The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2 - 40

Michelle L. Boettcher * Kurt Earnest * Angel Eason * Leslie Lewis

student success via formally acknowledged
and performed cleaning and maintenance
duties of observing, protecting, and promoting the health of college students" (p. iii).
Custodians need to be acknowledged for their
contribution to students' sense of belonging.
Providing training to custodians about how to
connect with students and build relationships
is a tremendous opportunity in residence life
to support diversity and equity on college and
university campuses.

Dialogue training for staff. The role of CAs
in social justice dialogue is important to Students of Color. Being able to engage in such
dialogue takes training and practice; thus,
building in time for dialogue training and
ongoing opportunities to practice dialogue is
essential. Staff meetings, supervision conversations, and staff development are opportunities to practice dialogue related to race, power,
and privilege, and building dialogue skills into
the expectations for CAs is important to this
work.
Staff of Color serve important roles (Harper
et al., 2011; Ketchum, 1988; Roland & Agosto,
2017), but CAs of Color do an inequitable
amount of work fostering dialogue, responding to questions, and educating others. This is
an important consideration for training, development, and staff expectations. This additional
labor on the part of CAs of Color also needs to
be considered when evaluating staff.
Similarly, ongoing dialogue with custodians
will provide additional insight. Building walkthroughs should include sharing of custodial observations about student behavior and concerns
and not simply be a report of facilities issues.
As staff who have daily interactions with students, as well as opportunities to observe com40

Providing these and other examples
of how crucial staff are to the
success of Students of Color can
serve to inspire more creative and
persistent efforts to engage not only
with Students of Color but also with
all residential students.

munities, custodians are essential. Again, this
aligns with existing scholarship that describes
custodial support as "informally-performed
actions of remembering, comforting, advising"
(Reed, 2015, p. iii) and engaging with students
in events in residential communities.

Educating White students. Participants
in this study repeatedly spoke to their work
educating White roommates, suitemates, and
others about issues of race and privilege on
campus. As a result, staff-both student and
full-time-need to do more when it comes to
discussing these issues with White students.
This not only takes some of that responsibility
off of Students of Color, but also positions staff
as partners in the work of educating White students about issues of justice and equity.
Research has shown that White students,
particularly at PWIs, can identify negative
issues related to racial climate, though they
often see higher education institutions as offering more support than is actually available
and see campus climate issues as less significant than they actually are (Ancis, Sedlacek,
& Mohr, 2000; Harper, 2006; Loo & Rolison,
1986; Strayhorn, 2008). Additionally, White

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 45, No. 2

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