13

Other Matters Related to My Work on this Case

Qualifications of the witness. A copy of my vita was provided to Attorney
Boonin several days ago. I have more than 39 years of experience in higher

education, including 27 years with direct or oversight responsibility for student

housing and residential life. I served two terms on the Executive Board of the

Association of College and University Housing Officers-International and have

published a number of articles, chapters, books and monographs on student

housing and residential life. I received the doctor of philosophy degree with an
. emphasis in higher education in 1974 from Arizona State University.

Vita. My vita has been provided to Attorney Boonin. It is accurate and includes
all of my publications for the past ten years. :

Other cases. I have not served as an expert witness during the past four years.

Compensation. I am being paid $150 per hour for services rendered in this case
other than testifying. I am being paid $200 per hour for testifying in this case.

Respectfully submitted,

pre-# Sha.

John H. Schuh
October 14, 2009



to them (see, for example, Cohen, 1998’; Schuh, 2004°) and the facilities were
designed as places to eat and sleep; services were provided by tutors who lived
with the students (Burton, 2007*). Over the years the purposes of campus-based
housing for undergraduate students have evolved and a contemporary approach
involves not only providing economical lodging and dining services for students
but also supporting the educational goals of students. A landmark study
published in 1977 by Astin’ concluded the following

Perhaps the most significant aspects of living on campus versus
commuting are on achievement and career development. Living on
campus substantially increases the student’s chances of persisting in
college and of aspiring to graduate or professional degrees (p. 220).

Since the publication of Professor Astin’s report, additional authors have
asserted the potency of the residential experience for students. Winston and
Anchors® (1993, pp. 32-35) offered suggestions for residence hall programming
that could advance the goals of higher education. White and Porterfield reported
how the psychosocial development could be advanced for students living in
residence halls (1993).” Whitt and Nuss (1994) provided suggestions for aligning
life in residence halls with the institution’s curriculum.’ This development has
led to the contemporary standards for housing and residential life programs

? Cohen, A. M. (1998). The shaping of American higher education. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.

3 Schuh, J. H. (2004). Residence halls. In F. J. D, MacKinnon (Ed. ), Rentz’s student
affairs practice ion higher education (pp. pp. 268-297). Springfield, IL: Thomas.

* Burton, J.D. (2007). The Harvard tutors: The beginning of an academic
profession, 1690-1825. In H. S. Wechsler, L. F. Goodchild, & L. Eisenmann (Eds.),
The history of higher education (pp. 93-103). Boston: Pearson.

5 Astin, A. W. 977. Four oritieal years. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

® Winston, Jr., R. B., & Anchors, S. (1993). Student development in the residential
environment. In ‘Authors (Eds.), Student housing and residential life (pp. 25-64).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

” White, D. B., & Porterfield, Psychosocial development in college. In R. B.
Winston, Jr., & S. Anchors (Eds.), Student housing and residential life (pp. 65-94).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

®whitt, E. J., & Nuss, E. M (1994). Connecting residence halls to the curriculum.
In C. C. Schroeder & P, Mable (Eds.) Realizing the educational potential of residence
halls (pp. 133-165). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.



People who are nonstudents cannot participate in the same experiences’as those
who are students. Nonstudents will not encounter the same challenges faced by
students who have to complete work that is evaluated by faculty members and
are awarded grades that ultimately lead to the accumulation of credits that are
part of the degree granting process. They will not be engaged in writing papers,
completing assignments in the natural and computational sciences, or
participating in group projects that are part of course requirements. Their
presence on a residential floor has the potential to be distracting particularly
during those times of the year when students are preparing for examinations or
academic requirements. Because of the unique experiences of students, the
standard followed by institutions of higher education is to provide residence
halls for students.

3. What is the Potential Impact on University Residence Hall Living if
Nonstudents are Permitted to Live in Campus Residence Halls?

Itis clear from the information provided above the institutions of higher
education operate residence halls for very specific educational reasons, aligned
with the educational missions of their institutions. Residence hall living is
designed to help students achieve their education goals through the various
kinds of programs and experiences that are provided. Nonstudent tenants, by
definition, have different goals than students and accordingly, have not been
permitted to live in campus residence halls in my experience in higher education.

