What are we trying to do here?

May 19th marked the end of my first academic year at Minnesota State College Southeast. It was a humbling year in many ways, as I hadn't changed jobs in a long time, and I had spent the prior 17 years in a different state system. It meant I came to MSC Southeast passionate about what I believe in (ending poverty), knowledgeable about education and about people, but completely ignorant on how things worked at my new college and new system. Oh, and then COVID-19 caused The Great Evacuation, and I continue to work through that daily as well. See what I mean by humbling? It was very challenging to feel like a novice again in many ways after growing comfortable enough in my old life to feel like I knew how things worked and maybe even how things really worked. But it's been worth it. When I made my pitch to get this job, I said I was looking for a place where we could rally around a common mission and do amazing things. That common cause was a commitment to social mobility through poverty-informed practice and infrastructure. After nine months, I would like to share what we are trying to do here.

Our strategic plan contains the goal of building a poverty-informed infrastructure. We have begun that work with food pantries on both campuses and free transportation in the cities we serve. Both things are wonderful but there is a long way to go. Our pantries are built on a no-barrier model which warms my heart, but they don't include refrigeration, and are stocked by volunteer efforts of students and staff. We will continue to build this out, and we will look for local partners to enhance and coordinate our efforts. We are also pursuing funding to have a coordinator for basic needs on campus. Part of what we are doing here is acknowledging students are humans first (credit to Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab) and working to create the conditions where learning is possible. Learning while you are hungry or unsure where you will sleep is a tall order. Being poverty-informed is the reason we made the decision to maintain student access to campus this spring even after we moved to distance learning. We knew the pantry was indispensable for many of our students, and we knew technology access was not a given as we moved more online. So, we left a skeleton crew on campus, used every spacing and cleaning protocol we could, and stayed open to students for support if not for classes. I realize this might be controversial, but not everyone is safer at home, and not everyone can delay their dream. We did what we had to, because parking lot WiFi for people without devices was not a solution we could live with.

My partner in student services and I created a two page "manifesto" of sorts, and it refers to "celebrating and doubling down" on serving our under-served populations. To me, this is a step beyond regular equity and inclusion work. It is the act of making sure students who have felt left out, not only feel welcome on our campus, but feel seen and wanted. Being wanted is so much different than being welcome. Think of it this way. There was a time when we talked about "tolerance" as if that was the gold standard of inclusion. On closer examination it doesn't seem nearly adequate to "tolerate" differences. I think we are evolving toward a similar shift from saying students are all "welcome" to creating a culture of being actively "wanted." We've paired this mindset of celebrating the students we serve with a commitment to removing the barriers which prevent them from succeeding. It also means actively recruiting students from under-served groups. Our recruitment team is already making us the partner of choice for Alternative Learning Centers. What better group of students to hear our message of not just welcome but wanted? We will remain welcoming to all, but we will make sure those who have been left out are actively wanted. Imagine the transformation of a campus that eats, sleeps, and breathes this mission. This work will force us to be serious about identifying and eliminating barriers, and it will definitely mean we will have to pursue resources to build the supports people need. It is exciting just to type, can you imagine how great it is going to be?

We imagine honoring the poverty-informed ideal of acceleration by being a partner to industry in our region in new and exciting ways. We will seek partners who also want to make students feel wanted. Internships, Credit for Prior Learning, and Work-Based Learning will be strategies we use to move people to stability and success faster. We will also establish a culture of pedagogical innovation based on understanding the students we serve and are trying to serve. In a deep culture of caring, we will leave no stone unturned in finding ways to help students succeed. Does a flipped classroom support the students we want, or maybe competency-based learning or any other number of ideas? We will fearlessly explore, evaluate, and evolve so we too can accelerate to success. We want to build something different. We want to have goals other than just remaining open and available. I've heard so many times our communities value us, but they don't really know what we do. I think we can define purpose and create identity while changing the world for the people we serve, their families, and the communities we live in.

So, what are we doing here? I suppose people could call it many things, but to me; it is building a truly poverty-informed campus based on the three principles of poverty-informed practice. First, we recognize basic needs impact persistence and graduation, and we work relentlessly to meet those needs or partner with those who can help us do so. We will refuse to lose someone because of their resource limitations. The second principle is about creating a sense of belonging on campus. This is working on what our facilities "say", how our staff interact, and making sure our students can see people like them represented on campus. This means we must make our staff more representative of the students we are reaching out to. It also means we need to look at our facilities, the artwork, the pictures, and the signs. We want to create a place that screams "you belong here." And lastly, we recognize time can be the enemy for the students we serve. This why talk of "gap years" in this pandemic sit uneasy in my mind. The longer we ask you to defer a dream, the higher the odds of life intervening and derailing the dream. So, we are committed to honoring what people have done and know when they arrive, and moving them quickly to a place of stability, success, and next steps. That is what we are doing here...

