Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 50, No. 3 - 46

Re-imagining Live-In Staff Experiences
STAFF MEMBERS IN LIVE-IN POSITIONS often find themselves faced with a
difficult choice: Leave their roles in search of a job that offers a better work/life
balance or stay and hope their department is invested in making the changes
necessary to support their staff. Live-in staff are in a unique position because
the challenges they face in establishing work/life boundaries and confronting
a constant sense of urgency permeate their jobs and are exacerbated by living
where they work. Entry-level staff, often the ones who fill live-in roles, are the
professionals who leave the field of student affairs at the greatest rate. How
can residence life leaders make entry-level live-in roles feel more sustainable
for their staff? In this study, researchers center the perspectives of seven live-in
staff who attempt to re-imagine their roles. Findings show that there are greater
organizational challenges related to a work culture characterized by a sense of
urgency and lack of reflection. Participants' ideas for re-imagining the role are
framed using a liberatory consciousness framework.
C
oncerns about attrition in student affairs and campus housing professions are
not new (Marshall et al., 2016; Renn & Jessup-Anger, 2008; Sallee, 2021), and
presently entry-level professionals leave the field at the greatest rates (Sallee,
2021), citing excessive hours, work/life conflict, a lack of responsiveness, and burnout
as reasons for leaving (Marshall et al., 2016; NASPA, 2022). For live-in residence life
professionals working and living on campus, the challenges of their work responsibilities
are exacerbated by the permeable boundaries created by the reality that their
home is also their workplace. Pressures also arise from an organizational focus on productivity
and what Okun (2021) refers to as " a constant sense of urgency " (p. 27) that
permeates their work (Hirschy & Staten, 2021; Rankin & Gulley, 2018). Practitioners
in residence life are well situated to change workplace culture, especially if they are
able to increase their organizational capacity for reflection and build a collective liberatory
consciousness. In this study, qualitative, semi-structured interviews reveal rich
insights about live-in professionals' experiences by seeking to understand how they
would re-imagine their live-in role.
WHITE SUPREMACY CULTURE AND FUNCTIONAL STUPIDITY
The student affairs profession has cultivated a reputation for expecting long hours
from its employees, who are faced with the burden of responding to student needs
at all hours of the day while still balancing obligations to their families and their own
sense of well-being (Marshall et al., 2016; Sallee, 2021). Entry-level residence life staff
are faced with the additional challenge of being required to live where they work, which
limits their available choices for managing work/life boundaries (Hirschy & Staten,
Volume 50, No. 3 * 2024 43

Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 50, No. 3

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Journal of College & University Student Housing Volume 50, No. 3