Talking Stick - September/October 2012 - 25

fOr neW Or yOung prOfeSSIOnalS, the abIlIty tO Separate themSelVeS frOm the ISSue at hand may preSent the bIggeSt challenge In adVOcatIng fOr StudentS.

in preparation for working with students and helping them develop this skill throughout their time on campus: “Advocating takes patience and understanding. I believe that by helping students develop emotional intelligence, it allows them to be more patient and look at all of the angles and evaluate all of the options. We’re all so busy we want to solve problems quickly. By solving problems quickly, we aren’t thinking of all angles of the situation.” She is also quick to point out that today’s new professionals were only recently students themselves and so may face some challenges in balancing the need for student advocacy without inserting themselves or their emotions into the issue at hand. “It requires some coaching on the supervisor’s behalf for the staff member not to pick up the issue. They need to be self-aware and clarify values, both institutional values and work values. It’s helpful in setting boundaries because then you already know what’s a hot button issue personally,” she says. language so that others may better understand them,” says PintoDyczewski, adding that administrators can speak one language while students speak another one. “We need to be translators and helpers without picking up the cause.” Pinto-Dyczewski believes that developing emotional intelligence is a critical piece of teaching students to advocate on their own behalf, removing staff from the process as much as possible. She integrates the concept into training staff For Stacey Pierce, director of residence education at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, New York, not taking on the student’s issue as her own is critical both to their success and her comfort in providing support. When students start relying on advocacy without investment, she draws them back into their own cause. “I always start by empowering the student and having them remain in control of and in possession of the issue. If we move to the point where it is a shared venture and I am working

alongside them, I keep them actively involved and engaged. If they start to slack off, I call them on it and remind them that the issue is their own. I am here to help, but not to do it for them,” says Pierce. Student advocacy can also look like a way to help students explore the options and possible outcomes available to them when resolving an issue. While a student may want instant gratification, the longer process of identifying resolutions may better serve them. David Akana, assistant director for residential education at Oregon State University in Corvallis, finds himself supporting student advocacy in this way. “I focus on presenting choice and options, then walking students through potential outcomes. I try to empower the student to take the initiative and to take steps on their own. I try to limit the occasions where I personally am representing them to times when they are unable to represent themselves.” Pierce is also cautious not to cross the line into enabling students, which she thinks would be easy to do in many situations. Not only is it potentially damaging to her professional reputation, but it hurts the student’s development. “There is a very fine line between advocacy and enabling. It is easy to find yourself on the side of enabling if you are not careful. We want to engage students in such a way that they become better able to advocate for themselves in our absence,” says Pierce. “If we do it for them, rather than assist them in learning to do it for themselves, we do
september + october 2012

Talking Stick - September/October 2012

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