. We can dictate time, place, and manner but we cannot dictate what student protesters are protesting about. This may be frustrating at times, but the roots of this issue go as deep as our fundamental American beliefs.
I know that I will have to deal with this issue as a student affairs professional, and thankfully I am ready for it because of my prior experience with UEC. I have to continually and constantly keep in mind that everyone deserves a fair shake, and I will give all students that as a student affairs professional.
Restorative Justice - A Little Bit Late
I went on vacation last week and had little to no access to E-mail while I was gone. By the time I finally checked my E-mail and found our blog topic there, Thursday's class had long gone by and the weekend was nearly over. Even though I didn't get the opportunity to talk about this week's blog topic in class, I would still like to say a couple of words about the topic, restorative justice.
Restorative justice has been the buzzword around the Dean of Students' Judicial Affairs Office for the last few weeks. Last month, the three staff members of the Judicial Affairs Office attended a conference where restorative justice was an agenda item. Since returning back to Ole Miss, they have been talking about embarking on a philosophical shift in their office to implement aspects of restorative justice into the office's everyday workings. I am particularly close to one Judicial Affairs staff member, and he has spoken to me numerous times about how much he is in favor of this philosophical shift to restorative justice and how good it could potentially be for the university.
I myself am in love with the concept of restorative justice. Slapping sanctions on students who do wrong on college campuses are just allowing them to do the bare minimum of what they need to do to clear their record, without teaching them that what they did was fundamentally wrong and without showing them who their actions hurt. If students can see who they affected by their actions - can really see who they hurt - their actions will become more real and they will be less likely to repeat them. In my opinion, an apology goes a long way, and restoring justice to those who justice was taken from is the perfect way to make up for the crime committed.
Let's say a student steals a composite from a fraternity house. (This is a situation that happens quite frequently, by the way.) Instead of sanctioning the student to ten hours of community service - which they will begrudgingly do and learn nothing from - it would be so much better for the student and for the members of the fraternity that student stole from if the student in trouble could publicly apologize to the chapter, express his remorse, return the composite, and then do something to better the fraternity. This could be anything as simple as taking care of the fraternity's lawn for a month to putting on a leadership program for new members of the chapter. Wouldn't that be so much better for all parties involved - the perpetrator and the victims - if everyone could learn something from the mistake?
So, in short, I am a proponent of restorative justice and I am excited to see Ole Miss hopefully implement it in our Judicial Affairs Office.
Restorative justice has been the buzzword around the Dean of Students' Judicial Affairs Office for the last few weeks. Last month, the three staff members of the Judicial Affairs Office attended a conference where restorative justice was an agenda item. Since returning back to Ole Miss, they have been talking about embarking on a philosophical shift in their office to implement aspects of restorative justice into the office's everyday workings. I am particularly close to one Judicial Affairs staff member, and he has spoken to me numerous times about how much he is in favor of this philosophical shift to restorative justice and how good it could potentially be for the university.
I myself am in love with the concept of restorative justice. Slapping sanctions on students who do wrong on college campuses are just allowing them to do the bare minimum of what they need to do to clear their record, without teaching them that what they did was fundamentally wrong and without showing them who their actions hurt. If students can see who they affected by their actions - can really see who they hurt - their actions will become more real and they will be less likely to repeat them. In my opinion, an apology goes a long way, and restoring justice to those who justice was taken from is the perfect way to make up for the crime committed.
Let's say a student steals a composite from a fraternity house. (This is a situation that happens quite frequently, by the way.) Instead of sanctioning the student to ten hours of community service - which they will begrudgingly do and learn nothing from - it would be so much better for the student and for the members of the fraternity that student stole from if the student in trouble could publicly apologize to the chapter, express his remorse, return the composite, and then do something to better the fraternity. This could be anything as simple as taking care of the fraternity's lawn for a month to putting on a leadership program for new members of the chapter. Wouldn't that be so much better for all parties involved - the perpetrator and the victims - if everyone could learn something from the mistake?
