The Subtle Art of Creating Unsafe Spaces

College campuses are changing. For years, faculty and administrators have lamented the lack of student activism on campus. This lack of activism was generally regarded as student apathy – a feeling that most students cared more about getting drunk on weekends than in fighting for causes. From the end of the Vietnam era through the beginning of the Black Lives Matter movement, college campuses were places of relative calm where only the occasional “fringe group” spoke out on important issues of the day.

Not anymore. After 40 years of apathy, a new generation of student activist has emerged. These Millennial protesters have been praised by many for their willingness to stand up and be heard, and have been derided by others because of their need for “safe spaces.” Those on the left have been quick to jump on board this new wave of activism, joining students in their demands for more inclusive campus environments. Those on the right have been even quicker to call these students coddled crybabies and to issue warnings that they’ll never make it in the “real world” with their victim mentalities.

Notably absent from these conversations, particularly in student affairs circles, has been any reference to student development. And that should strike us all as problematic.

Coincidentally (or not) these changes on campus have coincided with a change in how we prepare student affairs professionals. About the time I was finishing graduate school, a handful of higher education/student affairs graduate programs began incorporating social justice education into their curriculum. Initially, the schools doing this did so in order to distinguish themselves from the pack, but the trend proved popular and soon caught on in most other programs. Now, 15 years later, most higher education/student affairs graduate programs boast of a curriculum with a “social justice emphasis” and, in fact, many of these programs offer and/or require more courses on diversity and social justice than on student development. Simply put, social justice has eclipsed student development as the focal point of many student affairs preparation programs and, subsequently, many student affairs professionals. As a result, we now have more and more new professionals working in this field who appear to care considerably less about student development than they do about social justice work.

Let me be clear – a focus on social justice has been an important step forward for our profession, and has recruited a highly motivated new generation of professionals into the field. Additionally, the results on campus have been positive – we now see universities doing more and more to support social justice, dismantle institutional racism, and provide resources for oppressed minority populations. All of us can agree that these changes have come about at least in part because of the social justice focus that has taken hold within student affairs in the last decade and that these changes have been a good thing.

Like any great shift in philosophy, however, there are unintended consequences. I would argue the greatest consequence of the shift in focus away from student development and towards social justice is this:

As a profession, our priorities have shifted away from the creation of carefully constructed learning environments (unsafe spaces) and towards the creation of carefully constructed echo chambers (safe spaces).

This ideological shift could have long-lasting ramifications, not only on our profession’s place within the academy, but for the well-being and success of our students.

Whenever I think about the safe/unsafe space dichotomy, I always think of Nevitt Sanford’s theory of Challenge and Support. It states that, in order to progress along any developmental trajectory, students need a healthy balance of challenge (unsafe space) and support (safe space). Too much unsafe space, and students may regress to previously held, less developed beliefs. Too much safe space, and students will never be exposed to the different ideas and worldviews necessary for them to grow and develop. In order to develop, students need to experience challenge and support, a healthy balance of unsafe space and safe space.

I fear that, as a field, we are forgetting and/or neglecting the subtle yet important art creating unsafe spaces.

When we consider Sanford’s theory of challenge and support, we must always think about it in connection with some other developmental theory (I’ve written about the frequent misuse of Sanford here). In conversations around student activism and political engagement, the logical theory to apply is Perry’s Theory of Intellectual and Ethical Development.

In our world of social justice-focused practitioners, writing Perry off has become a favorite pastime of many in our field. Perry did most of his research on white men at Harvard – the most privileged of the privileged. Despite those shortcomings, Perry’s theory has stood the test of time and has been empirically validated across cultures, classes, and nationalities. Perry postulates that students develop intellectually along the following trajectory:

Notice that the arrows in between Perry’s stages go in multiple directions. This implies that students can both progress and regress along these stages. With the right blend of challenge and support, they progress, but with too much of one or not enough of the other, they can stagnate or, even worse, regress to previous, less developed ways of thinking.

So what does all of this have to do with the new social justice philosophy in student affairs? Simply, we now focus more on what students are saying rather than focusing on the thinking that led to those words. If the messages we hear from students are progressive and promote a message of social justice, we don’t dare challenge the intellectual underpinnings of those statements. To the contrary, we praise them for their activism and progressive thinking. However, if the messages we hear from students are traditionally conservative or not inclusive, we are quick to point out the flaws in their thinking or, even worse, we call them names (racist, homophobic, xenophobic, hyper-masculine, etc.).

This is problematic.

Dualism, even when cloaked in a social justice ideology, is still dualism. As a profession dedicated to student development, we should confront dualism whenever and however we see it - not just when it is cloaked in the ideology of political conservatism.

Frankly, we are doing our students a disservice if we do not help them develop intellectually, even if we support those causes for which they are fighting. A great example of how the dualism of some social justice activists can be confronted can be found in comments President Obama recently made about the #BLM movement. The President, clearly frustrated, criticized leaders of the group for refusing to sit down and engage in talks about meaningful reforms, stating that some #BLM leaders felt that such conversations “might compromise the purity of their position” – a way of thinking that is clearly dualistic in nature. President Obama was right to challenge this way of thinking – not because he opposes the aims or purposes of the #BLM movement, but because a dualistic “my way or the highway” approach to problem solving does not usually solve very many problems. President Obama has learned a lesson that many in our field could stand to learn – that social justice and intellectual development are not mutually exclusive. We do not have to pick one or the other. We can support the advancement of social justice while gently challenging the intellectual rigor of those arguing on its behalf.

Dualistic social justice activism manifests itself in a variety of ways on college campuses across America every single day. The example we see most often is student protests leading to the dis-invitation of controversial speakers. The dualistic “this person is wrong and I am right” way of thinking that fuels these protests would be best replaced by a “let me hear what this person has to say, understand this issue from their perspective, weigh the merits of their argument against my own views on the matter, and see if there are issues on which we may actually agree” way of thinking. But instead of creating the unsafe space where those conversations can happen, we create a protective cocoon – a safe space where students are left free to think what they want to think without ever being forced to consider an issue from someone else’s perspective.  We dis-invite controversial speakers.  We choose social justice over student development; safe space over unsafe space.

