Enter At Your Own Risk: Getting (Radically) Honest About Residence Life And Its Affects on Wellness
By: Cody Charles
Tags: Education, Higher Education, Mental Health, Racism, Students

We are a profession of well-intentioned people who love to talk about a glorious goodness that supposedly exist within this field. However, we conveniently forget we’ve solved very few issues within Higher Education because we refuse to commit to honest conversation. And because we’ve normalized the performance of honest conversation, I have to add the word radical (before honest) to invoke a new spirit.

We have to talk about the journey of student housing staff and the price of the ticket. And we must speak honestly about the work we ask residence life professionals to do.

I asked, using my social media platforms, for thoughts on residence life at the intersection of wellness. Below are a list of comments from residence life staff at a variety of places in their career. I honor their stories.

I used to be such a heavy sleeper and always wake up well rested. After 5 years of being on call and being so paranoid about missing duty calls I wake up at the slightest noises, typically panicked, and have such a hard time going back to sleep. Paranoid sleeping has been so hard to break and I haven’t been on call now for over 3 years.

Financially, I’m in an amazing position and I’m able to live a lifestyle a lot of my peers are not.

I had to go on fmla due to trauma from housing (responding to a student death). Lots of other pieces and that was the most acute. I’ve also had great things occur… I had lovely mentors that helped me make meaning of my identities.

I feel like working in residence life really made me recognize and live in my blackness. I had floors of majority-white young women who were of a higher socioeconomic status than myself and my family, and I was made aware of it a lot. Just tons of privilege around me and I wasn’t respected. It definitely took a toll on my mental health as well as being seen as being intimidating because of my mood and demeanor sometimes but I was literally just being there. Being me. And being black. I’ve had an RA friend who was harassed by their residents with them drawing hanging black stick figures on their whiteboard and a queer Co-RA’s residents carving very hurtful slurs into his door and it wasn’t taken as seriously as it should have been.

Working in housing amplified all of my feelings of unwellness. Every facet of capitalistic exploitation is lifted up as some ideal that we should all be striving for. Sacrificing ourselves for. Simultaneously, housing only wants us to advocate for students so long as it doesn’t implicate the institution. No ones humanity is as important as the maintenance of power structures and systems. I was actively harassed by students in my building for gender identity stuff. Like, shit was slashed with knives and I would get a half-hearted apology and no actual help or work toward making me feel safer in my home. Which ultimately culminated in me being the most actively unwell mentally that I have ever been.

I would like to center that my high level of stress denial contributed to my lack of stress awareness or management until the very end of my time in housing. The ending was where most of the stress and ill-being was a point of desperation. My ill-being began emotionally and mentally, as well as financially because I started housing before salaries were adjusted for FMLA. This over time led to my mental wellness being sacrificed and eventually showing up in my physical ability to do simple tasks or uphold basic commitments. I did not realize how much residence life impacted my wellness until I was out of it. It was then that I was able to acknowledge and address just how my housing experience had conditioned me to function in dysfunction, clutter and chaos, and that because of this, I had developed some unhealthy life habits and some ineffective work ethics.

I hate the phone, when it rings — I still panic. It is legitimately awful. Even on anxiety meds daily — still awful panic and absolute dread.

The above response helped me identify why I can’t cope very well with covering front desk phones, when needed, in my current role. I feel very anxious and overwhelmed.

Petty drama in the dept used to take a toll on my happiness. We spend so much time with each other, it’s hard to just “stay out of it”. Vibes and bad energy have an effect on your spirit and it takes a toll

There is not wellness. There is not thriving. There is dismantling oneself to save someone else’s face and/or procedure. The impact on relationships? We want a piece of you, part of your family, and we’ll let you all live here to steep in it.

As an RA, it was like a reality show…they could have made one. I had some trauma occur, and some other things/threats from a couple of male residents that may not have been addressed by housing had it not not been for the privilege I had, and the intervention of multiple professors in my professional school at KU who made a direct demand to the head of housing on my behalf.

As someone who came (to KU) from 1500 miles away, it helped me to become more independent. When I was recommended to become an RA by my RA, I was on the verge of transferring back east because of the culture shock. But it’s why I ultimately stayed at KU, which changed the trajectory of my career. I learned many life lessons and skills that I still use today, like conflict resolution and I made some lifelong friends.

There were 3+ suicides during my time as an RA/HR. Some duty nights were so hard I had to miss class because I was so tired. I had to teach white boys to do laundry, found students passed out sometimes assaulted, sometimes just drunk in hallways, be the 1st responder to domestic violence.