So, in short, I am a proponent of restorative justice and I am excited to see Ole Miss hopefully implement it in our Judicial Affairs Office.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
The Impact of a Tragedy
On a very, very personal note, last Friday's attack at the University of Alabama-Huntsville impacted me, as I can see it has impacted others in our class. It was very strange - I was sitting at work and suddenly my phone went off, telling me I had a voicemail, but there was no missed call. The voicemail was from one of my girlfriends from Kansas. She sounded very concerned and asked me if I was okay - she had thought I was going to be in Tuscaloosa this weekend and she had heard there had been a shooting at the University of Alabama (she didn't hear, apparently, that the shooting was not at Bama's main campus in Tuscaloosa but at its satellite campus in Huntsville), and she was worried about me. This voicemail was the first I had heard of any shooting in Alabama, and my heart dropped to the floor. My mind automatically went to someone very, very close to me who is a student at Alabama. I immediately called him and he was, of course, fine - only later did I learn that the shooting was not in Tuscaloosa but at the Huntsville campus. I was shaken up for the rest of the day and all through the night. These feelings came even after I heard that not only was Andrew okay, but the shooting happened three hours from the campus he is on.
I guess the question I will pose in this blog is this - if I felt so shaken up and spit out after absolutely nothing happened to the person I care most about in this world, how would I feel if he had been injured? If he had been severely hurt? Or God forbid, if he had died? How can and how do universities properly handle these types of situations? How do counseling centers handle the aftermath of a tragedy like this - helping to heal those who survived the tragedy, but potentially have a lifetime of healing to repair the wounds inflicted not necessarily by gunshots but by broken hearts?
An excellent resource I found on the topic was offered up by the American School Counselor Association and can be found here: http://www.schoolcounselor.org/content.asp?contentid=524
However, based off of what I read on the website, I started thinking about how I would want to be treated if, God forbid, a tragedy like this were to happen on my campus and I survived.
I would first have to know that the counseling center was available and ready to help me if I should ever need it. The counseling center could benefit from offering group therapy workshops so that a student could attend with a friend if they were uncomfortable seeing a counselor by themselves, or if they were afraid of the stigma seeing a counselor carries (my mom is a therapist by trade, so I know all about that). The counseling center would need to be staffed nearly 24/7 to accomodate all of the students needing assistance. Pamphlets, brochures, and E-mails would need to circulate with helpful tips on how to slowly but surely reel in from a tragedy of this magnitude. Above all else, a counseling center would need to show that they care, that they are there for students, and that they too are reeling from the tragedy - that members of the counseling staff and the students can work through their pain together.
When a shooter commits acts of violence on a college campus - or anywhere - I wonder if they realize how many people they affect. The victims in a school shooting are not able to just be counted by the number of dead bodies left behind. Greer, myself, and anyone who felt any amount of pain or anguish over last Friday's killings are victims of Amy Bishop's rage. In this case, three may be dead, but hundreds of thousands of others are emotionally wounded by her actions. While I'm sure many of my classmates chose to write about what we as college administrators can do to prevent the shooting from happening, I wanted to take a different angle and focus on what we can do after - God forbid - something like this happens. Eventually, with time, a college campus will heal. I believe time heals all wounds. But effective practices by a university's counseling center can only help ease the pain felt by all who were touched, in even the slightest way, by such an unspeakable act of violence.
My thoughts are with UAH in this difficult time.
I guess the question I will pose in this blog is this - if I felt so shaken up and spit out after absolutely nothing happened to the person I care most about in this world, how would I feel if he had been injured? If he had been severely hurt? Or God forbid, if he had died? How can and how do universities properly handle these types of situations? How do counseling centers handle the aftermath of a tragedy like this - helping to heal those who survived the tragedy, but potentially have a lifetime of healing to repair the wounds inflicted not necessarily by gunshots but by broken hearts?
An excellent resource I found on the topic was offered up by the American School Counselor Association and can be found here: http://www.schoolcounselor.org/content.asp?contentid=524
However, based off of what I read on the website, I started thinking about how I would want to be treated if, God forbid, a tragedy like this were to happen on my campus and I survived.
