SEAHO Report - Summer 2024 - 43

* And that we in Residence Life need to cultivate a comfortable space for students to come home to.
* We must center and re-center our work around the residents and create spaces for them to exhale,
for them to be heard and for them to find peace in what we know can be a cruel and unsettling
place.
* As professionals reach out for mental health resources for ourselves too
Perhaps the biggest campus challenge I have faced in my career was when our police shot and killed a
student. I knew our police chief and many officers. I had relied on Georgia Tech PD during on duty calls for
decades. It was September 2017, and it resonated like a tsunami of fear across campus. The same community
that suffered after the Mathew Shepard killing was feeling even more vulnerable again. Living through the
serial killings of Gainesville, Florida at University of Florida had provided me the roadmap to support our
students even in this worst case scenario.
I leaned into my listening skills: creating and holding space, validating people's grief and fears and
bewilderment and outrage. I walked by the parking deck and sat there with a book and talked to students as
they showed up to grieve. I listened and referred many to resources, and sometimes just nodded when they
cried. When hatred, crime, fear and student deaths happen on/or around our campuses we must remember
that for our students this is a chance to build skills for acceptance, understanding and compassion or for them
to bulwark themselves away from others and isolate. We can role model the positive responses by providing
spaces, access to resources and listening. After all, the social media images of hate or events could be seared
as deeply into their memories as the destruction of the Vietnam Protests for boomers, the Berlin Wall coming
and the lone Chinese man standing up to the lines of tanks in Beijing for Gen X, and 9-11 for our Millennials
and George Floyd's death and Black Lives Matter movements for our Gen Z.
Our students are living with us, growing with us and will remember their college years. Our campuses are
likely the most diverse environment students will live in during their lifetimes, with few exceptions. It isn't
our place as administrators to take political stands. But we can, through the practice of active-listening and
holding space, we can help students process crises so they can again focus on their education.
Our goal isn't to help students know what to think, but to hold space for them to have the time to reflect and
think. We need to create spaces where they are comfortable talking through the unsettling times and are able
to learn how to be there for each other.
No where on campus is a safe space more important than our residence halls. We can't shield our students
from all hate speech or societal violence, but we can 100% strive to make our residence halls a space where
students can exhale, reflect and discuss tough issues. It is likely that the future US president for the year 2049
is currently on one of our campuses today. We can role model active-listening, we can hold in person space
and we can listen and validate the experiences of our students. Our students must be able to be themselves
and feel safe to thrive. Through our care, concern, events and spaces we can help our students settle into
their new homes, even during unsettling times.
43

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/georgia-tech-killing-student.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/us/georgia-tech-killing-student.html

SEAHO Report - Summer 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SEAHO Report - Summer 2024