It is important to note, in my opinion, that once the residence halls are open to
anyone who seeks to live on campus, then institutional officials will need to
decide who has a compelling reason to live in a residence hall and who does not.
If the institution must consider other reasons, it will have to charge a
representative with reviewing applications and holding hearings to determine if
reasons are of sufficient merit to grant residence on campus. Theoretically, there
is no limit to the variety of reasons that could be presented; developing
guidelines for securing permission to live on campus would be costly in terms of



Experience and Students in Transition led a team that conducted a noteworthy
study that examined 13 institutions with exemplary programs for first year
students and found that an important element in successful programs for first
year students is that all the students participated in first year experiences at the
institutions they studied. They concluded the following: “Thus, what
distinguishes these thirteen institutions is their attention to all first year
students” (2005, p. 385").

Included among the services and programs that are part of the first year
residential experience are’ access to institutional resources, such as the college’s
electronic network that can be accessed from a student’s room and more
importantly, programs designed to facilitate the student’s experiences. Typically
among these are enriched programs for first year students, learning communities
that have ties to the college’s academic programs, and staff who are committed to
providing assistance as needed for students.

The students in these special programs share experiences of their classes, their
preparation of papers, engaging in other experiences to meet their academic
requirements, and typically forming study groups to prepare for examinations.
A nonstudent living in a campus residence where every student but him would
be a participant in these special programs by definition is an outsider. That is,
nonstudents do not have the resources and experiences available to them that are
provided for students and cannot participate in all of the same experiences as
students. Moreover, part of the strength of these programs has to do with
developing a culture of learning and support that is shared by students who
collaborate, work together and study together. Such interactions can add
potency to the student learning experience. For example, Pascarella and
Terenzini (2005”) concluded the following:

1 Barefoot, B. O., Gardner, J. N., et al. (2005), Achieving and sustaining
institutional excellence for the first year of college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

2 Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P.T. (2005). How college affects students (vol. 2).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. .



(Dean, 2006), which state, in part

The mission of HRLP (housing and residential life programs) must
address:

The living environment, including programs and services, that promotes
learning and development in the broadest sense, with an emphasis on
academic success....(p. 210)?

As this brief summary indicates, offering educational experiences that contribute
to student learning is central to the operation of residence halls on today’s
college campuses. Contemporary residential education is informed by a
commitment to student learning, growth and development. Programs are
planned and offered to complement the institution’s academic mission. Staff
members are trained to provide assistance to students in accomplishing their
educational goals. As the CAS standards indicate, “The Housing and Residential
Life Program must incorporate student learning and student development in its
mission and enhance the overall educational experience” (Dean, 2006, p. 210)"

Institutions of higher education operate residence halls to facilitate the
educational experiences and learning of students. Services and programs are
provided for the residents that speak specifically to their status as students.
Since the person central to this litigation would be in his first year of living ina
residence hall, literature relevant to the first year experience is discussed.

A number of publications that address the first year experience. Betsy Barefoot,
codirector and senior scholar at the Policy Center on the First Year of College and
John Gardner, Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Senior Fellow of the
University of South Carolina’s National Resource Center for the First Year

° Dean, L. A. (2006). CAS professional standards for higher education (6 ed.).
Washington, DC: Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher
Education.

” Ibid.



and living in a residence hall actually achieve the gdals that have been
established for them. The work of Pascarella and Terenzini (2005), cited above, is
instructive. They observed the following:

Our earlier review and others (Blimling, 1989, 1993, 1997; Pascarella,
Terenzini, & Blimling, 19094) have pointed to the remarkably consistent
evidence that students living on campus are more likely to graduate than
students who commute. This relationship remains positive and
statistically significant even when a wide array of precollege
characteristics related to persistence and.educational attainment are taken
into account, including precollege academic performance, socioeconomic
status, educational aspirations, age and employment status. In our
current review we found nothing to change our conclusion on this point
(p. 421).

They added,

Johnson, Jonson, and Smith (1998a) report the results of a meta-analysis of
more than 300 studies as indicating that cooperative learning
environments promoté both academic and social engagement and success.
According to their review, learning communities foster development and
supportive peer groups, greater student involvement in classroom
learning and social activities, perceptions of greater academic
development, and greater integration of students’ academic and
nonacademic lives (p. 423).

The evidence appears to be clear. Living in a residence hall adds value to the
student experience along educationally purposeful lines. Programs and
experiences are developed to enhance the development of students. Students,
then, participate in programs. The result is that their progress toward their
academic goals is enhanced. Nonstudents, by definition, must have different
goals for living in a campus residence since they are not engaged in progress
toward the completion of an academic program.