I would first have to know that the counseling center was available and ready to help me if I should ever need it. The counseling center could benefit from offering group therapy workshops so that a student could attend with a friend if they were uncomfortable seeing a counselor by themselves, or if they were afraid of the stigma seeing a counselor carries (my mom is a therapist by trade, so I know all about that). The counseling center would need to be staffed nearly 24/7 to accomodate all of the students needing assistance. Pamphlets, brochures, and E-mails would need to circulate with helpful tips on how to slowly but surely reel in from a tragedy of this magnitude. Above all else, a counseling center would need to show that they care, that they are there for students, and that they too are reeling from the tragedy - that members of the counseling staff and the students can work through their pain together.
When a shooter commits acts of violence on a college campus - or anywhere - I wonder if they realize how many people they affect. The victims in a school shooting are not able to just be counted by the number of dead bodies left behind. Greer, myself, and anyone who felt any amount of pain or anguish over last Friday's killings are victims of Amy Bishop's rage. In this case, three may be dead, but hundreds of thousands of others are emotionally wounded by her actions. While I'm sure many of my classmates chose to write about what we as college administrators can do to prevent the shooting from happening, I wanted to take a different angle and focus on what we can do after - God forbid - something like this happens. Eventually, with time, a college campus will heal. I believe time heals all wounds. But effective practices by a university's counseling center can only help ease the pain felt by all who were touched, in even the slightest way, by such an unspeakable act of violence.
My thoughts are with UAH in this difficult time.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Free Speech on College Campuses
This week's blog topic was one that really interested me personally - the topic of free speech on a college campus. In my undergraduate years, I took a class called First Amendment and Society to fulfill requirements for my journalism degree, and we spoke about free speech at length. As someone who is extremely interested in the law and is even considering possibly enrolling in law school one day, anything dealing with the Constitution is interesting to me, especially if we are looking at it through the lens of a college campus.
I found the FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) website to be extremely helpful in providing a framework for the discussion of free speech. As our assignment was to find the most recent free speech case on a college campus and comment on it, I will be writing about a case at San Jose State University. You can find the full text of the article here on FIRE's website: http://www.thefire.org/article/11548.html
In summary, the housing department at SJSU revised several restrictive policies that basically prohibited free speech on campus. Let's compare the old policy to the new...
The Old: Any form of activity, whether covert or overt, that creates a significantly uncomfortable, threatening, or harassing environment for any UHS resident or guest will be handled judicially and may be grounds for immediate disciplinary action, revocation of the Housing License Agreement, and criminal prosecution. The conduct does not have to be intended to harass. The conduct is evaluated from the complainant's perspective.
The New: Any form of activity, whether covert or overt, that creates a threatening or harassing environment for any UHS resident, guest, or staff member will be handled judicially and may be grounds for immediate disciplinary action, revocation of the Housing License Agreement, and criminal prosecution.
Rather than there being plenty of new key words in the new policy, it is important to note instead the words that have been removed - the word "uncomfortable" and the entire last sentence of the old policy, which stated "the conduct does not have to be intended to harass. The conduct is evaluated from the complainant's perspective." By removing that last sentence, SJSU is complying much more with grounds of free speech. By saying that "the conduct does not have to be intended to harass," that is basically implying that I could get kicked out of my residence hall if anything I said to anyone was taken the wrong way. If I said "the sky is blue" and someone got offended slightly by it, I could be removed from my residence hall and rendered homeless, which doesn't seem to be the least bit rational. Also, by evaluating the situation from "the complainant's perspective," it takes away the judiciality of the case and puts it into the hands of an emotional, offended, college-aged student who basically wields the power to kick a student out of the residence hall. It seems a bit overdone and not nearly fair enough.
Free speech is such an important right that we as American citizens all have. I am happy to see that organizations such as FIRE even exist to make sure that we retain that right to free speech, especially on a college campus. SJSU's example is one step in the right direction for higher education to continually move in the direction of free speech for all - and, because they are setting the precedent, we will hopefully see advances in the movement for years to come.
