journal_vol49no3 - 72

Under Pressure: The Impacts of Judicialization
on Dual Role Housing/Conduct Officers
ADJUDICATION OF ALLEGATIONS OF STUDENT MISCONDUCT in campus
living facilities is one of many responsibilities often held by residence hall staff.
After receiving an incident report, these administrators may address concerns
like roommate conflicts, fire safety, vandalism, and alcohol consumption with
their residents in formal or informal meetings in concert with or as a part of
the larger institutional disciplinary system. As students increasingly perceive
any sort of conduct matter as adversarial and legalistic, they may enlist the
support of parents, senior-level administrators, or even attorneys to navigate
this process. However, residence life staff, who typically manage only lower
level cases like those described above, may not necessarily have the training to
comfortably address the encroachment of outsiders into the student disciplinary
process. This phenomenon is called judicialization, and as a direct result of this
interference, full-time student conduct administrators experience real harms in
both their professional work and personal lives. Based on a survey of 87 full-time
housing and residence life professionals who also have conduct adjudication
responsibilities, this study extends the body of literature on how concerns about
litigation impact the lived experiences and well-being of those who adjudicate
student conduct. Findings and discussion reveal insight into the ways that
distinct demographic groups within this population experience the impacts of
judicialization on their well-being.
R
esidence life staff often wear multiple hats in their interactions with students.
One such role is that of conduct officer (Blimling, 2015; Bryant et al., 2018; Miele
& Hamrick, 2019), in which a staff member trained in an institution's disciplinary
procedures assesses information to determine whether a student, or group of
students, has violated community expectations and, if so, what outcomes or sanctions
are appropriate. Residence life staff who also serve as conduct officers are therefore required
to have a " legal consciousness " (Nguyen et al., 2018, p. 129), or the understanding
that policies and procedures are undergirded by federal and state laws and statutes
Volume 49, No. 3 * 2023 69

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