ResEdChat Ep 59: Dr. Charlie Potts on Re-Engaging Men in Residential Education

Dustin Ramsdell:
Welcome back to Roompact’s ResEdChat podcast. I’m your host, Dustin Ramsdell. This podcast series, if you’re new to it, features a variety of topics of interest to hired professionals who work in and with university housing. So today we have an interesting conversation that’s anchored around a recent article that our guest wrote, he’ll tell you more about, but really long and short of it about the reentry of men on campus, picking up after the disruptions of the pandemic, of students going home and everything. What does it look like for men in particular, and examinations of masculinity and all that interesting stuff as it relates to being on campus and all that?
So plenty to discuss. We’ll get to as much as we can in the time that we have. But Charlie, if you want to introduce yourself and your professional background, and then we’ll get into the piece and getting into all the context around it?

Charlie Potts:
Yeah, thank you, Dustin. Thanks for having me. Charlie Potts, he, him, his pronouns. I’m the Interim Dean of Students at Gustavus Adolphus College, which is a small private school about an hour south of Minneapolis in Minnesota, about 15 years of Res Life background, working my way up through multiple positions in Res Life at various places in Minnesota, Gustavus Adolphus, St. Olaf College, University of St. Thomas. So small to medium-sized private schools are my jam, working mostly in Res Life and now in a Dean’s role. I have a master’s in higher education, and then an EdD in higher ed from the University of Minnesota, and a husband and father of two twin 14-year-old boys. And so masculinity is something I think about often and that my wife and I talk about a lot as we raise boys who will soon be venturing off to a college campus near you. So that’s why I love talking about this topic, and I’m so happy to be here today to talk to you, Dustin.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, yeah. Excited to have you. And I think it’s something that I’ve found myself gravitating towards as well, where my wife, when I met her, she was a student studying women’s studies, and I think that sort of moment over this past decade of examining feminism and masculinity a lot. There’s podcasts that I’ve listened to and stuff. This topic definitely had an appeal to me because I just wanted to have the opportunity to talk about it for my own sake, but it is something that I think I’ve seen a lot of people acknowledging and identifying that it is a stubborn issue of how masculinity shows up on campuses and how we’re interfacing with that.
But if you want to, before we get to anything else, just explain your article in particular as the inspiration, the catalyst for this conversation happening now, and just how it came to be?

Charlie Potts:
Yeah, absolutely. So as we reopened parts of campus, as we moved out of the initial stages of COVID, we noticed some behavior patterns on our campus that conduct was down, all students were a little more isolated and not connecting the way that we were very used to them connecting on a fully residential campus. And then I read a blog on Open Campus Media, a higher ed blog, and I just happened to see it come across on Twitter or something. And it was the question about whether we would return to Animal House after COVID? Jeff Selingo wrote this about the movie Animal House. I’m sure many are familiar with the film, a 1978 film, this fictional fraternity life at a fictional institution and showed all the toxic masculinity traits that we have come to know as stereotypes of college men.
And so there was this question that this author posed about, we’re in this down period during COVID when people are isolated and not behaving the way they once did, but when it gets back to normal, are we going to be back to Animal House where behavior we explode with this toxic behavior and will men act the way that we so long had stereotyped them to act? So I was really intrigued by that article and wanted to think more about that and talk to men on campus who were experiencing the pandemic and all of the related things that were affecting their life. And then how were they behaving? How were they interacting? How were they finding their friends now? And what that transition out of the pandemic and back to what we were used to, but they were not used to because they hadn’t had a full college experience yet. And so what did that look like?
And so socialization for men is such a big part of that transition into college and if they didn’t have it the way that we always anticipate that they will, how will they react if they were coming out of high school with some effects from the pandemic? They missed out on a really formative part of their experience in getting ready for college. And so I wanted to examine what life on a residential campus looked like for these men, and really dug in with qualitative research, doing interviews and really asking them about their own masculine identity, their own social behaviors, and the way that they were viewing masculinity in the broader world during a time of upheaval in terms of society. So yeah, really fun article, really interesting to dig into, and I’m glad that it ultimately saw the light of day and got published.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think I’ll certainly link out to the article so folks can read it themselves. And I guess just for the context around creating it, something that when I read it that stuck out to me is that it feels like because of this disruption, everybody had all this maybe time and opportunity to do some self-examination or whatever else, but even these students that you were talking to did seem to have a good level of self-awareness around these things and everything. Do you feel like it was easier to write than you thought it would be or anything? Or just what was the process of doing these interviews and getting these insights? Because there’s certainly a version that I guess that’s what was your inspiration for it was maybe more anecdotal. It wasn’t necessarily like, “Oh, I’m going to go and do all this research.” You took more of that approach to try to capture a snapshot of this moment. But do you feel like it was easier to have these conversations with these young men and get their insights? Because that was a really compelling part of it for me, for sure.