Imagine, for a moment, that you worked at one of the campuses where students have openly supported Donald Trump’s candidacy for President. The response to these incidents on the popular student affairs Facebook groups and twitter channels has been predictable – joining in with the social justice activists, shaming the students supporting Trump, calling them any manner of names (I’m not sure very many people knew the meaning of xenophobia until Donald Trump became a serious presidential candidate) and demanding accountability for political speech that is clearly protected by the First Amendment. But how many of us have sat down with a student supporting Trump to find out why? How many of us have facilitated those conversations between and among our students?

What if we learned that a student who supported Trump was a first-generation college student whose parents lost their jobs in the manufacturing sector when those jobs were shipped overseas. Then, his parents could not find a good paying job at the local food processing plant because of the suppressed wages brought on by the flood of illegal immigrants working in that plant. Imagine that this student’s parents are on unemployment with no hopes of finding a good-paying job in their hometown and this student is having to now work two jobs to pay for his education because his parents can no longer afford to help him. So for him, when he hears Trump talk about how bad trade deals and illegal immigration are suppressing wages and screwing over the working class, “Make America Great Again” isn’t a message of hate or xenophobia at all but, rather, a message of economic prosperity that resonates with his own lived experience.

Knowing this, would we still call that student xenophobic? A racist? Or might we be a little more willing to think differently about illegal immigration and trade once we heard the perspective of someone who has been adversely affected by those issues? Are some of Trump’s supporters xenophobic, sexist and racist? Absolutely. But we should know better than to paint all of his supporters with such a broad brush, especially when those supporters are our own students. 

Instead of calling our students names, we should be committed to their learning and development. Instead of adding fuel to the fire and protesting against Trump and his supporters, we should be creating opportunities for students from different sides of the political spectrum to sit down in an attempt to better understand one another's perspective. Our work as social justice advocates is important, and it must continue, but it becomes problematic when it begins alienating a significant portion of the students we are supposed to be educating. Instead of choosing sides in the culture war raging on many of our campuses, we should be focused on helping students from different sides sit down, understand one another’s perspectives, and try to find common ground. Instead of allowing both sides of the culture war to rest comfortably in their own unchallenged safe space, we need to remember that student development is still important, and do our part to create the unsafe spaces where students can have meaningful conversations and learn from one another. But when we view every problem solely through a social justice, rather than a developmental lens, this becomes increasingly more difficult to do.

In doing this, we must acknowledge that for some students, daily life can feel like a constant “unsafe space” where they experience oppression at every turn. I am not suggesting that we make their lives even more difficult by refusing to provide them with the spaces, both physical and psychological, that they need in order to feel protected and safe. We must provide those safe spaces, not only because it is the right thing to do, but because their success and development depends it. But in doing so, we need to be willing to acknowledge the differences between inadvertent micro-aggressions and deliberate acts of oppression, between cognitive discomfort with an idea or topic and something that genuinely triggers traumatic memories from the past, and between hate and ignorance. Not all unsafe spaces are created equal, and we need to stop pretending that psychological discomfort, no matter how great or small, even for oppressed minorities, is always a bad thing.

We need to balance our commitment to social justice with a renewed commitment to student development. We need to understand that social justice can and should inform our work in student development, but that social justice WITHOUT student development is, frankly, not what our colleges and universities hired us to do. We need to break away from the mindset that our own ideological purity is more important than the impact we have on student learning. We need to commit to the development of ALL of our students. Most importantly, we need to commit to doing the work the work that is, always has been, and always should be at the heart of the student affairs profession – creating the spaces, safe and unsafe, where our students can learn from one another. 

On Bernie Bros, Hillary Haters, and Ideological Purity (Or, What LBJ's Presidency Might Tell us About Hillary's)

I was in Los Angeles last week to catch a Dodgers game, and had a few hours to kill before the game began. Yelp sent me to a hipster watering hole on Sunset Blvd where I sipped on a local IPA while taking in the LA social scene. I found myself seated next to a group of 20-something hipsters and, being a researcher, decided to conduct some ethnographic research by observing the LA hipster in his natural habitat (basically, I eavesdropped on their conversation).

Their conversation was wide ranging, but eventually turned to politics, and, wouldn’t you know it, one of their number was a full-fledged Bernie Bro. I listened with fascination as he tried to A) explain the difference between socialism and democratic socialism to his hipster friends, and; B) convince his pals of Bernie’s ideological purity.

I don’t think anyone understood his socialism rant (certainly I did not understand him), but the second part of his lecture was representative of the type of nonsense I’ve come to expect from Bernie Bros:

“Bernie has been fighting for the same things his entire life. He’s been consistently progressive. Hillary is a flip-flopper. She’s always having to go back and apologize for things she did 20 years ago. She isn’t a real progressive.”

As I sat and listened to this, I couldn’t help but think about Hillary’s record in comparison to who I think is the most fascinating President of the 20^th Century – Lyndon B. Johnson.

If you have not read Robert Caro’s four-part series on LBJ, I highly encourage you do so. In those books, Caro carefully dissects LBJ’s complicated, seemingly incongruous record as a Senator from deeply conservative Texas. LBJ came of age and was first elected to Congress while FDR was President, and in his first congressional campaign, ran as an ardent New Dealer – an economic populist who would support FDR’s agenda. Over time, as the depression faded into distant memory, Texas became more and more conservative, and the once progressive young New Dealer had to walk a fine line between supporting progressive policies that would establish his bona fides in the national Democratic Party while not alienating his increasingly conservative base back home. An ambitious man who wanted desperately to be President, LBJ’s tightrope act in the Senate lasted for over a decade, even while serving as the Senate Majority Leader.

Every Democrat in the Senate thought they knew the “real” LBJ. The southern segregationists gave him a free pass on signing the Southern Manifesto, a full-throated rebuke of desegregation signed by all southern Senators with the exception of Johnson (who was “allowed” to not sign because of his role as Majority Leader and the understanding they all had that signing would doom his Presidential ambitions) and Tennessee’s two senators (Al Gore and Estes Kefauver, who were both progressives on civil rights). Despite LBJ not signing the manifesto, the southern segregationists were convinced that Johnson was one of them. His first speech as a senator (“We of the South…”) was a rebuke of federal overreach into civil rights issues. He had willingly watered down the civil rights bill of 1956 to the point that, while significant in that it was the first civil rights bill passed since Reconstruction, it accomplished very little in actually promoting civil rights. The Strom Thurmonds and Richard Russells of the world were convinced that Johnson was one of them.

