Journal of College & University Student Housing "Housing While Black" Theme Issue - 83

Black Exodus
The Work Has Changed
Marshall and colleagues (2016) note that the presence of extreme work obligations
can lead to burnout, fatigue, and eventual departure from the field, and they define
burnout as the " state of fatigue and frustration arising from unrealistic, excessive
demands on personal resources leading to physical and mental exhaustion " (p. 152).
For example, when asked what would have changed their decision to leave their job,
Participant B stated,
Nothing. The work has shifted. I got into this work to develop students and while some
aspects of my former position lent itself to that, about 80% of my job was catering to the
shifting demands of divisional leadership and managing the change in student dynamics.
Inclusion but Not Included
The experiences of being othered within student affairs are reinforced by a system of
judgment that perceives otherness as a determining factor in who gets to belong and
who does not-what is appropriate and acceptable versus what is not. Student affairs
as a field, campus housing specifically, prioritizes inclusion, but overwhelmingly in
the sense that all ideas are equally worthy of expression and discussion regardless
of the harm they cause or the ideas they spread. Ideas and concepts are not viewed
as legitimate or valuable unless they are found to be valid for the majority population
within the professional workspace (i.e., white staff). We see this in policies for
protected speech within residential communities, where Black staff are continually
being harmed by the effects of living in an environment where hate speech is often responded
to with merely educational efforts, and very little community care takes place
afterward-and, even rarer still, the care that also includes and centers the Black staff
within the community.
An ACUHO-I Talking Stick article focused on a study about free speech norms
across higher education institutions where almost half of the respondents said that
" they deal with between three and nine incidents " of " intolerant or disrespectful behavior "
over the course of an academic year (Friedman & Perez, 2021, para. 4). Those
most likely to be targets of this behavior were Black/African American (76%). In addition,
one in 10 respondents reported that the hate speech policy at their institution
needed " a complete overhaul " (Friedman & Perez, 2021, para. 8). Though the article
did not indicate how this increase in targeted hate speech impacted Black residents or
Black-identified housing and residence life staff, the sense is that they had an overarching
desire to improve current policies. Efforts toward inclusion provided by the overwhelmingly
white administration at the institution are often viewed as benevolence
toward Black staff and result in further devaluing the work, experience, and voices of
those Black staff who are on the ground level.
There is a clear dissonance between how Black individuals experience the
oppressive space of higher education and how non-Black people interpret
and validate the experience that Black individuals have within the same space.
80 The Journal of College and University Student Housing

Journal of College & University Student Housing "Housing While Black" Theme Issue

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of College & University Student Housing "Housing While Black" Theme Issue