Charlie Potts:
Yeah. I think it was significantly easier than I thought it would be. I was a little bit amazed at how reflective some of the men were and how they had really thought about it. I think that they maybe hadn’t been asked. I think that is part of our issue with men in college, is that I don’t know that we spend enough time asking how they perceive who they are as men or what that even means to them. And so I don’t know that these men had that conversation prior to COVID, and so now they maybe had been… It’s been percolating, and then COVID’s happening and they don’t have an outlet to discuss it, and then someone asks them about it. And they were remarkably articulate about, “Yeah, I’ve thought about that. Yeah, I see this in the news. I see this behavior with other people on campus. I see this on social media, and it really made me think.”
And so yes, I was quite pleased with how articulate the men were, and that it just showed I think, that it was in the back of their mind for a really long time, and they were affected by what they saw in terms of masculine behavior during the pandemic, and it really made them question who they were, who they wanted to be, and how they were going to navigate all this as men. And so that was really, to me, enlightening and helpful, certainly as a researcher, to have men who were willing to talk about it. And I know that’s not the case on all campuses or for all ages of men, but I felt really lucky that the participants that I had were ready to open up and ready to talk about it.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah, because I think the joke is that not many people would expect 18-year-old men to be super introspective and whatever. But I think I, as a parent of a young child, and as of the recording of this, baby number two is days away. So we’ll pick up this thread in some future episode, but the idea of… I feel like we chronically underestimate how observant and spongy and all that like anybody would be like, “Oh, my kid is always repeating what I say,” whatever. But I think they’re internalizing observing so much, and then especially at that time when they’re finding their identity, and a lot of it boils to the top and manifest of what they see, what they think they should be seeing, [inaudible 00:09:14] or whatever mixture of things they’ve been encountering in their environment, that idea that there’s this ripe ground for engaging in these conversations with these young men and everything. And especially during a time when whatever it is that they expected to happen didn’t happen and they’re trying to manage that ambiguity.
And I think that’s what I really like too, is there’s a twofold thing in the piece of, I think you’re acknowledging the challenges of where we are of the ambiguity, but then also that there’s a lot of great opportunities because this moment is allowing a lot of space for reexamination of masculinity and everything. So I guess for me, how I wanted to articulate this question was why was it important to you to acknowledge that nuance? Because I think even the piece that maybe inspired it was just like, “Oh, boy, we’re just going to go back to boys and fraternities doing whatever kind of shenanigans,” whatever. And just that headline even, sometimes as much as people even really interface with, it’s just scanning headlines and be like, “Yeah, I don’t know, maybe, who knows?” This is really trying to get into the full depth of it, of the challenges and the opportunity. So why was it important for you to really fully reflect both of those realities?