Meanwhile, Johnson had successfully convinced the liberals in the Senate that he was actually one of them. He would privately support their initiatives, work behind the scenes to help pass their bills, and would explain to them in private conversations that his voting record was not necessarily a reflection of his actual views, but rather those of his constituents back home in Texas.

The voting public, meanwhile, was left only to speculate that Johnson was a fairly conservative Southern Democrat based solely on his voting record – he regularly voted against federal involvement in civil rights issues, was hostile towards organized labor, and had a decidedly hawkish record on foreign policy; policy issues that made him popular back home in Texas, but not in the national Democratic Party.

Then, at the 1960 Democratic National Convention, presidential nominee John F. Kennedy was looking for a running mate. A New England liberal, he knew he needed a moderate southerner or westerner to help bring balance to the ticket. As leader of the Democrats in the senate, Johnson was the obvious choice – besides, Kennedy was one of those progressive Senators who was convinced that Johnson was really in the progressive camp.

When Kennedy floated Johnson’s name to party insiders as a potential running mate, it was met with outright hostility. Civil rights leaders did not support Johnson’s positions on race. Labor leaders threatened a full revolt because of his poor record on labor issues. These constituents were interested in a candidate with ideological purity – someone like Hubert Humphrey. Bobby Kennedy very famously tried to convince his brother to change his mind, even going so far as visiting LBJ’s hotel suite to try and convince him to decline the nomination. But LBJ was an ambitious man, and he knew that his only path to the Presidency may very well lie in accepting the VP nomination, which he did.

We know the rest of the story – Kennedy was fairly ineffective at getting his program passed through Congress, while Vice President Johnson was relegated to the “kids table” and was rarely involved in any major policy decisions. Then, in November of 1963, Kennedy was assassinated and Johnson became President, and in a period of two years pushed some of the most progressive legislation of the 20^th Century through Congress: The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act, the Higher Education Act of 1965, Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, the War on Poverty….the list goes on and on.

In a speech to Congress urging passage of the Civil Rights Act, Johnson spoke of his time as a young man teaching in an impoverished school in Cotulla, TX, a largely immigrant town near the Mexican border. Johnson stated in that speech that he had vowed, as a young school teacher, that if he ever had the power to help people like those children he knew in Cotulla, that he would do so, famously stating “Well, now I have that power. And I intend to use it.”

Those Southern Democrats who were convinced that Senator Johnson was really one of them were shocked by what they saw in President Johnson. This was a man they did not know. Richard Russell, Johnson’s mentor in the Senate, was famously quoted as saying he felt personally betrayed by Johnson. This man – who had spent his entire career performing an intricate tightrope act, trying to convince both liberals and conservatives that he was one of them – finally showed his true colors when he became President. His domestic agenda is rivaled only by FDR’s in its impact on disenfranchised people in America. His record as a senator was anything but ideologically pure, but once he was freed of the need to please the electorate in Texas, he was able to let his ideological purity shine through. LBJ was, in fact, a progressive, and his liberal bona fides are evidenced by his legislative achievements.  But he had to become President before we could truly find that out. And he succeeded where Kennedy failed because he understood what it took to get legislation through Congress. He knew all the levers of power, and he knew how to use them.

Which brings us back to Hillary Clinton. Hillary rivals LBJ in ambition. It is clear that, much like the fictional Claire Underwood, she has been angling for the Presidency for most of her adult life. She has strategically and surgically picked her path, and despite a few setbacks (a political upstart named Barack Obama and a little misunderstanding about email servers), she has methodically plotted her path and now stands on the threshold of the highest office in the land.

But the Bernie Bros who demand ideological purity above all are now standing in her way.

Ideological purity for many elected officials is a luxury they can ill-afford. Bernie has had the benefit of serving as a Senator from the most liberal state in America. He has never really had to weigh his liberal convictions against those of his constituents and vote in a way that violated his conscience (his controversial stances on gun control being the only possible exception – a stain on his ideological purity that his supporters seem willing to overlook). He has enjoyed a luxury that LBJ could have only dreamed about as a Senator.

The model for electing Democratic presidents for the last 75 years has been simple – pick a moderate- progressive from the South. Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton all fit this rule. The two exceptions to that rule were both young, passionate, handsome, articulate first-term Senators named Kennedy and Obama who took the political world by storm, who broke all of the rules of Presidential politics and who, despite their reputations, ran and largely governed as moderates.

Now, take a look at the “ideologically pure” liberals who have run for President in the last 75 years whose last names were not Kennedy or Obama: Adalai Stevenson (trounced by IKE not once but twice), Hubert Humphrey (trounced by Nixon), George McGovern (trounced by Nixon), Walter Mondale (trounced by Reagan), Michael Dukakis (trounced by Bush 41), and John Kerry (beaten handily by Bush 43).

The only outlier in the dataset is Al Gore, a moderate Southerner who lost the election but WON THE POPULAR VOTE!

So if you are a Democrat who wants to be president and are not as handsome or rhetorically gifted as Kennedy or Obama, your formula for becoming President in the last 75 years was to be a Southern moderate.

Do you suspect Hillary Clinton has noticed this trend, as well? I suspect she has.

Her husband ran and governed as a moderate because that was the winning formula. Some people are now questioning his record and ideological purity, but he governed during a time when compromise was not a bad word. He was a progressive Democratic governor from a conservative southern state, was President during a time in which the county was still coming to terms with social issues that now seem straightforward (particularly issues surrounding gay rights), and took pride in working with the other party in order to accomplish objectives. He was more interested in effectiveness than he was in ideological purity. His record of accomplishment is now under attack by those who demand ideological purity (interestingly, the Tea Party demands ideological purity of its candidates, as well).

Hillary has carved out a similar path. Her record as First Lady, as Senator from New York, and as Secretary of State is that of a moderate progressive – staying true to the ideals of her Democratic base, particularly on issues related to women's rights, children and healthcare, but not so far to the left that she would be written off as “too liberal,” all the while plotting her run for the Presidency. She has fastidiously followed the only formula that has worked in Democratic Presidential Politics for the last 75 years, and at no point in her career had the luxury of calling herself a Democratic Socialist or compiling the type of voting record that Bernie has been able to compile as a back-bench Senator with not a single significant legislative achievement to his name.

