March 12, 2008
Student-Affairs Officers as Unsung Heroes
Boston — This year’s Naspa conference gave members a chance to do more than share ideas. As they got together as a national group for the first time since the tragedy at Virginia Tech, many presentations and conversations turned to the identity of the student-affairs profession.
Some comments seemed to reflect an impression that student-affairs officers were the unsung heroes of higher education.
“We’re major players whose words should be listened to,” Michael L. Jackson, vice president for student affairs and enrollment services at the University of Southern California, said in one session here.
“We’re expected to be experts in everything,” added Dean Bresciani, vice president for student affairs at Texas A&M University.
In the conference’s closing session, Zenobia Lawrence Hikes, vice president for student affairs at Virginia Tech, rallied her “brothers and sisters.”
“Student-affairs professionals are indeed some of the most important people on campus,” she said. “Their responsibilities entail life-and-death decisions every day.”
The massacre at Virginia Tech, Ms. Hikes said, “will change the higher-education landscape for years to come.” She urged her fellow student-affairs officers to take certain lessons from it: Reach out to all students, balance public safety and the privacy of mental-health records, set up a threat-assessment team, improve security, and run active-shooter drills. But she reminded them, to applause, that nothing can stop a determined enemy and that there’s no such thing as a campus lockdown.
Ms. Hikes denounced violence in popular culture, particularly video games, and called on her colleagues to “be the groundswell of public opinion” against it. “If you are tired of watching … innocent students run for their lives across our campuses,” she said, “say, Enough is enough.” Several hundred people in the soaring ballroom did. And when she asked them to lobby to keep guns off their campuses, they applauded again.
“Student affairs is not just our profession; it is our calling,” Ms. Hikes told the crowd. “Our responsibility then is to foster a civil and just society. To do anything less is irresponsible.”
Sara Lipka | Posted on Wednesday March 12, 2008 | Permalink
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