I See You

Remember the movie Avatar? One of the big emotional payoffs is when the main characters say "I see you" to one another. It's a substitute for "I love you", but it's also more. It is acknowledgment of another's existence and their importance. A little internet research indicates Avatar borrowed this expression from tribes in South Africa. It is loosely related to the idea of Ubuntu, which I only became aware of a dozen years ago when it was made popular by the Boston Celtics as an emblem of team culture. I'm not an expert, but the loose translation I learned was "I am because we are..." It resonated with me as an advocate for people in the crisis of poverty because I've often found those people to be more interconnected and interdependent than the middle class norms we have been taught are the ones to aspire to. I've shared before my fears this pandemic will cause those of us who can to retreat to safety and isolation, when I believe the better choice is to recognize and celebrate our interconnectedness. We have to see one another. Let me tell you how we tried to make sure our students knew we could see them.

For a Vice President of Academic Affairs, I'm not the most "academic" person you will meet. I understand things like accreditation, curriculum design, program learning outcomes, and the like, but it's never been what feeds my soul in this work. What feeds my soul is the idea that colleges can help end poverty, particularly 2 year colleges. And I believe proximity to students and their stories and their humanity is the reminder we need when things get hard. So what should we do in this time where our students are harder to hear from? Our solution was pretty basic, we asked. I'm fortunate to have an excellent partner in Student Affairs at MSC Southeast. His name is Josiah Litant (that's him above), and he shares an affection for our students and a soft spot for those left out. We were both concerned about how students were handling the incredible amount of change thrust upon them, so we sent a one statement survey. It said: "We know this is a challenging time to be a college student. Please let us know both what is working for you and what you are struggling with." It was accompanied by an offer to have one of us contact them if they wanted to talk more. The answers we received were illuminating, and a number of students asked for follow up contact. Let me share what we learned.

Takeaway number one: The resilience of students is remarkable. This came to us with answers like, "I am doing good. Staying indoors is important for myself and my (child) as (they) has a weakened immune system. We don't even go for walks due to the fact that this virus is so contagious. I have been keeping busy by doing school work and doing crafts... Other than that, things are going pretty good for the most part." and "I am just struggling with (class) but the instructor has been more then(sic) helpful. The real struggle is staying sane at home quarantined." Even with a change they had never asked for, these students were making the best of a difficult situation. Even the students who were frustrated and angry were surprisingly kind with answers like "Well we've all been thrown a bit of a curve ball...I have no blame to throw here. But I can't help but feel I'm being completely ripped off when it comes to my education/experience... It's definitely been weighing on my mind if students in the real "hands on" classes, are not being able to be there for all that exp. but still needing to meet standards is way unfair. even tho I'm confident we can meet those standards, I'm not as much worried that my GPA that I've worked so hard for up to this point may suffer, as much as how much hands on experience I'm skipping right over...though-( we have GREAT GREAT GREAT teachers!)not being able to have them face to face time and missing all the hands on stuff, (which just cant be done online)... I'm just venting a little here... I will continue to do my best and hope its good enough. I have hope that everything will work out in the end. thank you for listening." I appreciated the second student thanking us for listening. It's hard to not be able to fix all this, but we wanted them to feel heard and seen. One of my premises of poverty-informed practice is to stand in awe of our students, and I am in awe.

Takeaway number 2: Students are struggling, no matter how much we want that to not be true. Phrases like these told us the story of struggle: "My main problem is WiFi issues..." "I hate online classes they suck so much..." "I have fallen behind due to the campus not being open or accessible, as my computer has taken a shit, and my phone isn't the most reliable thing to work on, especially when doing papers...." "I am scared that I am going to fail this quarter. I still have kids at home and trying my best to do everything. At the end of the day I did not chose online classes it is extremely difficult. I even felt like dropping out and that is not my goal at all because I do want to finish..." There were many more, but the theme was clear. This is hard, and the pandemic made it harder. And these were the students who answered. I can't help but wonder how many were just knocked off track and can't stay with us. As a higher education professional, these are not comfortable moments, but they are important. If we can't hear and see what is really happening, how do we change the world for these people who trust us to help them chase their dreams?