So to the Bernie Bros seeking ideological purity, I offer this: be careful what you wish for. The Democratic Party has fallen into the “ideological purity” trap before, and it has led to disastrous results on election day. And let us learn a lesson from LBJ’s legacy and ask ourselves an important question - what might a President Hillary Clinton do once she is unshackled from the chains of moderation? Once she is given the power of the Presidency, how might she use it? Like LBJ, might we see her true colors? Do we really doubt that, in her heart, she is just as progressive as Bernie or any of the other liberal icons of yesteryear? Do we REALLY believe she is a corporate sellout aiming to do nothing more than protect her Wall Street cronies?

Hillary has methodically followed a formula for the last 40 years. It was and remains the only tried and true formula to elect Democratic Presidents. Does that make her disingenuous? A sellout? Untrustworthy? If we begin hurling those monikers at her, who else might we need to hurl them at? She was and is the Democratic Party’s best chance at keeping the White House, and I suspect that, like LBJ, she would go down in history as one of our most progressive Presidents if given the chance.

Don’t mistake this blog as my endorsement of Hillary – I am still weighing all of my options, and am becoming increasingly interested in the possibility of a Libertarian as president. But as a registered Democrat who worked for John Kerry and voted for Obama twice, and as someone who cares deeply about a progressive social agenda in this country, I have zero doubts as to Hillary’s liberal bona fides. Frankly, I am sick and tired of hearing the Bernie Bros pound their chests while extolling the virtues of Bernie’s ideological purity and discarding Hillary’s “moderation” with self-righteous indignation. Bernie Sanders would be a horrible president, not because he is a horrible person (to the contrary, he seems like a really great guy), but because he has zero chance at getting any of his agenda passed through Congress. He has never passed a bill as a Senator – what makes anyone think his legislative prowess will suddenly change once he becomes President?

So if you want progress, and you want a champion for social justice and economic equality who actually has a chance to get things done and not just talk a good game, it may be time to begin rethinking your options. Ideological purity never got us anywhere. I’ll take effectiveness over ideological purity any day of the week. Kennedy was ideologically pure, but ineffective. It took ideologically impure but legislatively effective Lyndon Johnson less than 12 months to do what Kennedy failed to do in more than three years. I’m not interested in a candidate who makes me feel good – I’m interested in a candidate who will get things done. Hillary, not Bernie, is that candidate for the Democratic Party.

How We Sell Brotherhood and Sisterhood Has Never Been More Important

When I have a chance to speak with students about brotherhood and sisterhood, I always ask them whether or not, when they were going through the recruitment process, they chose the chapter that they eventually joined, at least in part, because of their perception of its brother/sisterhood. Inevitably, almost every hand in the room goes up when this question is asked. I then ask what it was they saw in that group – what was it about the brotherhood or sisterhood that attracted them to the organization. The answers to that question are usually the same:

“I saw a group of people who love each other and always have fun together.”

“I saw a group of people who are there for one another.”

“I saw a group of people who you could tell just really enjoyed being around one another.”

My research partner, Dr. Josh Schutts, coined the phrase “currency of fraternity” to describe this phenomenon. Brotherhood and sisterhood are the currency of fraternities and sororities. Chapters are selling it, and new members are buying it. If you think of a fraternity or sorority as a business, then I would argue that brother/sisterhood is our product. Potential members are consumers of brotherhood and sisterhood.

And today’s consumers of brotherhood and sisterhood are the most informed consumers we have ever seen.

When I joined Alpha Gamma Rho in the Fall of 1997 at the University of Tennessee, I knew very little about Greek life. My older sister had joined a sorority at East Tennessee State University, but didn’t really enjoy it and dropped out after the first year. My parents did not attend college, and none of my extended family who were college graduates had joined fraternities or sororities. At that point, I may or may not had seen the movie Animal House – I’m honestly not sure. But beyond that, I knew very little about about fraternity life when my old 4-H buddy Lake Elliott invited me to go with him down to the AGR house during our first weekend in Knoxville. I was an uninformed consumer. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I suspect many people in my generation share a similar story. We came to college with only a passing understanding of what fraternities or sororities were about. We may have had a parent or older sibling in a fraternity or sorority, but outside of that, we didn’t really know much about Greek life. We met someone or had some experience that led us to join, and we signed up, not really knowing what it was we were getting ourselves into, unsure of the product we were about to be consuming for the next four years.

But fast forward from 1997 to 2016. Times have changed. Students coming to college today are much more informed about fraternities and sororities than those at any other time in history. TFM. TSM. Greek. Old School. Media coverage of fraternity and sorority misdeeds. Stories that 10 years ago may not have even made it into the school newspaper are now national headlines. Hazing. Sexual assault. Drug and alcohol abuse. Racism. All right there staring at them on any social media venue they happen to be using. The negative aspects of fraternity and sorority life on full display, 24/7.

And they are still choosing to join, in spite of all that.

Or, perhaps, a more troubling scenario - they are choosing to join because of all that.

The way we sell brotherhood and sisterhood to prospective members today has never been more important. The stereotype is out there, and our prospective members are fully aware of what those stereotypes are, and are choosing to join in spite of – or maybe even because of - those stereotypes. And if our chapters don’t sell brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that dispels those stereotypes – in a way that shows prospective members that the stereotype isn’t necessarily true – then the problems associated with those stereotypes will grow exponentially. In other words, more and more students will be joining fraternities and sororities not blissfully ignorant of the stereotypes (like I was), but in spite of or because of the stereotypes. They know what the stereotype is, and that stereotype represents the experience the are seeking.

Fraternities and sororities, now more than ever, have to begin selling brotherhood and sisterhood in a way that moves beyond just the fun/social side of the experience. Guys recruiting with beer pong and selling the party scene are just reinforcing the stereotype. Women recruiting with videos that sell sisterhood as bubbles, glitter and pillow fights are just reinforcing the stereotype. And prospective members, who already have that stereotype indelibly imprinted into their minds, are provided with nothing to challenge or confront those stereotypes, and they join a brotherhood or sisterhood under the impression that the stereotype is what the experience is supposed to be.

We have to begin selling a different product.

We have to make sure our chapters are selling ALL aspects of brotherhood and sisterhood. Not just the fun side, but also the sense of belonging, the self-betterment that comes with accountability, and the self-actualization that can come from working with a group of people towards a common purpose. Only when we sell brotherhood and sisterhood in this way can we really begin to have members come into our organizations understanding that there is more to the experience than just the stereotype. And imagine how much easier our jobs would be if we knew that every member who joined a fraternity or sorority on our campuses walked in the door from Day 1 understanding that the fraternity/sorority experience was about more than just a good time.

