Graphic by NICOLE THORSON | Art Director
CARLY WIXSON
Special to The Leader
Trigger Warning: prejudice, homophobia, racism, sexual violence
It’s January 2023, and packets containing homophobic and racist content were found outside of a residence hall at Rhode Island College.
Students on the school’s paper immediately went to cover this incident, but when writers contacted the police about what happened, there was no response.
Nine months later in September 2023, and residence staff at Point Loma Nazarene University informed their residents that an act of vandalism had taken place in their residence hall.
The words “fuck gays” were scrawled on the door of a resident’s room, and on the hall whiteboard it read, “no gays allowed.”
The university is investigating and hoping to hold the perpetrator accountable.
A 2022 survey conducted by the American College Health Association found that 27% of students over a span of 51 different colleges and universities identified as being non-heterosexual.
They are feeling this heaviness of on-campus living with part of their identity being targeted.
An article in Inside Higher Ed reports that 40% of LGBT-identified college students hear derogatory terms being thrown around in their residence halls.
Hearing these terms can have a tremendous impact on their mental wellbeing, knowing that the place they live is not safe.
Higher education should be a place that is safe for students to come out and express themselves the way that they want to, especially since evidence has shown that queer students are more likely to come out in college.
But the discrimination doesn’t stop at homophobia.
In March 2022, there were two incidents of racially motivated acts of hate at Ohio University. First, a student left a trash bag outside of the room of a Black student with racial slurs written on the side of it. Then, a white student urinated in the room of their Black resident assistant, and ultimately was given criminal charges for his actions.
Race plays a vital role when it comes to on-campus housing, from disparities in housing to feelings of not being able to fit in on university campuses that are primarily white.
A 2020 study in the Journal of College and University Student Housing found that many Black students will separate themselves in the dorms from their white peers to escape microaggressions.
Even with the best of intentions from college housing organizations, such as randomly assigning dorms or having programs to stop microaggressions and racism from happening, it is hard to entirely prevent the occurring racism.
Besides homophobic and racist incidents, students also experience sexual assault in theirresidence halls.
According to “Know Your IX”, 19% of women will be sexually assaulted at some point during their time at college, as well as 5-6% of men. Twenty-six percent of the time, these assaults take place in residence halls.
Long story short — danger lurks in the dorms.
For most college students, living on campus for at least one year is mandatory. This means subjecting themselves to the very real possibilities of disparities, harassment and sexual assault.
These horrors can be a reality that impact mental health and wellbeing in serious ways – but one bothersome question remains: What could we be doing more to fix this?
That is not to say that college campuses are not trying.
It has been an age-old task of university residence hall staff to figure out the perfect way to configure a sense of belonging and safety for the students that live in their halls.
Primarily, these halls are where students will receive most of their socialization.
The Society for College and University Planning found that there is a correlation between relationships and a built community in a residential hall and its social climate.
Through a 2016 study, it was found that there is a need to promote more social interactions between residents, even in corridor-style buildings that already attempt to promote this.
It is more than vital that residence halls are safe spaces.
Eddie Stakelum, former Resident Assistant at SUNY Fredonia, and current LGBTQ+ Living Community Graduate Assistant at Binghamton University, in an October 2023 interview, said that, “if a student doesn’t feel like they fit into a space they are less likely to engage with their environment, which can lead to isolation which can decrease academic performance.”
This inherent loneliness and lack of engagement, of course, is only heightened by the very real threat of violence that lurks in some dorm halls.
According to James G. Speight’s book, “Ethics in the University” (2016), harassment of any kind can lead to a decrease in social activity of a student.
This includes their attendance and performance in class.
The sheer fact of living on campus, a sometimes-necessary evil, should not hinder the way in which college students perform.
Most are here primarily to learn — is it fair to throw additional hardships their way?
Grace Breen, former Resident Director at SUNY Fredonia, brought up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when asked about how a living space may affect a student’s learning in an interview in October 2023.
This is a theory which states that people must have their basic needs met before their more complicated needs can be.
Breen said that, “living on campus provides these necessary structures that allow students to achieve personal and professional goals… and increased levels of student engagement with their peers shows a higher likelihood of degree completion and academic retention.”
A resource available on all SUNY campuses is a Title IX coordinator, who is in charge of dealing with such reports of harassment.
A Title IX coordinator must provide the members of their organization with protection against discrimination.
The Title IX coordinator is Dr. Vicki T. Sapp, and she can be contacted through email or through submitting a bias, discrimination, or Title IX incidence form through the Fredonia website.
However, many students are not aware of this resource on their campuses. A 2023 SUNY Fredonia administration survey found that only 35.6% of students knew how to contact the Title IX coordinator.
Yet, harassment on campus still happens, and happens often. Most of the population of students have either been harassed or witnessed harassment of some capacity,according to Speight’s book.
When this is true, there is a need for change.
Reporting an issue doesn’t equate to the end of the problem, either.
“Ethics in the University” reports that many students experience levels of stress after reporting to a Title IX coordinator, ranging from anxiety, sleeplessness and depression to changing their career path and impacting their relationships with others.
“After my suitemate used [racist] remarks against me and verbally assaulted me, I reported it to Title IX [a Bias Incident Form] and after the whole situation I’ve felt like I never truly got justice. It has really affected me,” Alaya Moore, a sophomore BFA Dance major and Ethnic and Gender Studies minor said in a November 2023 interview about her experiences.
Simply reporting and hoping for change is not enough, and it never will be enough.
The change needs to start at the smallest level – in the residential halls.
Stakelum provided insight about their own experience with SUNY Fredonia’s training for their resident assistants, explaining that they “learn about how to address issues relating but not limited to mental health concerns and crises, bullying and harassment, sexual misconduct, Title IX and various forms of discrimination.”
These types of training are required by the state.
When further asked, though, he elaborated on how the system could be better. “I honestly think that having a building contract that is signed by all students in the hall would be beneficial,” he said.
Tahaaní St. Bernard, a current resident assistant at SUNY Fredonia, said in a November 2023 interview that “there was a two-day long training for Title IX [for RAs] with a quiz at the end.”
St. Bernard further added that residence halls could do more by ensuring that residents feel safe to come and speak with their RAs about things that happen to them, both on campus and off. “They really do care if [they] feel that [they are] in danger”, she said.
Kevin Hahn, Associate Director of Residence Life at SUNY Fredonia, provided further insight into how ResLife goes about training for resident assistants.
He described the reporting structure at Fredonia as “robust” and said “[they] do a lot of training with RAs to help them understand how to submit [Title IX] reports and how to be supportive to students.”
He also explained how ResLife intentionally chooses their resident assistants to be “really approachable people that students will come to to talk about things that are going on whether it’s in the residence halls or sometimes even in other areas of campus.”
Putting the policies clearly out for all residents to understand can be an effective tool to help prevent this, and allows for something even more important, something that can be used to act against those who break these policies — accountability.
Breen said, “Education is an effective way to combat hateful behavior and ignorant rhetoric.”
Accountability and education in conjunction could do wonders for the residential hall system at colleges, SUNY and otherwise.
These topics need to be tackled directly with less trying to appease those who believe the system is infallible.
Students deserve to have a safe place to live and study, and for that to be true, action needs to be taken.
There should be an implementation of more supplementary education in the residence halls, as well as a clearer and indisputable understanding of the rules in terms of respecting fellow students in the dorms.
No one should have to feel unsafe in their living space, and it’s time that something was done about those who believe respect is not required.