EXHIBIT
1


11

institution would no longer function as an educational enterprise; it would be in
the business of operating group housing similar to apartment buildings off
campus. There are no assurances that nonstudent tenants will pay any attention
to examination periods or other times when students need to study and coinplete
their academic requirements. Accordingly, even if the disruptive behavior of
nonstudent tenants is dealt with, it will be after the fact and it will be impossible
to undo the damage done to students who are unable to achieve their
educational goals because of the misbehavior of nonstudent tenants.

Students are not required to live on campus at Oakland University. Typically
students choose to live in campus residence halls with the expectation that they —
will live with other students who share their academic and educational goals.
They will attend class together, study together, collaborate on projects and share
their academic experiences. To alter the nature of the residence halls so that any
person may live in campus residence halls changes the fundamental reason
students choose to live in campus residences. Nonstudents, as has been
established earlier in this report, have different goals that do not include
completing courses, earning credits, and ultimately receiving a degree. The
placement of nonstudent tenants with students on a residence hall floor
potentially will disadvantage the student residents who wish to share and enrich
their experiences with other students. Living on campus for students then has
the potential to become less attractive, and the institution would be
disadvantaged in trying to explain to prospective students and their parents that .
the university could not guarantee that the new students would be living with
other students. Rather, they might be living on a floor with nonstudent tenants
who have very different reasons for living in campus housing and do not share
the goal of completing academic courses and participating in educational
activities.

Finally, the introduction of nonstudent tenants to the special programs housed in
campus residence halls for students has the potential to dilute these experiences
for students so as to render them useless. In residences designed with special
programs for the residents, if some of the residents are students and others are



10

time and effort. This expense would have to be borne by all persons who live in

campus residence halls, needlessly in my opinion.

Institutions of higher education typically hire an upper class student or graduate
student to provide oversight for the residents on the floor. This person is called a
resident assistant at Oakland University. The resident assistants provide “advice
and guidance in academic, social and financial matters and handle several
administrative duties” (http://www.oakland.edu/?id=274&sid=3). If
individuals who are nonstudents are permitted to live in campus housing, the
job description of this person will change to an assignment more along the lines
of that of an apartment manager. It is highly likely that a different kind of staff
member would need to be hired since the relationship between the nonstudent
resident and the university would be that of a landlord /tenant rather than that of
a student resident and the university. Clearly, the resident assistant should not
be asked to deal with some people on the floor who are students and others who

are nonstudent tenants. It is even possible that additional staff members would
have to be hired to provide oversight for nonstudent tenants.

Providing an environment where students can study and engage in their
academic pursuits is an important element of campus residential living. In
providing this oversight, institutions apply a Code of Student Conduct

(http:/ /www.oakland.edu/handbook/) as well as other rules and regulations to
the residence hall community, At Oakland University “This code includes
nonacademic and academic conduct and applies to all undergraduate students,
graduate students and student organizations at Oakland University.” Violations
of the Code of Conduct can subject a student to removal from the residence hall
or removal from the university in extreme cases. The Code does not apply to
nonstudents. In cases where tenants (nonstudents) would violate laws or the
landlord tenant agreement, the University would have to use means other than
the institutional student judicial process to seek relief, such as the court system.
This process would place on undue burden on staff that would have to apply one
set of regulations and procedures to student residents and another set of
procedures, and perhaps regulations, to nonstudent tenants. Put bluntly, the

|


The weight of the evidence from this research is quite clear in suggesting
that certain kinds of nonclassroom interactions with peers have a net
positive effect on learning. Not surprisingly, the most influential peer
interactions appear to be those that reinforce the ethos of the formal
academic program and extend it to nonclassroom settings. That is, they
are interactions among students related to campus activities; having
serious discussions about religious, philosophical, or political beliefs;
discussing personal problems; discussing the arts, science and technology,
or international relations, and talking about an idea brought up in class (p.
121).

They added in reference to a specific study: -

With these controls in place, the nonclassroom peer interaction scale had
significant, positive effects on self-reported gains in writing and thinking
skills and in understanding the arts and humanities across all three years
of the study. It also had significant, positive effects on end-of-first year
scores on a standardized measure of reading comprehension and ona
standardized measure of composite learning consisting of reading,
mathematics, and critical thinking (p. 121).