We have tried to do this for the last 15 years by talking about “values-based recruitment.” It hasn’t worked. It is time to try something else.

Values-based recruitment hasn’t worked because 18 year-old college students are not interested in joining values. Rather, they are interested in joining a group of people who they feel can provide them with a certain experience – an experience called brotherhood and sisterhood.

So, today, I want to declare the end of the “values-based recruitment” movement and the beginning of the “brother/sisterhood-based recruitment” movement. Stop trying to convince your students to sell their values, and start convincing them to sell the more altruistic forms of brotherhood and sisterhood. Convince them to sell how membership in their organization will provide prospective members with a sense of belonging and connection, with a group of people who will support them and have their back. Convince them to sell how membership in their organization will make prospective members better people by holding them to high standards and expectations. And convince them to sell how membership in their organization will allow prospective members to work with a collective of like-minded individuals to pursue the noble objectives of self-improvement.

Values-based recruitment is not the answer to our problems. We have been beating that drum for well over a decade, and our problems are only getting worse. We need to help students better understand the product they are selling (brotherhood and sisterhood), and then help them develop strategies to sell ALL forms of their brother/sisterhood to prospective members, not just the type that reinforces the stereotypes that today’s well-informed consumers are buying.

Can We Please Stop Misusing Challenge and Support???

Student affairs interview season is almost upon us! Thousands of eager second-year graduate students and disgruntled-with-their-first-job-young-professionals will scurry about participating in the annual placement exchange circus. This highly ritualized, often maligned, and largely ineffective process of hiring staff is more akin to sorority recruitment than to an actual job interview, but every year we prep our grads and young professionals for this routine like a nervous mother preparing her 5 year-old for his first day of kindergarten.

“Don’t forget to write thank you notes.”

“Make good eye contact and have a firm handshake.”

“Be sure to dress appropriately.”

“Make sure to prepare follow up questions for each interview.”

Well, today I’d like to add another admonition to the list of reminders we share with our little mentees as they prepare to engage in this annual student affairs rite of passage:

“Stop misusing Sanford’s Theory of Challenge and Support.”

It’s inevitable. Some smarty pants graduate student, eager to show how much they paid attention in their student development theory class, will find a way to talk about their favorite theorist during their interview when asked about their advising style, and they’ll make some banal comment like this:

“Sometimes I push my students to figure things out on their own, and sometimes I help them out with whatever project they’re working on. You know, challenge and support.”

This attitude is akin to some young mother in the middle of potty-training her toddler saying “Well, sometimes I make him wipe his own ass, and sometimes I wipe it for him. You know, challenge and support.”

This isn’t what Sanford was talking about. Not even close.

When Sanford told us that student growth required adequate amounts of both challenge and support, he was not intending for his theory to be used in a vacuum to describe how hands-on or hands-off we treat the students we advise or supervise. But more often than not, this is how I hear young (and old) professionals in our field (mis)use his theory.

When Sanford offered us his theory of challenge and support, he meant for his theory to be used in combination with other theories, to help us understand how students grow along a certain developmental trajectory.

Take moral development, for example. Sanford would argue that in order for a student to move from pre-conventional (obedience to authority) to conventional (social norms) levels of moral development, students need an adequate amount of challenge (i.e. forcing them to question their own beliefs and where they come from) and support (giving them safe spaces with like-minded others, free from constant challenge). Too much challenge, and the student may regress or rebel, yielding no growth. Too much support, and the student is never pushed to think differently, yielding no growth. The key is finding the right balance, giving the student enough challenge, but not too much challenge, to safely push them down their developmental path.

Sanford only works, and should only be applied, in conjunction with other theories (be they cognitive development, psycho-social development or identify development). It was never intended as a stand-alone theory to use in describing your advising style.

So, if you’re prepping for job interviews and want a pocket theory to drop in, only use Sanford if you plan on talking about another theory. Don’t make this common mistake that too many in this field often make.

And if you’re on the other side of the table conducting interviews, and some eager-beaver graduate student flagrantly misuses Sanford in this way, stop the interview, give them a puzzled look, and ask them.

“So, do you wipe your students’ behinds, or do you make them wipe their behinds for themselves?”

A Tale of Two Sororities (Or, Perhaps Its Time to Stop Evaluating Sororities Based on Recruitment Strength)

It is time to stop using recruitment statistics as a measure of chapter quality.

I have long felt this way, and I have long known that I am not the only person who feels this way, but I could never really conclusively prove why I felt this way.

Until now.

Let me tell you about two sorority chapters I had the chance to work with on a recent campus visit.

Sorority A is the top-recruiting chapter in their campus Panhellenic community of six NPC sororities. They have great members – women who are involved on campus, who excel academically, and who win award after award after award. SGA officers. Homecoming queens. Greek awards. Their members are physically attractive by most definitions – slender blondes and brunettes, most of whom were likely homecoming queens in high school. Picture-perfect in every way, with the Relative Recruiting Strength to prove it.

Sorority B is on the same campus. Based on recruitment statistics, they are a “bottom tier” organization, ranking fifth out of six on campus. They readily admit that they have a lot of young women crying at their house on bid day, disappointed to have received their second choice. Their members, while attractive, are not generally considered the “classic beauties” as seen in Sorority A, and they represent a broad diversity of body types, skin colors, ethnic backgrounds, and rungs on the socio-economic ladder. They make good grades – acceptable, but rarely the best on campus. Their members are involved on campus, but rarely do they boast of a top-ranking SGA officer or homecoming queen amongst their ranks. Most campus-based advisors, and certainly most sorority headquarters staff, would consider them a “below average” chapter. In fact, this sorority’s national organization is so concerned about the chapter’s recruitment statistics that they disbanded the chapter’s local advisory board and the chapter is now advised by IHQ staff members, who spend a few weeks with the chapter every year.

But there is a deeper story to these two sororities – a story that recruiting strength statistics or the “eye test” could never tell. A story that, I would argue, should be the most important consideration of chapter quality, but one that rarely, if ever, warrants even a passing mention in those conversations.

You see, the sisterhood in Sorority A is…well, for lack of a better term….shitty.

And the sisterhood in Sorority B is off-the-charts awesome.

