This blog series features different writers responding to the prompt, “How is the rising generation of college students changing residence life practice?”
Re-evaluating Traditions
Today’s college students are not interested in “what we’ve always done”, and they’re not afraid to show it. When first year students unapologetically call students just two years their senior “unc” (A.K.A. out-of-touch old person), understand that there is absolutely no love lost between those same students and your 20 years of midnight breakfast tradition.
While we don’t necessarily need to go back to the drawing board when it comes to traditions, housing programs need to engage with student feedback in all forms to reevaluate if those longstanding traditions make the same impact they did 20 years ago. When I was a residence director at UMBC, one of the most beloved traditions was the student-led semesterly “midnight scream”, in which hundreds of students would gather on a central green space on campus and scream their lungs out for what seemed like 5 minutes straight. The event coincided with finals week (and of course 24-hour quiet hours), but housing employees never addressed the situation as a conduct issue as a sign of respect for a student-made tradition that genuinely sought to enhance the student experience.
Exploring Virtual Strategies
If the technological generational divide between generations wasn’t already apparent in the late 2010s, the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly brought it front and center. Today’s college students are much more comfortable being themselves in virtual spaces than many millennials and Gen Xers could ever hope to be.
As we rushed to reestablish “business as usual” operations in the aftermath COVID-19, many housing departments were all too eager to say goodbye to virtual strategies. We anticipated students being eager and excited to get to know each other face-to-face once again, and living with other people isn’t exactly something you can do virtually. But one thing we didn’t anticipate was just how much learning loss they would experience in the area of synchronous, face-to-face interaction. For better or for worse, many college students find comfort in their virtual spaces. If we hope to rebuild students’ in-person interaction skills and “meet them where they’re at” as so many universities claim to value, we need to challenge ourselves to re-engage with virtual spaces like Zoom, Discord, and Instagram as valid spaces for engagement.
Bringing More of Ourselves to Work
As fellow blogger Alex Baker put quite well in a previous post, “Gen Z has an incredible bullshit detector.” While Alex wrote specifically about how this applies to the curricular approach, I believe it also applies to how we show up at work.
Many of us have shaped our approach to work off our observations of our parents’ and role models’ relationship with their work. Growing up in the 90’s and early 2000’s, I had a workaholic parent that believed staunchly in the American Dream and that hard work was its own reward. A work phone call never went unanswered, even on the weekends or during family time. As a result, I told myself I would never dedicate myself so fully to a workplace that wouldn’t return the favor, and developed a very compartmentalized approach to work and life.
All this to say, as we continue to navigate our professional identities, what this generation of students may need is for us to break down those walls we’ve put up for professionalism’s sake. Students don’t want to meet with the impersonal, business-forward housing employee whose only office decoration is their college diploma. They want to meet with a real, imperfect person who exudes empathy and humanity.
In today’s highly politicized educational environment, it would be remiss of me to not acknowledge that there are very real limitations to what we truly can bring to work; we still need to protect our peace and protect our paycheck. But in many ways, letting our conversations and spaces be a more genuine reflection of who we are can open up unexpected doorways to building connection and community with our students. I can’t say what this will look like for everyone, but I know for me it means covering every square inch of my office with references to my life as a dog owner, artist, and serial hobby collector (with deference to fire codes, of course).