I found the FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) website to be extremely helpful in providing a framework for the discussion of free speech. As our assignment was to find the most recent free speech case on a college campus and comment on it, I will be writing about a case at San Jose State University. You can find the full text of the article here on FIRE's website: http://www.thefire.org/article/11548.html
In summary, the housing department at SJSU revised several restrictive policies that basically prohibited free speech on campus. Let's compare the old policy to the new...
The Old: Any form of activity, whether covert or overt, that creates a significantly uncomfortable, threatening, or harassing environment for any UHS resident or guest will be handled judicially and may be grounds for immediate disciplinary action, revocation of the Housing License Agreement, and criminal prosecution. The conduct does not have to be intended to harass. The conduct is evaluated from the complainant's perspective.
The New: Any form of activity, whether covert or overt, that creates a threatening or harassing environment for any UHS resident, guest, or staff member will be handled judicially and may be grounds for immediate disciplinary action, revocation of the Housing License Agreement, and criminal prosecution.
Rather than there being plenty of new key words in the new policy, it is important to note instead the words that have been removed - the word "uncomfortable" and the entire last sentence of the old policy, which stated "the conduct does not have to be intended to harass. The conduct is evaluated from the complainant's perspective." By removing that last sentence, SJSU is complying much more with grounds of free speech. By saying that "the conduct does not have to be intended to harass," that is basically implying that I could get kicked out of my residence hall if anything I said to anyone was taken the wrong way. If I said "the sky is blue" and someone got offended slightly by it, I could be removed from my residence hall and rendered homeless, which doesn't seem to be the least bit rational. Also, by evaluating the situation from "the complainant's perspective," it takes away the judiciality of the case and puts it into the hands of an emotional, offended, college-aged student who basically wields the power to kick a student out of the residence hall. It seems a bit overdone and not nearly fair enough.
Free speech is such an important right that we as American citizens all have. I am happy to see that organizations such as FIRE even exist to make sure that we retain that right to free speech, especially on a college campus. SJSU's example is one step in the right direction for higher education to continually move in the direction of free speech for all - and, because they are setting the precedent, we will hopefully see advances in the movement for years to come.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Students and Their Community
From what I gather from Sparky's instructions about this week's blog, we are to write about students and the university community that they are a part of. Let me tell you something I have found to be unabashedly true - there is no place on this earth like a college campus. The excitement of youth mixed with the joy of learning combined with hope for the future makes the college campus a dynamic place to be. There are truly very few places like the campus of an institution of higher learning. That's why folks like me and many of the other students in the higher education administration master's program just can't seem to leave. The aura of a college campus, the sheer ability to be on a college campus - well, it's pretty amazing.
But our college campus community is changing - and, in many ways, already has changed - from the college campus community of our parents' generation, and especially from the college campus community of our grandparents.
Let me explain.
My mom loves to talk about her college days. She went to school at KU (the University of Kansas, the same school I went to for undergrad) and she was there in the middle of the 1970s - a time very ripe with student demonstrations, protests, and activism. Lawrence, Kansas - where KU is located - is the liberal oasis in the conservative state of Kansas (which sometimes drove me crazy, but that is another blog topic for another day) and even today is a hub for the type of student activism that was at its height in my mom's college days. She talks frequently about she and her friends gathering at the Union, pulling up to a table, and sitting there for hours upon hours talking about the latest work they had read in English, or about what the president was doing. A common theme that is constantly repeated as my mom discusses her college days was that there was just so much conversation. So much communication. There were informal debates on the lawns outside of Fraser Hall. Groups of students would congregate on Wescoe Beach (which is not actually a beach, just in case you don't know anything about Kansas geography) and discuss Congress, or popular music, or current events, or the weather for pete's sake. Her college experience of the 1970s was definable by the spoken word. She learned just as much outside the classroom through these conversations, she said, than she did inside the classroom. And often, she points out, the conversations from inside the classroom would trickle out to outside the classroom because students were so engrossed in what they were learning that they could just not stop talking about it.
Psh.
Not exactly my college experience.