So much gaslighting!! I remember bringing up legitimate concerns and being constantly told that I must be burnt out. When I didn’t enjoy sitting in hours of training and forced to do some degrading ice breaker, I was told I had a bad attitude. My weight was constantly held against me as I didn’t feel comfortable doing a trust fall and thus wasn’t a team player. Basically if I didn’t put on the happy, fake smile, I wasn’t a team player, I had a bad attitude, and I was made to feel that there was something wrong with me. After my housing experience I also learned just how exploited I was. If I calculate the number of hours that I spent working, even at minimum hourly wage, I should have made a ton of money. Instead my RA salary was $35 every 2 weeks plus room and board. My assistant director pay wasn’t much better. Housing props itself up on so much unpaid labor. Also, what business did I as an untrained young person have dealing with the crises and mental health issues I did. Then there was no support when my mental health suffered from dealing with so many residents and all their issues.

While I made many friends in housing, my relationships with people outside housing suffered. It is almost like you are isolated from non-housing folks because the job demands are so high. I remember missing so many typical college experiences because all staff was expected to stay in the building in case of issues. I think the experience also instilled a police like mentality of enforcing rules and punishing rather than helping or encouraging responsible behavior. We also were constantly thrown in as the “bad cops” told to enforce rules, catch residents, and testify against them at judicial board hearings, only then to have housing upper admin not back us up. The message was go be police and enforce our rules and then we will come in and be good cop. Being in housing took a toll on my school work, on my relationships outside of housing, and on my mental health. You are made to feel ungrateful and selfish if you point out any injustices. There were so many good experiences I had and I made some great friends, but being outside the higher ed admin field painted me as an outsider. It was definitely a mixed bag for me.

The impact on my relationship was significant. It was expected that I was on campus even when not on-call and to always be around for extra events, so never leaving for the weekends was hard. It also meant that my partner always had to come to me and our weekends were often interrupted by issues that came up. If I ever did leave for the weekend or possibly take the day off, there was significant judgement from my coworkers for “not being dedicated.” I also would say that work/life balance was talked about, but not actually supported. It was a lot of talk about how important mental health was, but no action to it. One of the main positives to residence life for me was what it did for me financially. Not having to pay rent or buy (much) food, allowed me to take my stipend and pay my way through grad school and then professionally it allowed me to start saving right away.

I really loved working in residence life as an undergraduate student but when I became a professional and the lifestyle transitioned to being 50 or 60 hours a week, I really struggled to find myself and find time to take care of myself. I prioritized everything before myself and I ultimately left residence life because it was affecting both my mental and physical health. The constant “go-go” mentality of residence life was difficult to overcome; I constantly felt like I needed to do everything in order to advance or for people to view me as successful.

Working in housing has not only affected my wellness but my partner’s as well. She handles being a Res Life Wife pretty well but sometimes gets frustrated or drained because I am in that head space as well.

I love my flawed institution but this portion of the field, and SA in general, has caused me to develop stress-induced anxiety and PTSD from past experiences that I never experienced prior to being an SA Pro.

I am very passionate about working with students, and I know that passion came from my time working in res life. I served alongside so many amazing students and staff and made some of my very best friends, and favorite memories, but I often question if the impact on my wellness was truly worth it. As a person who was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression while working as an RA, I think my now 10+ years in housing was debilitating for my wellness. The apathy that I developed after dealing with so much crisis was probably one of the things that worried me the most. Things would happen, still do happen, that I know I should be sad about, but I have been trained to compartmentalize those emotions and respond to the situation that I can almost be robotic in times of serious trauma. The chronic insomnia caused from being on call and being expected to handle any crisis at any time was exhausting to say the least. Even if the phone never rang throughout the night the possibility that it might triggered my anxiety and often lead to sleepless nights, and then of course there were the nights when it did ring. Standing in rooms overwhelmed by the smell of marijuana that set my allergies off, and caused sinus infections, while I waited for UPD to finish their search. Being the first responder to crisis that sometime triggered personal traumas, but not being given an option to opt out, or simply say, I can’t handle this. Unhealthy eating habits after working 10 to 12 hour days with a never ending to do list because housing became a catch all for so many responsibilities on campus, conduct, programming, marketing, facilities, etc. The challenge of dating or maintaining a social life while living on campus. The financial instability of being paid an incredibly low salary, not having the option to work another job because of on-call and late night responsibilities, but being told that it is actually a reasonable salary when you add in the room and board you receive. I have taken a ton of transferable skills from my time in housing. My ability to stay calm, remain flexible, and make even the most stressful situations fun are some things that I love. However, I was given the advice, that once you leave housing, seek counseling. There is so much unpacked trauma that I am still working to process through.

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This is the work of Cody Charles; claiming my work does not make me selfish or ego-driven, instead radical and in solidarity with the folk who came before me and have been betrayed by history books and storytellers. Historically, their words have been stolen and reworked without consent. This is the work of Cody Charles. Please discuss, share, and cite properly.