journal_vol49no3 - 83

Under Pressure: The Impacts of Judicialization
cases that can typically be remedied through educational, developmental assignments,
rather than through punitive sanctions. One may then deduce that residence life staff
who live off campus and serve at the director level are generally adjudicating cases that
are more likely to be contested than those handled by staff in entry-level positions.
The difference between residence life staff who live on or off campus was particularly
notable in the responses to Question 9, which stated " I avoid dealing with
students who have threatened litigation or have involved their parents/attorneys. "
The phrase " I avoid " can be interpreted in two ways, which may illuminate why residence
life professionals responded with strong agreement. The respondent may have
interpreted this question to mean " I choose to avoid dealing with students " but may
have understood it to mean " I avoid dealing with students who have threatened litigation
. . . because the expectations of my role require me to notify someone else when this
occurs. " However, it may be inferred that, because there was a significant difference in
responses to Question 9 between housing staff who live in the area they supervise and
those who live off campus, they actively and intentionally avoid working with those
students who have indicated that they will involve their parents or retain legal counsel.
Female-identified respondents reported stronger impacts of concerns about litigation
than did those who were male-identified in every item on Subscale C, with items
30 and 33 showing statistically significant higher agreement than males. These two
questions reveal the most explicit examples of how student conduct work has impacted
the well-being of residence life practitioners. Women report at much higher rates that
their eating habits have changed as a result of the stress from their jobs and that they
relive conversations to recall whether they made errors with students. Such behaviors
represent coping mechanisms that concentrate more on one's ability to regulate emotions
than to address the environmental impact that is causing the distress (Folkman
et al., 1986). These results align with Glassman and Lewis's (2022b) study as well, in
which female student conduct administrators reported stronger impacts of judicialization
not just on their personal lives, but on their professional work as well. Of note,
early research on the impacts of litigation stress on physicians (Charles, Pyskoty, &
Nelson, 1988; Charles et al., 1985; Charles et al., 1984) did not address the differences
between men and women because the majority of the study participants were men.
Because residence hall staff, who typically live among their
students, are responsible for building community, they should
be the institution's designees to respond . . . with educational,
holistic strategies. And since conduct adjudication is only
a portion of their job portfolio, more egregious and disruptive
behavior can be investigated by full-time conduct officers.
80 The Journal of College and University Student Housing
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