Charlie Potts:
For sure, and I think lest I lead us down the wrong path on that previous question, I certainly, and I think this fits into your next one, there were certainly several responses that were grunts and shrugs because these were 19 and 20-year-old men who yes, were to be able to articulate their experience, but also couldn’t always understand their experience during COVID, right? Just like we couldn’t, we didn’t really know what was always going on.
And so to me, that duality of some of the responses I got, the grunts and shrugs, but then the next answer was really articulate, I think really highlighted for me those challenges and opportunities is that we have men on our campus who are ready to engage about their identity and ready to talk about what it means and how they view the world and view their campus. But at the same time, sometimes bros are going to be bros, guys are going to be guys, and they’re not going to be able to articulate as well as you would hope or be able to pick up on nuance in their relationships on campus.
And so to me, this was really analyzing how the pandemic influenced them, was that catalyst to understand that the struggle versus the opportunity. And so we know on our campus, certainly across the country too, that men are leaving college at historically higher rates than they ever have before. And that the achievement gap and the success gap between men and women is expanding on a lot of campuses, that men are just falling a little behind. And then what they do is stop out or drop out. And for a place that’s entirely enrollment, tuition driven, we can’t afford to lose people, and we can’t afford to lose people because they haven’t really understood their experience. We need to jump in and help them understand that. So that was the important part for me in understanding the challenge versus the opportunities because we need our men to stay and be successful, but we know that we need to help them get there. And so this helped me understand what they were wrestling with.
We know that men have always stereotypically, but then also the data backs it up, have always higher rates of conduct violations, higher rates of sexual violence, higher rates of alcohol use. And so we know that stuff, that’s almost a given in how we approach how men are going to behave on our campus. Fair or not, that’s how we approach it. And so how do we insert ourselves in appropriate ways at that initial developmental transition into college so that we can help men understand who they are as men, and then why that’s important to how they’re going to navigate the next few years? And so yeah, I think that’s where hopefully I’m answering your question here about the opportunities that I saw, that actually could spring from the challenges that the men were articulating.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Right. Well, because the challenges, like you said, even just on a very broader scale of where we are in this moment is, well, we’re also not going to be easily able to make up for years of just how these men have been conditioned about how they’re supposed to behave or whatever else. Or like you said, it’s like we’re all also just trying to reckon with this moment. So it can’t be where it’s like, “Well, this is all you got to do is just do this and then you’re going to be fine.” So there’s so much there in terms of headwinds, in terms of trying to help this population in particular navigate this ambiguity. But then the idea that there’s been this space for self-examination and reevaluating what masculinity means. Yeah, there’s a lot of opportunities there and how they build community and how we can, as an institution, position ourselves to be of help to retain these students and help them be successful and have more healthy relationships with themselves, with other men, with anybody else in society.
So I think it’s twofold where it’s a tall order, but it’s also really important work for a number of reasons, like you said. Even if it’s just like, okay, just be the institution who’s just looking out for their own back kind of thing. It’s like, fine, yes, but invest where you need to and do the work and whatever. But then society will benefit down the road. And I think just for my own curiosity too, and just for the nature of the show of what we talk about a lot too, of seeing how digital tools play into this work, either just being maybe some of the causes of the problems or potential solutions and stuff like that. So take it as you will. How do you see digital tools playing into this topic?

Charlie Potts:
Yeah, sure. When I think about this, I think a lot about phones and social media. I do a lot of work with digital well-being as well, and my doctoral dissertation was looking at the role that social media use played in gender identity and gendered performance for men. So this is something I’ve been thinking about and looking at the influence on college men for quite a while, but I think about social media and I think about gaming, and I think about those ways that men have always built and engaged in relationships, but relevant to this study, that was the way that they were connected during the pandemic, gaming, social media, phones. Those were the way that they were building interpersonal relationships. And as we know that the ability to build in-person relationships, the ability to have connections on campus are so vital to that transition, especially for men.
And so when they weren’t able to have it, they had to rely even more on these digital relationships that they were building. And so I think there’s some positives. I think the ways to amass connections and amass friendships may be more surface level than they were deep. And so that doesn’t always help with understanding social cues and understanding how to navigate complex relationships, but at least there were some ways that they could connect during the pandemic. And I think we’ve seen how they’ve carried that through now to the ways that they use their phones and the ways they’re connected with social media. But yeah, I think there are a lot of concepts that we’re wrestling with with men in particular about digital well-being and how do you balance all of those tools, all of those devices with other aspects of your development?
So we can’t let you not have in-person connections simply because you have a way to do it in another format. And so we’ve been talking a lot about that, and then how do you balance it with academics? And then when we think about masculinity, a big part of masculinity for a lot of these college men is gender performance, is seeing portrayals in media, seeing what their friends do, and then having to act that way. And there’s lots of research about how and why men do that. But when you think about digital tools, you think about social media, you think about all the ways that men have to present themselves to the world, and if they haven’t thought about carefully curating that or being mindful of how that’s presented, they’re going to look a certain way. And it’s really amplified in those digital spaces.
And that is a quick way to amplify toxic masculinity on your campus is when men show aside that they’re trying to impress or show off and it’s not really their genuine… It’s not aligning with their values, it’s not aligning with who they hope to be, but they have that pressure to perform in those spaces. And we all have a choice. We have a choice of who to follow. We have a choice of how to present ourselves, who to pay attention to. So I think a lot of our conversations around that have been how do you balance, how do you decide who you are and what you value, and then how are you going to show that to the world? Particularly when you’re doing it in a digital space, and you might not have the context of who you are as a human in person to fill out what you’re presenting to the world.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Yeah. The word that’s echoing in my head with what you’re saying throughout that is harmony. We are not going to completely pull you out of the digital world or be able to neglect the in-person one or whatever. It’s like, how can we have those both work really well in tandem where digital spaces maybe can be the catalyst for in-person community or vice versa and everything. And even just that idea of digital well-being and just being a good digital citizen and everything, and just all these words that get thrown around and just be able to seek good balance and seek getting the right thing in the right way from wherever you’re putting yourself out there in the world. Because yeah, I think there’s just a really beautiful harmony that you can see happen, but I think that for many reasons, and especially now, people are going to just naturally lean one way or the other of where they feel like they’re being served or what feels easier or whatever else.
So I think, yeah, there’s a good opportunity, just the idea of trying to see the takeaways for institutions. It’s like, yeah, that’s a big area. You don’t have of your digital citizenship curriculum built up. It’s like, yeah, do that and try to make space for conversations around masculinity and everything. And if you haven’t, just like you said, it’s backed up by the data, and it probably would be this way on any campuses, like, okay, who are most of the students who are stopping out? Who are most of the students who are moving off campus or getting caught up in our conduct system or whatever? And that could be the justification if you need it to go to maybe senior leaders or something, if you’re seeing that firsthand.
And just to really bold, circle, underline, highlight this because I think you were alluding to it before with some of your answers of exactly what we’re just saying of why this work is so important right now is for all those reasons of the male students swapping out and maybe getting caught up in the conduct system or any of those things, if there’s just more you want to emphasize there more you want to add, take that as you will?

