journal_vol49no3 - 121

Taking the Pulse
The RAs described the difficulties of balancing their mental health with their
academic responsibilities, coping with a lack of privacy, and facing challenges
in boundary setting with their residents who needed mental health support.
Interviewees said that the long Zoom RA trainings, which lasted for 10 days, felt
arduous. Staff were in Zoom meetings from five to eight hours per day, which they felt
impacted their overall mental health and well-being. There also seemed to be a higher
rate of professional staff turnover during this time, which further impacted the morale
and stability of the student staff. As Bo recalled,
Last year, we had three resident directors (RDs). So one left in the middle of fall
semester . . . and then after that we had another resident director [leave]. Once that
second person left, that definitely had a huge impact on being able to build community.
And every single resident director had their own working style, whether one was
breathing down our neck a lot versus one who wanted us to do whatever we wanted,
as long as we felt supported. And there's just different levels of interactions that the
RD wanted to have with RAs. And that was really hard to both manage, and being able
to be that liaison with RAs and resident directors and also being able to create a
community because after a while . . . I think a lot of my staff members, including myself,
just felt really tired, just wanting to get through the year, and didn't really feel comfortable
sharing with the resident director.
The RAs described the difficulties of balancing their mental health with their academic
responsibilities, coping with a lack of privacy, and facing challenges in boundary
setting with their residents who needed mental health support. Several spoke of the
challenges of being low-income students and how they needed to work another parttime
job in order to have sufficient income to support themselves. They also spoke
about the stress of being on duty and anticipating student crises but not feeling adequately
prepared to handle severe incidents on their own and feeling vulnerable and
afraid while performing in-person aspects of the job before being vaccinated. The
pandemic seems to have exacerbated the separation between professional and student
staff, creating tension and a lack of trust while reinforcing hierarchies.
Coping and Resilience
The campus administration conducted the pulse surveys in order to gain real-time
information on how well students were doing during the pandemic. This information
was discussed at the highest levels of the institution so that individual divisions could
work to promote health and well-being. Campus communications from the division
of student affairs and other divisions promoted an array of campus resources such as
university health services that are designed to give all campus community members
the tools needed for coping and bouncing back from the daily impacts of the pandemic.
While student staff discussed the challenges of making social connections and
building community, they also seem to have viewed each other as a significant resource
for support during these difficult times. They turned inward to the RA community to
help them cope with their stress and challenges personally and professionally. They
118 The Journal of College and University Student Housing

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