Abstract
At Compass University, a mid-sized, public, predominantly white university in the Midwest, an RA staff faces turmoil when two men on the student staff have a public, intimate argument. Racism online, indecent images, and the complexity of preexisting relationships between returning RAs leave a hall coordinator in a difficult position. Faced with a sensitive situation, she must decide how to respond immediately and how to take ongoing action in support of her student staff. This case engages student development theories (identity development, moral development, intercultural maturity), legal liability, and crisis management, focusing on issues salient to the LGBTQ+ community.
Keywords: Discrimination and racism in the queer community; Supervising student staff; Crisis intervention; Student conduct and legal issues
Primary Characters
Andrew (he/him) is an Asian American, cisgender, bisexual man. He is from San Francisco and is in his second year at Compass University. This is his first year on the North Hall RA staff.
Brian (he/him) is a white, cisgender, gay man. He is a senior at Compass University and grew up near campus. This is his third year on the North Hall RA staff, and he has a Senior RA role with additional leadership responsibilities.
Carrie (she/her) is a white, cisgender, straight woman. She is from a small city an hour away from Compass University and in her junior year. This is her second year on the RA staff. She and Brian became close during their first year on the North Hall staff. She appreciates Brian because he is a good listener and someone she feels she can trust.
Danielle (she/her) is a white, cisgender, straight woman. She is a hall coordinator for North Hall, and this is her second year as a full-time professional at the institution. Brian and Carrie were on her staff last year, and she rehired them for this academic year.
Context and Case
Context
It is October in Residence Life at Compass University, a mid-sized, public, predominantly white university in the Midwest. The 12-member RA team in North Hall, a first-year residence hall, has been helping residents navigate midterms season on campus. The year thus far has felt fulfilling, mainly because the summer training was enjoyable and successful, helping create a cohesive staff culture. RAs often speak highly of one another and support each other in their programming efforts and cross-resident interactions. Andrew and Brian, two RAs on the North Hall staff, met each other at training and since then, have been friendly and have encouraged each other. Their connection is partly because they both discussed their coming out processes during an emotionally rich identity development workshop during RA training.
At that summer RA training, Andrew and Brian agreed to serve on a panel comprising several queer and trans RAs at Compass University. Panelists shared their coming-out experiences and what it was like to be out on campus. Andrew, who is part of the campus LGBT speakers’ bureau, offered the story he usually tells on similar panels about how he “never really came out of the closet” back home because people usually assumed he was gay growing up. Instead, he talked about repeatedly “coming in,” surprising people at Compass each time he clarified he was bisexual, not gay.
Andrew also shared how it was hurtful when people doubted this aspect of his identity. In addition, he expressed how being bisexual and Asian meant that he was subject to racist microaggressions when interacting with other queer men. After Andrew finished sharing, Brian turned to him, validated his experiences, and expressed his appreciation.
On the same panel, Brian recounted how he did not come out of the closet until his first year of college. Though he felt coming out was a good thing, Brian said it did not go well: he was cut off financially by his family, and he considered leaving college. With Compass being so close to home, he shared how it was painful to live so physically close to family, yet at an emotional and psychological distance.
He mentioned that he had a supportive RA his first year, who encouraged him to stay enrolled at Compass to apply for an RA job for the next year to defray costs. Though Brian did not particularly want to serve in an RA role among his peers, he applied anyway and got the job. He told the audience he became an RA primarily for the room and board since he no longer had his family’s financial support. Despite his initial motivations, Brian shared that he enjoys serving in the RA role for the community and ability to be himself on campus. Now, he hopes to be a role model for others as a Senior RA.
Andrew’s and Brian’s stories were presented with great emotion at the panel during RA training, eliciting supportive sentiment from the other students in attendance. At the conclusion of the panel, Andrew and Brian expressed wanting to be friends when the school year started. However, a variety of circumstances got in the way. Since they were of different class years, had different pre-existing friend groups, had busy class schedules, and did not live on the same floor, they had not become particularly close. Still, they were friendly at staff meetings.
The Staff Meeting
Staff meetings for the North Hall team are on Thursday evenings. In the half-hour before this Thursday’s meeting, Andrew had extra time on his hands, and he opened the gay dating app, Juicer. There he came across Brian’s photo, which he had not seen on the app before. After a moment of hesitation, Andrew opened Brian’s profile. Andrew was not sure what he expected to find, but certainly not a statement that Brian only wanted to interact with other white men on Juicer. Realizing that the staff meeting would start soon, Andrew took a screenshot of Brian’s Juicer profile, closed the app, packed his things, and made his way to the meeting room.
At the staff meeting, Danielle started the meeting as she always does, asking the RAs to each share a “weather report” check-in to describe how their day was going. Andrew immediately volunteered to go first. He shared, “Well, I was ‘sunny without a cloud in the sky’ until a few minutes ago, but then I saw golden boy Brian’s racist profile on Juicer, and now I’m feeling like ‘a tornado on the loose.’ Here, take a look for yourselves.” Andrew then pulled out his phone and hit ‘send’ on a text message containing the screenshot of Brian’s indecent Juicer profile. The message went to Danielle and the rest of the members of the RA team–but not to Brian.
As the RAs started to look at their phones, Brian realized what had happened. Flustered, he slid his belongings into his backpack and rushed out of the room, yelling an expletive after the door clicked behind him. Carrie followed him, caught up to him, and asked, “What’s going on?” Brian said he was angry that Andrew brought up that he was on Juicer, called him racist, and sent a compromising photo of him to the RAs and Danielle. Carrie said, “Hold on – don’t run away. How can I support you right now?”
Meanwhile, back in the meeting room, the other RAs were experiencing a range of emotions and conveying a range of reactions: some sat in stunned silence, some were crying, and some were angry. Having been trained in a student affairs graduate program that centers equity and inclusion in higher education, Danielle recognized that she needed to take immediate action. Now, she must decide what exactly to do.
Discussion Questions
- What kinds of emotions are Andrew and Brian feeling through this process? How might these emotions change or deepen as Thursday unfolds?
- What should Danielle consider about her relationships with Andrew, Brian, Carrie, and other team members and how they influence the situation?
- What should Danielle do a) when Brian walks out the door, b) in the hour after the text message incident, and c) to follow up in the coming days?
- What legal and privacy concerns do Danielle or others need to address?
- What student development theories (identity development, moral development, intercultural maturity, and others) might be helpful for Danielle as she thinks through the situation and makes decisions about what action to take?
Author Bios
Nicholas R. Stroup (he/him) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Higher Education and Student Affairs (HESA) program at the University of Iowa. His research focuses on socialization theory and global dimensions of higher education and student affairs. Prior to his doctoral study, he worked for seven years as a full-time student affairs practitioner in the functional areas of residence life and graduate student services.
Jason Walls (he/him) is a second-year graduate student in the HESA program at the University of Iowa. He is interning in Residence Education and doing a practicum in the Pomerantz Career Center. He studied English as an undergraduate and taught ESL in South Korea and Taiwan. He also served as an English Language Arts Teacher and College Counselor for two years in K-12 education.