Charlie Potts:
Yeah, for sure. I do think one of the primary things is keeping men in college, is helping them understand that journey and helping them stay in college, succeed in college and graduate from college, I think is a really important part of… We need to understand who they are and why they are that way to help them do that. I also think that some of the things that emerged from this research were we are really at a critical juncture for helping men develop some help seeking behaviors. The men in this study, certainly, I think they grew in their empathy and they grew in understanding the challenges that others had in the world and on campus.
And so I do see an increased acknowledgement of empathy and that I need to care about other people and that I also need to care about myself, which I think for everyone who’s worked with college men, that can be a really hard thing to get them to say is that they need help or that they are not okay. And so I think understanding that experience, understanding how this outside thing imposed, the pandemic imposed on their experience can help us push them towards some of these help seeking behaviors that it’s okay to ask for help. It’s okay to talk about your mental health and that that’s an okay part of masculinity.
So I think we saw this acknowledging of some emotion and some authentic identity and how we can help nudge them in those right directions and a movement toward that more productive masculinity as opposed to toxic. I think we’re never going to get rid of toxic or negative masculinity. It’s so baked into who men are and how they see themselves in the world. But I think as we work on this encouraging help seeking, talking about empathy and compassion, I think we can mitigate and maybe change the scale a little bit and how pervasive, toxic or negative masculinity is.
I conducted follow-up interviews a little over a year later with these same men and got almost all of them to participate, which was really great. But just hearing how they continued to think about their mental health, the mental health of others, caring for others, I think was really promising to me because we talk about that, we push that with our current students, and then when they leave this place, hopefully they’re going to go do that out in the world when they become parents, when they become teachers, coaches, whatever they might be to influence the next generation of men.
So to me, that was one of the most promising things and why it was really critical for me to examine that was I want to know that’s happening and understand how we as student affairs and student affairs folks can help keep nudging in that right direction.