Sorority A measures well-below the campus and national averages on three important measures of sisterhood: belonging, support/encouragement, and common purpose (click here to read more about the five schema of sisterhood). When you talk to the members of this chapter, you understand why. They don’t see the sorority as “home” or their sisters as “family.” In fact, many of the members joined the chapter not because that is where they felt “at home,” but because of their perception of the sorority’s status on campus as “the best.” They do not feel supported by their sisters, they are not unified in any other pursuit or purpose other than maintaining their status as “the best” sorority on campus. Relative to other chapters, they do not feel connected to their sisters or to their organization’s purpose. Their outcomes as a chapter are great, but the experience itself leaves quite a bit to be desired.

Sorority B, on the other hand, is off the charts on the measures of sisterhood based on belonging, support/encouragement, and common purpose, far outpacing both campus and national averages. They genuinely love one another. They are connected to one another in meaningful ways. They support one another and take an active interest in one another’s lives and in the life of the chapter. They understand and are connected to their organization’s values, and regularly incorporate the values and ritual into their activities as a chapter. Women in the chapter are happy with their experience, are committed to one another, and feel loved and supported by their sisters.

In conversations with the leaders of Sorority B, I asked about areas where they felt they needed to improve. Their response left me astonished, sad and angry.

“Well, nationals think we really need to improve our image on campus. They want us to do more social events with the guys and to work on our image during recruitment.”

They went on to talk about the lack of confidence they have during recruitment, because of the pressure they are under to “look like and act like” the “top” chapters on campus (i.e. Chapter A). What they really want to be able to do is be themselves, and to share with prospective members their stories – stories of being disappointed on bid day, but of quickly coming to understand that they had joined a sisterhood where they weren’t judged by their outward beauty, but by their reciprocity in loving, serving, and supporting one another. Simply, they long to be authentic during recruitment, but are being told to instead work on their “image.”

My friends, if this is what we have boiled the sorority experience down to, then we have much work to do.

When we reduce our definition of a successful chapter down to Relative Recruiting Strength, we reinforce the idea that the only thing that matters is image. Sorority B, who by every conceivable measure is providing a positive and meaningful experience for its members, has been placed on national receivership, is getting multiple consultant visits per year to help the chapter “polish its image”, and is under orders to have more parties with fraternities, all because someone at their national headquarters feels their RRS should be 10 percentage points higher. And this amazing group of young women, whose love for one another can literally be felt when you walk into their chapter room, are being made to feel “less than” not by the other sororities on campus, but by the adult leaders of their own organization.

Why do we focus so much on the outcomes, and not on the experience, of sorority membership? The point of being in a sorority, or a fraternity for that matter, is not to focus all of our time and attention on some externally construed notions of success. The point of joining a sorority or fraternity is to become part of a group of people who will support you, value you, make you a better person, and provide you with a sense of shared purpose and identity. Sadly, the metrics we are using to determine the strength or quality of chapters often has little to do with any of this. We focus on grades, we focus on awards, we focus on dollars raised, and we focus on recruitment stats. And all of these metrics share one thing in common – they often have no bearing whatsoever on the experience that organizations are providing to their members.

It is time to seriously reconsider how we are measuring chapter success, how we are rewarding chapter performance, and why we are rewarding outcomes over experiences. Fraternities and sororities are co-educational offerings that should provide students with both the challenge and support necessary to help them learn and grow as humans, providing some fun memories along the way. They are not about maintaining a social image. They are not about desirability. They are not about how many homecoming queens your chapter has had in the last decade.

And they are sure as Hell not about Relative Recruiting Strength. 

Maybe We Should Stop Talking About Hazing (Or, Gentry’s Two-Pronged Hazing Test)

Catchy title, right? You probably wouldn’t expect a guy who makes his living talking about hazing to suggest that we stop talking about hazing.

Over the last four years, I’ve talked to thousands of students on dozens of campuses about hazing. These conversations have informed my perspective on hazing more than any research articles I have read (and, when it comes to hazing, I have read them all). And all of those conversations have led me to a singular conclusion – If we are talking about hazing with our students, then we are usually having the wrong conversation.

Students don’t want to talk about hazing. Very often, they are not even willing to talk about hazing. But we keep talking about it, and in all of the wrong ways. The way that professionals on most campuses talk to their students about hazing has been reduced to one of two strategies, neither of which are very effective.

Strategy #1 – "Check the Box" Education – Check the box education is where we gather all of our chapter leaders together a few times a year and go over the campus hazing policy, which inevitably includes a lengthy list of “Thou Shalt Nots.”

Thou shalt not strike thy pledges.

Thou shalt not make thy pledges consume intoxicants.

Thou shalt not deprive thy pledges of sleep.

You get the idea. At the end of this “education,” chapter leaders sign a piece of paper acknowledging that they have read the list of Thou Shalt Nots and understand that if any hazing goes on in their chapters, their asses are on the line. University lawyers love this type of programming, because if there is ever a lawsuit, the University can show where the “hazing education” box was dutifully checked and can show where the chapter in question promised not to hit their pledges but decided to do it anyways. But other than providing some legal cover to the University, this strategy does very little to stop hazing. Students will either do the things prohibited anyways, because we failed to help them come up with something better (you can read more about that here) or they’ll come up with something just as bad that you didn’t think to put on your list and then you have to decide how you’re going to deal with that.

Strategy #2 – "Live Your Values Education" – In this version of hazing prevention education, we gather students together and beg them – IMPLORE them – to live their values.

“You guys, hazing is inconsistent with who we say we are!”

“What would your founders think of the way you treat your new members?”

“Live your values and don’t haze, you guysssss!!!!  Please????”

I can just envision the “hypermasculine” new member educators rolling their eyes and tuning out…

Stop. Just stop.

If you want to start addressing the hazing culture on your campus, here is my suggestion. Stop it with the box-checking and the “live your values” guilt trips. Stop talking to students about hazing altogether. It is a loaded word - it means different things to different people, and when we talk about hazing, we end up debating what "Is" hazing and what "Is Not" hazing. Instead of engaging in this circular debate of trying to define what is and is not hazing, sit down with chapter leaders and ask them to subject all of their new member education activities to Gentry's Two-Pronged Test:

Test #1 – “Is there a group-relevant point or purpose to this activity?”