It is a new day and age, that's for sure. My college experience was pretty well summed up by a meeting I attended tonight, actually. I walked into the meeting a few minutes early, parked myself in my seat, looked up and saw every student in the room literally attached to their cell phones. Texting, playing games, surfing the Internet - I don't know what they were doing, but they were click-click-clicking away. The room full of students was absolutely silent. Some students had their iPod ear buds tucked in their ears. One was fiddling around on his laptop on Facebook - where students now discuss topics not face-to-face, but through wall posts and group discussion boards. Whereas mom's generation were talkers, we are a dead silent generation.
All of the technology that has infiltrated our society has made us shut our mouths. The atmosphere in the room tonight at my meeting pretty well summed up my four years in college. Walking down campus, I cannot count how many times I was mortified trying to get the attention of one of my friends by yelling their name over and over again, only to be rebuffed and ignored, or so I thought - turns out they just had those stupid iPod ear buds in and couldn't hear me. Wescoe Beach - the center of so much rampant communication when my mom was an undergrad - is silent most of the time. Shoot, why would you want to have a face-to-face conversation if you can just IM someone, or (even worse) poke them on Facebook? Why verbalize feelings when you can let it all out in an E-mail, or why meet up with someone for lunch when you can eat by yourself and text three, four, five of your friends while you do it?
I mentioned earlier that the college campus is a place unlike any other in this world. I still feel that way, I really do, but technology is taking some of the sparkle and the magic out of a college campus. Nowadays (I sound so old...I'm really not intending to, I'm only 23!) students are in a rush to leave the classroom and would be damned to talk about the lecture outside of class. Doesn't that make you a - gasp - geek? And no one wants that. It seems as though we are losing a sense of community on college campuses because life is just so individualized now. Technology is working to make our lives pretty solitary. Maybe not on the surface - I guess you're still communicating, albeit backwards, even if you're texting or Facebooking - but we as a generation are beginning to forget how to socially interact. This is devaluing our sense of community and rusting over the luster and shine of college campuses.
I will step off my soapbox now. But I will leave you with a closing thought. What if we all put down our iPods and iPads or whatever they call it all now and just talked to each other? I bet our sense of community would skyrocket. Now that is an experiment I am willing to try.
But our college campus community is changing - and, in many ways, already has changed - from the college campus community of our parents' generation, and especially from the college campus community of our grandparents.
Let me explain.
My mom loves to talk about her college days. She went to school at KU (the University of Kansas, the same school I went to for undergrad) and she was there in the middle of the 1970s - a time very ripe with student demonstrations, protests, and activism. Lawrence, Kansas - where KU is located - is the liberal oasis in the conservative state of Kansas (which sometimes drove me crazy, but that is another blog topic for another day) and even today is a hub for the type of student activism that was at its height in my mom's college days. She talks frequently about she and her friends gathering at the Union, pulling up to a table, and sitting there for hours upon hours talking about the latest work they had read in English, or about what the president was doing. A common theme that is constantly repeated as my mom discusses her college days was that there was just so much conversation. So much communication. There were informal debates on the lawns outside of Fraser Hall. Groups of students would congregate on Wescoe Beach (which is not actually a beach, just in case you don't know anything about Kansas geography) and discuss Congress, or popular music, or current events, or the weather for pete's sake. Her college experience of the 1970s was definable by the spoken word. She learned just as much outside the classroom through these conversations, she said, than she did inside the classroom. And often, she points out, the conversations from inside the classroom would trickle out to outside the classroom because students were so engrossed in what they were learning that they could just not stop talking about it.
Psh.
Not exactly my college experience.
It is a new day and age, that's for sure. My college experience was pretty well summed up by a meeting I attended tonight, actually. I walked into the meeting a few minutes early, parked myself in my seat, looked up and saw every student in the room literally attached to their cell phones. Texting, playing games, surfing the Internet - I don't know what they were doing, but they were click-click-clicking away. The room full of students was absolutely silent. Some students had their iPod ear buds tucked in their ears. One was fiddling around on his laptop on Facebook - where students now discuss topics not face-to-face, but through wall posts and group discussion boards. Whereas mom's generation were talkers, we are a dead silent generation.