A nonstudent would not be eligible to participate in the specialized programs
that are designed for students and offered in a residence hall by virtue of not
being enrolled in courses that lead to the completion of an academic degree.
Moreover, it is quite doubtful that a nonstudent could benefit by living in a
residence hall along the lines designed above because the experiences provided ~
are aligned with the academic programs of students. That is, the experiences in
the residence halls are specifically planned to complement that academic goals of
the institution. The academic goals of the institution, which include improved
student proficiency in such areas as reading comprehension, improved writing
and computational skills do not apply to nonstudents.

The question, then, becomes whether or not these academically-related programs



Whitt, E. J., & Nuss, E. M (1994). Connecting residence halls to the curriculum.
InC. C. Schroeder & P. Mable (Eds.) Realizing the educational potential of
residence halls (pp. 133-165). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Winston, Jr., R. B., & Anchors, S. (1993). Student development in the residential
environment. In Authors (Eds.), Student housing and residential life (pp. 25-
64). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. ;

I reviewed no other material of any kind in preparing this report. The questions
are: ,
1. What is the definition of a student?
2. Why do colleges and universities operate residence halls?
3. What is the potential impact on university residence hall living if
nonstudents are permitted to live in campus residence halls?

1. Whats the definition of a student?

A commonly used definition of the term “undergraduate student” can be found
in documents published annually by the National Center for Education Statistics,
which is overseen by the U.S. Department of Education. The following definition
of an undergraduate student is' provided in the Digest of Educational Statistics
2008': “Students registered at an institution of higher education who are
working in a program leading to a baccalaureate degree or other formal award
below the baccalaureate, such as an associate degree.” (2009, p. 681).

2. Why do colleges and universities operate residence halls?

Institutions of higher education in the United States have operated residences for
students since their founding. The colonial colleges had residential components

* Snyder, T. D., Dillow, S. A., & Hoffman, C. M. (2009). Digest of educational
statistics 2008. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National Center
for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences.



Report of John H. Schuh, Ph.D. in the Matter between Micah Fialka-Feldman
and Oakland University Board of Trustees, et al.

The purpose of this short report is to respond to three questions, listed below. To
prepare my answers, I reviewed the depositions of Oakland University Vice
President Mary Beth Snyder, former housing director Lionel Maten, and various
web sites of Oakland University. I also had a telephone conversation with Vice
President Snyder. I am also relying on my experience in higher education and
my contributions to higher education. I reviewed several publications including:

Astin, A. W. (1977). Four critical years. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Barefoot, B. O., Gardner, J.N,, etal. (2005). Achieving and sustaining institutional
excellence for the first year of college. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Burton, J.D. (2007). The Harvard tutors: The beginning of an academic
profession,.1690-1825. In H. S. Wechsler, L. F. Goodchild, & L. Eisenmann
(Eds.), The history of higher education (pp. 93-103). Boston: Pearson.

Cohen, A. M. (1998). The shaping of American higher education. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.

Dean, L. A. (2006). CAS professional standards for higher education (6" ed.).
Washington, DC: Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher
Education.

Pascarella, E. T., & Terenzini, P. T. (2005). How college affects students (vol. 2).
San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Schuh, J. H. (2004), Residence halls. In F. J. D. MacKinnon (Ed.), Rentz’s student
affairs practice ion higher education (pp. pp. 268-297). Springfield, IL:
Thomas.

Snyder, T. D., Dillow, S. A., & Hoffman, C. M. (2009). Digest of educational
statistics 2008.. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, National
Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences.

White, D. B., & Porterfield, Psychosocial development in college. In R. B.
Winston, Jr., & S. Anchors (Eds.), Student housing and residential life (pp. 65-
94). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.



Report of John H. Schuh, Ph.D., in the Matter between Micah

Fialka-Feldman and Oakland University Board of Trustees,
etal. ,

Distinguished Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies
Towa State University. —

October 13, 2009



12

nonstudent tenants, the potency of the peer culture is weakened and my

prediction is that the programs will be discontinued, much to the detriment of
the student residents. Nonstudent tenants cannot, by definition, participate in
programs and experiences designed for students even if they want to. No act
could be more injurious to such special programs than to offer them on residence
halls floors that also would house nonstudent tenants.