You have to start with the first test, and the key word here is “noble.” Is the purpose of the activity something that we could all agree would be a good outcome, and is the activity logically matched to producing that outcome. The outcome needs to be specific – not some vague notion of “it builds brotherhood.” What kind of brotherhood? How? To what end? Insist on specific linkages between the activity and the outcome.

If the activity does not pass the first test, then you are done. No need to go on to the second test. The activity failed. Chapters should not be doing activities with their new members that serve no noble point or purpose. Note: “Because we’ve always done that with our pledges” is not a good reason and would not pass the test. Neither would “The pledges need to learn to keep the house clean” “The pledges need to learn time management” or “The pledges need to learn to hold their liquor.”

But, many activities will pass the first test. There will be activities that are directly linked to some positive outcome, and once you have made that determination, you are free to move on to the second test.

Test #2 – “Is the activity dangerous, demeaning, excessive, or illegal?”

I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. I don’t care how noble the outcome may be from Test #1, if it meets any of the criteria in Test #2, it’s a no-go. No activity can put a new member in danger, we should be above any activities that demean or degrade new members, and none of us are in a position to allow things that are against the law.

When I bring the two-pronged test up with students, there are a few common themes that emerge when they try to push back. They’ll often ask about the pledges as sober drivers. I always hammer home Test #1 when they do. What is the point? Making members safe? Help me understand, if safety is your concern, why you don’t have a sober driver program involving all of your members? Also, I include in the “dangerous” category not only those things that are dangerous to a person’s physical well-being, but to their overall success in college. So, yeah….tell me more about how your pledges are doing sober driver programs until 4:00 in the morning and that isn’t impacting their grades?

Another one that comes up is the pledge “signature books” that so many chapters love to use. Is there a point? Ostensibly it is to help the pledges get to know the older brothers. Is it dangerous? Not in and of itself, but it can be used as a platform for those older brothers to require the pledge to do something that would violate Test #2 in order to get the signature. If you want the pledges to get to know the older brothers, I can easily help you come up with about a dozen different activities that will do a better job of accomplishing the objective without opening up the potential for “rogue members” to violate Test #2.

Notably absent from my tests are “Is the activity required of all members?” A lot of people use this test. I don’t. I don’t think that test is legitimate, because the new member education process is just that – about new members. Once you go through it as a new member, you don’t do it every year. New members can and should be asked to do things that older members are not expected to do, but only if those activities pass the two-pronged test.

The beauty of the two-pronged test is that it allows you to avoid having to categorize things as "hazing" or "not hazing." If a new member activity doesn't pass the test, it may or not be hazing, but it isn't a good activity because it doesn't pass the test. We don't have to categorize it or debate it endlessly. It didn't pass the test. Period.

My favorite example of the problem with traditional prevention education strategies is that we inevitably put things on the “list of thou shalt nots” that, if done correctly, would pass the two-pronged test. A perfect example is scavenger hunts. In the Fall of 1997, as a new member of Alpha Gamma Rho at the University of Tennessee, my fellow new members and I did a scavenger hunt. It was probably my favorite thing that we did in our entire new member program. Our new member educator obviously put a lot of time and energy into putting it together. It was designed to help us learn about important landmarks and the history of the University. We were divided into teams of 3-4, and were given clues about important or historic locations on campus. When we figured out a clue and went there, a brother was waiting there to tell us all about the building or statue, its history, its importance, and to give us our clue to the next landmark. I still remember things I learned from that scavenger hunt. And today, it would pass both of my tests. Was there a noble purpose? Yup – learning the history and important landmarks of the school made me even more excited and proud to be a student there. Was it dangerous or degrading? Not at all. We weren’t drinking, we weren’t encouraged to break the law, and we didn’t get yelled at if we didn’t solve all of the clues. It was a great new member activity – we learned a lot and had a great time in the process.

But some well-intentioned fraternity/sorority advisor on some campus today would get asked about doing a similar activity by a well-intentioned new member educator and would tell that student they couldn’t do it because at some point in the past one of their predecessors had placed “scavenger hunts” on the list of “thou shalt nots.” It is easy to just say “No” to all scavenger hunts – but it is also lazy. And it isn’t developmental or educational. If we were less concerned about enforcing policies and more concerned with helping our students think critically and develop, we’d probably be more willing to use something thoughtful like this two-pronged test instead of just reading our students a list of things they aren’t allowed to do. Intentionality is more than just a buzzword! It takes time and effort to be intentional and to actually help students think and learn. Being the captain of the “No Police” is not what any of us were hired by our campuses to do, but for whatever reason, about half of the questions I see posted on the NASPA Knowledge Community page have something to do with asinine policies. WE NEED TO BE DOING MORE THAN ENFORCING POLICIES, PEOPLE!!!

Should you still have a hazing policy that lists some specific activities? Yes, and you should make sure your students read it. Should you still be talking to students about how their behavior reflects on who they say they are, and encouraging them to be more consistent with their stated values?  Of course.  But our hazing education and prevention work needs to become more advanced if we are going to A) get students to listen to us and; B) actually do something to prevent hazing. In the New Year, let’s all commit to being more intentional and, as a result, more impactful in our work to prevent hazing.

I'm Sick and Tired of Hearing About the H-Word

Were you at the Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors annual meeting closing banquet this past week in Fort Worth? If you were not, then you missed out. If you were, then you got a chance to hear Anson Award winner Tom Jelke speak some uncomfortable truths in his acceptance speech.

He asked us some really uncomfortable questions – questions that made us think about the ways in which we do our jobs. While there were a number of zingers in his speech, here was my favorite:

“Are you reaching out and developing all of your students, or just the ones with whom you feel comfortable working?”

This question, out of all of his questions, triggered something that I have been feeling now for quite some time.

In the last 5-10 years, we have alienated about 80 percent of the male students on our campuses, particularly in our fraternity chapters. We have alienated them to the point of having a name that we call them – a term that in many circles is met with derision and scorn.

We call them “Hypermasculine.” The H-Word.