All of the technology that has infiltrated our society has made us shut our mouths. The atmosphere in the room tonight at my meeting pretty well summed up my four years in college. Walking down campus, I cannot count how many times I was mortified trying to get the attention of one of my friends by yelling their name over and over again, only to be rebuffed and ignored, or so I thought - turns out they just had those stupid iPod ear buds in and couldn't hear me. Wescoe Beach - the center of so much rampant communication when my mom was an undergrad - is silent most of the time. Shoot, why would you want to have a face-to-face conversation if you can just IM someone, or (even worse) poke them on Facebook? Why verbalize feelings when you can let it all out in an E-mail, or why meet up with someone for lunch when you can eat by yourself and text three, four, five of your friends while you do it?
I mentioned earlier that the college campus is a place unlike any other in this world. I still feel that way, I really do, but technology is taking some of the sparkle and the magic out of a college campus. Nowadays (I sound so old...I'm really not intending to, I'm only 23!) students are in a rush to leave the classroom and would be damned to talk about the lecture outside of class. Doesn't that make you a - gasp - geek? And no one wants that. It seems as though we are losing a sense of community on college campuses because life is just so individualized now. Technology is working to make our lives pretty solitary. Maybe not on the surface - I guess you're still communicating, albeit backwards, even if you're texting or Facebooking - but we as a generation are beginning to forget how to socially interact. This is devaluing our sense of community and rusting over the luster and shine of college campuses.
I will step off my soapbox now. But I will leave you with a closing thought. What if we all put down our iPods and iPads or whatever they call it all now and just talked to each other? I bet our sense of community would skyrocket. Now that is an experiment I am willing to try.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The College Student Today
Okay, I'll admit it - it took me a while to get going on this particular blog entry. The topic posed - "the college student today" - seemed so extraordinarily broad that every time I would sit down to write this blog entry I would think of another component to add, get frustrated, and throw in the towel. Asking someone to speak about "the college student today" is like asking someone to speak about "children today" or "adults today" - where do you begin to describe the multitude of different people that encompass that category? That is why I am interested to read my classmates' blogs, because, like snowflakes and, well, like college students today, each individual one will certainly not be like the rest.
I decided to turn to a trusted source on college students today - the fine folks of NASPA, or, in non-acronymic terms, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators - to help me define the college student today. Who is he or she? What do they look like? What are their future aspirations? What are their values and beliefs?
After digging around NASPA's website for a while, I came across some very useful information - NASPA annually puts together what they refer to as a "Profile of Today's College Student," and it is extraordinarily detailed and tailored exactly to what I wanted to write about in this blog entry. (Thanks NASPA!) I was disheartened to see that the latest information they had compiled was from 2008, but still, it handidly gives insight into what I entered graduate school to learn all about - the topic of this blog post, the college student today.
To list all of the information gathered from this extensive report would be enough to begin work on a small book. That said, I will pull from the report highlights that I find interesting and, if anyone wants to read more, I encourage you to check out the full report for yourself at http://www.naspa.org/divctr/research/profile/results.cfm.
Our college student today is primarily full-time (90.58%), has never transferred (71.71%), is not an international student (96.94%), and is a female (a whopping 62.71%, compared to just 37.05% guys). 69.78% of college students today are white, followed by, in order, Asian/Pacific Islanders (8.32%), Latino(a)/Hispanics (6.78%), and Black/African-Americans (4.62%). Middle Eastern and Indigenous/Native American students account for less than 1% of those surveyed. 3.61% of the students surveyed are multiracial, and 5.44% of the students preferred not to answer the question at all. Most of our students only speak one language, were born in the United States, and are Christian/Catholic (24.51%). Most identify themselves as heterosexual/straight (92.34%), live on-campus (38.11%), work as well as attend school (63.42%), and communicate with their parents daily (40.94%).
So basically, I just described myself.
I am a full-time student that has never transferred, I am not an international student, I am a female, I am white, I only speak one language (unless you count my weak and feeble attempts to speak Spanish, which I most certainly do not consider fluent), I was born in the United States, I am Christian (not Catholic though), I am straight, I work as well as attend school, and I communicate with my parents daily (hi Mom!). The only characteristic I don't fit is that I don't live on-campus.
