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Under Pressure: The Impacts of Judicialization
For directors, it seems that litigation is a significantly more pressing issue than
it is for entry- and mid-level staff and that they are concerned about the possibilities
of litigation as a matter of the practice itself, not just as a result of their own errors.
The current study lacked a complementary qualitative strand that could have enhanced
the results of the survey with rich experiential data. Having narrative information
about the lived experiences of dual role residence life/conduct officers may have
served to improve confidence in the quantitative component and provided a deeper understanding
of the phenomenon. A future narrative inquiry into the lived experiences
of residence life staff may not only enrich the body of literature on how student affairs
personnel feel about and navigate their professional roles, but could also expose gaps
in training and job preparation that could assist new staff with a deeper understanding
of the complexities of the residence life landscape.
Finally, because federal legislation and contemporary discourse play a role in the
practice of student conduct administration on campus, it is possible that the responses
generated for this survey were impacted by the political climate during which it was administered.
The first distribution of the CALSSCP to student conduct administrators
(Glassman & Lewis, 2022b) took place during the Trump presidential administration,
months before the Office for Civil Rights drastically overhauled the federal policies and
procedures institutions would need to implement for addressing allegations of sexand
gender-based harassment. By the time residence life staff completed the survey,
President Biden's team was working to overturn many of the regulations set forth by
the Final Rule on Title IX (Office for Civil Rights, 2020). Although housing staff are
not typically involved with Title IX-related cases, they-and almost certainly some students
in their community-may still be impacted by the ripple effect of legislation. It
is remiss to exclude student affairs staff from all levels of Title IX education, response,
and prevention. Residence life departments must include all levels of staff in training
and workshops that address not only law, policy, and protocol, but also the impacts of
adjudication on the involved parties, the investigators, the decision makers, and other
community members.
CONCLUSION
Although the residence life staff in entry- to mid-level positions who completed the
CALSSCP generally reported lower impacts from judicialization on their well-being,
it would be naive to think that these personnel are not meaningfully affected by litigation
threat, public scrutiny, or encroachment on their decision making by supervisors.
Perhaps they experience the stress of adjudicating student conduct cases as being
inextricably intertwined with the stressors from other aspects of their work, including
counseling, crisis management, building maintenance, roommate disagreements,
and community building. As such, the well-being of housing/residence life staff who
also adjudicate allegations of student misconduct will require a holistic approach in
addressing the multidimensional aspects of both their sources of stress and their
experience of the workplace. 
82 The Journal of College and University Student Housing
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