Hypermasculinity has become a buzzword in student affairs in the last decade. Initially, the H-Word was used only to describe a relatively small portion of our students, and only in a clinical setting – those whose behavior exaggerated stereotypical masculine behavior, such as physical strength and sexual aggression. It was a new way of describing what had previously been referred to as “jock culture,” where physical and sexual aggression were ways of life for a small percentage of male students, particularly among male athletes. When the word first came into popular use, it was met with hostility in some circles, as some felt it was a racist term to describe black male athletes. But its use persisted. Originally just a psychological term, it came into popular use through books such as Michael Kimmel’s “Guyland: The Dangerous World Where Boys Become Men,” a pseudo-scientific tome which lamented the fact that *GASP* some men were waiting later than previous generations to get married and that *GASP Again* because of that phenomenon, many of them were living communally (i.e. they had roommates) and those roommates occasionally did crazy things like drink beer and/or play video games *AUDIBLE GASP.*

KIMMEL WAS TALKING ABOUT ME! THAT BASTARD! You see, guys like me are apparently everything that is wrong with America. We shun responsibility. We fastidiously avoid “growing up.” Whereas our fathers got married and started families in their early 20’s (by the time my father was my age, he’d been married for 18 years and had a teenage daughter), we were waiting until our late 20’s or *GASP* even our 30’s before settling down. And Kimmel said this was a huge problem!!! Never mind the fact that the divorce rate for our parent’s generation is now well over 50 percent and perhaps – just perhaps – we were trying to avoid their mistakes. Never mind the fact that, for many of us, this “delaying of adulthood” was actually used to further our educations and better prepare ourselves to be able to financially support our future families.

All of a sudden, after Kimmel’s book (and, in all fairness, others like it) became popular in student affairs circles, a lot of traditional male behaviors began getting tossed onto the Hypermasculinity trash heap. Guys living together in apartments or fraternity houses? Hypermasculine. Guys who like to hang out with their buddies and drink beer? Hypermasculine. Guys who go to the gym? Hypermasculine. Guys who have sex with women outside the confines of a committed relationship? Hypermasculine. Guys who choose to set at home on a Tuesday night and play video games instead of coming out for a program on campus? Hypermasculine, not to mention irresponsible. You get the idea.

So now, any guy who fits the traditional male gender stereotype is hypermasculine. On many college campuses, if you are a cis-gendered male, you are generally lumped into one of three categories: gay, hipster, or hypermasculine.  We have created very little room for any sort of in-between.

Here’s why all of this is a problem - Our use of the H-word is driving heterosexual college men away from engagement on our college campuses in droves. We started calling them names, and now we act surprised or frustrated when they become “disengaged.” A lot of fraternity/sorority advisors that I talk to will readily admit their discomfort or, even worse, their outright disinterest in working with “hypermasculine” fraternity men. And as a result, a population that arguably needs our support the most is getting the least support!

Need proof? The decline in men’s engagement on college campuses throughout the last decade is well documented. My guess is that on 90 percent of college campuses in America, resident assistants, orientation leaders, peer leaders, student activity board members, etc. are made up of a disproportionate ratio of gay to straight men. While survey research tells us that gay men make up anywhere from 10-15 percent of the men on our college campuses, my guess that on most campuses they outnumber straight men in these areas of student involvement by a ratio of somewhere between 2 or 3-to-1. And I don’t think it is because all of a sudden gay men started clamoring to get more involved on campus – it happened because slowly, gradually, straight men became less and less engaged, and less and less interested in getting involved in any sort of traditional student affairs engagement offerings. It happened because, somewhere along the way, student affairs professionals forgot how to sit down and have a conversation with a straight student who occasionally enjoys sex, beer and video games. And instead of reaching out to them, we’ve demonized them and started calling them the H-Word.

Want the straight men on your campus to become more engaged? Stop calling them names. Reach out to them. Talk to them. And stop blaming them for all of the problems on campus.

So many challenges we face with men on campus have mistakenly been chalked up to hypermasculinity. Hazing, for example, is often thought of as a rite of passage caught up in displays of hypermasculine behavior (and in some groups, particularly some culturally based groups where ethnic identity has taken the place of hypermasculinity, that may be the case), but in reality it is generally the result of a group-think mentality wherein groups have convinced themselves that the prize of membership is worth abusing prospective members, flexing our evolutionary impulses to not allow newcomers to immediately exploit the benefits of membership. Hazing very often has nothing at all to do with masculinity, which becomes even more evident when you consider the fact that sororities haze, too! Does hypermasculinity contribute to the severity of hazing in some cases? Possibly. But it is not the underlying cause of a culture where hazing is viewed as a requisite component of group membership. As my good friend Jeremiah Shinn likes to say, just because something seems true doesn’t mean that it is.

So what are some strategies that we can employ to re-engage all of these “Hypermasculine” men that we have slowly disengaged over the last decade, while still confronting the real problem of actual hypermasculinity?

Some of it we are already doing – we are finally targeting groups traditionally associated with hypermasculinity (fraternities, athletes, etc.) and inviting them to be part of the solution, helping them think through and challenge traditional male stereotypes and helping them better understand problems associated with the objectification of women. But we can’t stop there. We need to intentionally be recruiting men to be involved in things like orientation leaders and resident assistants, providing them with training that will allow them to be positive male role models for future new students who may then also seek out those opportunities in the future. Frankly, we need to make it cool to be involved.

I also think the work that Josh Schutts and I are doing related to brotherhood has some implications related to this conversation. In particular, chapters where solidarity or shared social experiences are viewed as the most salient forms of brotherhood also tend to have the most demonstrations of hypermasculine behavior (hazing, competitive binge drinking, fighting, etc.). Working with chapters to move beyond solidarity and towards belonging and accountability can be among the most important work we can do in changing the cultures that permit hypermasculine attitudes to thrive. This notion is backed by another study that found that individual levels of hypermasculinity did not predict sexual violence among fraternity men, but it did among non-affiliated men. The group culture in fraternities is more powerful than any individual predisposition that members may possess. If we can move chapter cultures away from solidarity and towards belonging and accountability, we can create group cultures where problematic hypermasculinity is replaced with genuine engagement, involvement and a feeling of being able to be yourself (as opposed to fitting the masculine mold) and being accepted for who you are and what you bring to your group.

Is hypermasculinty a real problem in our society? Of course it is. But instead of a disease inflicting 80 percent of our males on campus, it is a psychological disposition that impacts a small portion of men in serious ways, and a larger number of men in minor ways. It is often passed on to them through male role models in their life, popular media, violence in sports and video games, and a belief in traditional gender roles. All of these are things we can help alleviate by just having conversations with them, helping them unlearn that which society has taught them.  Let’s stop calling our students names, and start practicing what we preach by “meeting them where they are” and helping them become better.