So basically, if I moved into Crosby Hall, I would be the living, breathing prototype of the college student today. Interesting, and not what I expected.
Most students attend college because they want to get ahead in life (28.13%) and most aspire to earn a master's degree (45.60%). Most, immediately after they graduate, want to get a job (43.28%), and most want to make between $40,000 and $59,999 right out of the chute (35.44%). Good luck with that, friends.
I am very happy to report that most students surveyed "strongly agree" with the following statements - I enjoy learning for the sake of learning (48%), it is important to make a difference in the world (55.18%), it is important to give back to my community (51.85%), it is important to stand up for what I believe in (73.81%), and I treat others with respect (76.32%).
This is some really, really interesting data. I'm excited for the 2009 report to come out so that I can see if our "college student today" changed any in the last year.
If I have already learned this much after just one blog entry, I am thrilled to see what I'll learn throughout the course of the entire semester. "The college student today" is what I came to Ole Miss to learn all about, and I can't wait to learn even more about him...um, her (I still can't get over that percentage).
I decided to turn to a trusted source on college students today - the fine folks of NASPA, or, in non-acronymic terms, the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators - to help me define the college student today. Who is he or she? What do they look like? What are their future aspirations? What are their values and beliefs?
After digging around NASPA's website for a while, I came across some very useful information - NASPA annually puts together what they refer to as a "Profile of Today's College Student," and it is extraordinarily detailed and tailored exactly to what I wanted to write about in this blog entry. (Thanks NASPA!) I was disheartened to see that the latest information they had compiled was from 2008, but still, it handidly gives insight into what I entered graduate school to learn all about - the topic of this blog post, the college student today.
To list all of the information gathered from this extensive report would be enough to begin work on a small book. That said, I will pull from the report highlights that I find interesting and, if anyone wants to read more, I encourage you to check out the full report for yourself at http://www.naspa.org/divctr/research/profile/results.cfm.
Our college student today is primarily full-time (90.58%), has never transferred (71.71%), is not an international student (96.94%), and is a female (a whopping 62.71%, compared to just 37.05% guys). 69.78% of college students today are white, followed by, in order, Asian/Pacific Islanders (8.32%), Latino(a)/Hispanics (6.78%), and Black/African-Americans (4.62%). Middle Eastern and Indigenous/Native American students account for less than 1% of those surveyed. 3.61% of the students surveyed are multiracial, and 5.44% of the students preferred not to answer the question at all. Most of our students only speak one language, were born in the United States, and are Christian/Catholic (24.51%). Most identify themselves as heterosexual/straight (92.34%), live on-campus (38.11%), work as well as attend school (63.42%), and communicate with their parents daily (40.94%).
So basically, I just described myself.
I am a full-time student that has never transferred, I am not an international student, I am a female, I am white, I only speak one language (unless you count my weak and feeble attempts to speak Spanish, which I most certainly do not consider fluent), I was born in the United States, I am Christian (not Catholic though), I am straight, I work as well as attend school, and I communicate with my parents daily (hi Mom!). The only characteristic I don't fit is that I don't live on-campus.
So basically, if I moved into Crosby Hall, I would be the living, breathing prototype of the college student today. Interesting, and not what I expected.
Most students attend college because they want to get ahead in life (28.13%) and most aspire to earn a master's degree (45.60%). Most, immediately after they graduate, want to get a job (43.28%), and most want to make between $40,000 and $59,999 right out of the chute (35.44%). Good luck with that, friends.
I am very happy to report that most students surveyed "strongly agree" with the following statements - I enjoy learning for the sake of learning (48%), it is important to make a difference in the world (55.18%), it is important to give back to my community (51.85%), it is important to stand up for what I believe in (73.81%), and I treat others with respect (76.32%).
This is some really, really interesting data. I'm excited for the 2009 report to come out so that I can see if our "college student today" changed any in the last year.
If I have already learned this much after just one blog entry, I am thrilled to see what I'll learn throughout the course of the entire semester. "The college student today" is what I came to Ole Miss to learn all about, and I can't wait to learn even more about him...um, her (I still can't get over that percentage).
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