Dustin Ramsdell:
Even just that reassurance that we’re planting some seeds, getting folks to start to think about and go on these journeys where it’s like that acknowledgement, I guess, that this work will likely be a simmering long… It’s going to be slow cooking for a while. It’s going to be going likely over the span of someone’s college career and even after. Just even as they enter into, “Okay, who am I as a long-term partner or a spouse, a parent?” And all those sorts of things. But yeah, I think to me, for students who earnestly are pursuing higher education, that idea of, well, we owe it to them to always do whatever we can to create these supportive environments and those things that you mentioned of help seeking and empathy and all that. It’s like it’s just good life skills. That’s my takeaway.
This isn’t just the idea of while we’re helping you to have good study skills, which somebody could scoff at, where it’s like, “Well, I’m not going to need this after I graduate. What’s the point?” Or whatever. “Why can’t I just cram or try to memorize things or whatever?” But yeah, it’s just important in that way of if we get students and then on the other end, they come out better than when they entered, they just have those skills that help them to build community and everything. But then it’s like if you’re doing that work while in college of just trying to be in healthy environments, I feel like you’re going to come out with those skills, but then also good social capital. You’re going to have healthy relationships with people that you’re able to develop that are based in your authenticity and everything else.
So yeah, so much around why I think this is important. I think where we’ll leave it is I think you’re getting at this, and I’ve been trying to call out as I see, the takeaways for the folks who are the staff members at institutions doing this work, how they can best create these environments and everything? So any last parting bits of advice that you would give, and I would say to Res Life pros in particular? I guess from that vantage point? Just advice on this topic that you would give?

Charlie Potts:
Yeah, certainly. I think that what I would leave it with is that it’s okay to think as men as an important subgroup on your campus. I think I’ve presented at national conferences, I’ve written these articles, and I get reviewer comments and I get questions at conferences from professionals who say, “I’m so sick of talking about why men behave so poorly and that they’re the problem. Why don’t we just name it?” It just makes me really sad as a man, as a parent of boys. Masculinity and understanding masculinity is a vital piece of identity for a large percentage of our students on campus.
And so I think we’ve just so long been ingrained that men are going to behave in a certain way and that boys will be boys and we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that that is how that has to be. And I think when we push aside that idea that men need help thinking about how they view themselves as men, we are even inadvertently denying them the ability to really feel that they can be their authentic selves.
So talk about masculinity, talk with men about what it means to be a man, address that unproductive and toxic masculinity, and reaffirm what positive masculinity looks like, what help seeking behavior does for you and why that’s important. And I think very specifically in residence halls is emphasizing that culture of care and that culture of empathy, especially among your men who live in the halls. Restorative practices, emphasizing really don’t just develop mediation strategies or roommate agreements, but really develop those with men in mind as well, specifically about masculinity, because I think a lot of men will just block it out if they don’t feel like it has something to do with who they are. And so really tap into that when you can.
Having spent a lot of time in Res Life, a lot of time in residence halls, I always think about that. We hear a lot, “Oh, that particular floor in that residence hall is smelly and gross because it’s the men’s floor,” or is it smelly and gross because it’s the men’s floor or is it the men’s floor because it’s smelly and gross? I think we need to prioritize men in these spaces when we can or prioritize their ability to talk about masculinity because it’s in a really important subgroup, and it’s a really influential part of every campus. And so to understand that, to tap into that and to help men understand why and how they can be productive members of campus because they are men is a really valuable thing to do.

Dustin Ramsdell:
And it’s just that idea that like you said, there’s been a notion, I think, which thankfully is eroding that yeah, you’re dismissive of men because it’s like, oh, there’s just going to be bros and doing whatever, especially on a college campus and all that. And I think it’s something we’ve explored on the podcast and elsewhere here. A lot of that idea of imbuing that restorative mindset to what you’re doing, I think is so important in this context in particular.
And I know the other people that work in this space, I think repeat this often and what you’re saying. It’s just like, “Hey, for the love of men, I love men. They’re great. I have brothers,” or whatever, that idea, “They’re wonder wonderful parts of my life, and I want them to be,” like you’re saying, “Have that full opportunity to be authentic and everything else,” whatever, versus just being dismissive and disregarding of the issues that they face and try to see when they do trip up and yeah, they’re going to be risk-taking and doing whatever antics in college and stuff. It’s like, okay, you get caught up in the conduct system, or you’re struggling in a course, whatever that moment is, that’s an opportunity. That’s an opportunity to help them recognize, okay, well, why do you feel like maybe you’re not fitting in or struggling or pursuing these risk-taking behaviors, whatever?
Yeah. You have to operate as an institution and your staff and everything from that place of empathy, which of course you’re trying to imbue in the students as well. But yeah, so this is great stuff. I really appreciate this topic and the work that you’ve done on it and coming on to talk more about it. So ways to obviously check out the article, connect with you and everything in the show notes for this episode. But yeah, just thanks so much for hanging out.

Charlie Potts:
Yeah, thank you, Dustin. I appreciate it.