I wish I was concluding by telling you Josiah and I, along with the rest of MSC Southeast solved every one of these issues for students, and everything was on track. It's simply not true. I've been arguing since this crisis started the other side of this pandemic has to look different in many ways. I'm not entirely clear what those changes all are, but I know it has to start with understanding the real journey of our students. I keep reading about colleges coming back in the summer and fall, and it doesn't sound like the students I know. Talk of dormitories and sports and dining halls are important, but they don't represent the stories of the students I know. The stories collected in our one question survey tell me about the students I know. These students are amazing. They are operating on thin margins, and they are counting on post-secondary education to make a difference in the arc of their lives. It is an awesome responsibility, and we work day and night to figure out the best way to continue the work of providing social mobility through education to the widest possible audience. But if we don't SEE the students we serve, really see them, it will be too easy to give in to our own fatigue and just do the best we can. But if I could talk to them right now, I would want them to know, I see you... I am because we are. Because I know these things, I know that as much as we are doing, it isn't enough, and we have to do more. Once you really see something, it can't be unseen. What will you do to say "I see you" to students?

It Has to be Different After This

This pandemic has completely exposed the kind of inequity colleges like mine have been trying to mitigate since their creation. But even for practitioners like me, the reality of all of this has been hard to see. I think sometimes we work so hard trying to make a difference, we blind ourselves to the simple unfairness of the situation. The unfair Horatio Alger myths we assign to our students and staff overcoming obstacles to increase social mobility are being tested and exposed in ways they never have during my career. Now, make no mistake, there are remarkable things happening at colleges across the country, and there are students doing amazing things in difficult to impossible situations, but should they have to? Does it need to be that way? I always remember the quote from Rhodes Scholar Hazim Hardeman “Don’t be happy for me that I overcame these barriers,” he says. “Be mad as hell that they exist in the first place.” I think we can choose wisely, on the other side of this pandemic, I really do. I think we must. Let me try to explain the contrast. It starts just down the hall from me.

I know a college student quite well who had to leave her state university residential campus and not return this spring. She lives in my house actually. Now, before you assume I'm taking in wayward students, you should know it's my daughter, and she moved back to her childhood bedroom from her dorm in the middle of her second semester. I suppose it's been inconvenient for her, and I'm sure she's sad because her college experience was interrupted, but here is the reality, she's mostly fine. She's living in the house she grew up in, and her bedroom is larger than the dorm room she shared at her university. She has a new Surface tablet she purchased this fall because her laptop wasn't making the grade, and she has the fastest internet the local provider has. She always has by the way. The refrigerator is full of food, the semester is paid for, and she doesn't need to get a job right now to help with costs. She's anxious because all of her classes are suddenly online, and her teachers aren't really prepared either, but in all honesty... She's fine.

The contrast to other students I know is striking. I've spent most of the last month trying to make the best of this bad situation for the students I serve. Of course, my college also serves students like my daughter, but the stories I'm hearing are of adult students with children and trying to do online courses and home-school on the one device in their home or on their phones. Or the stories are of homes with poor or no internet access. At Minnesota State College Southeast we know who we serve, so we have kept our computer labs open and as safe as possible, but the comparison to the student who lives in my house is bothering me every day. Our small college with limited resources does everything it can to provide access to physically distanced computers for students who are able to travel to campus. I know some colleges have given devices to students who are without, we did not have the resources to do so. It's a bit of cliche to say community and technical colleges lack necessary funding, but it's become even more clear in recent weeks. I think of students who are home-bound and alone, and the contrast to my daughter runs deeper. I listen to stories of students who are working more hours during this pandemic because they don't know what the future holds. I've met multiple students this year who were living in cars at some point, what is happening to them? Did they stay in class... can they? How do we even pretend their opportunities are equitable in any way to the young person living in her bedroom in my house?

For the record, I love my daughter, and I'm glad she has the things she has, and the opportunities those things bring. Where it falls apart for me is if anyone has any sense that she "deserves" this, and the other students I know don't. It just isn't true. My daughter has what she has simply through an accident of birth and a pile of privilege. She's talented and bright, but no more bright and talented than students I've been meeting for years, who have much less. We must acknowledge the inequity of where they start, and if we are interested in bringing out the potential in everyone, we need to start leveling the playing field. These are choices. We like to pretend they aren't, but they are. I truly believe there is enough to provide opportunity for all, we just have to decide there is and act accordingly. If not, we need to openly acknowledge that we choose to have different levels of opportunity for people based on who they were born to and where. We know this is true, but I believe if we force people to see it and say it, we will be motivated to change it.

My college returned in full distance learning mode two weeks ago, and faculty are telling me of students they cannot make contact with no matter how they try. It hurts my soul to know we might lose some of our most vulnerable students when they need us most. It hurts my soul when the best solution for students is to boost the WiFi so it is accessible outside of buildings and in parking ramps, so they can do work in their cars. I'm proud of all of us for finding these "solutions" but we cannot celebrate them and pretend they create equity. They are a band aid on a system that feels irretrievably broken to me. We cannot let charity be a substitute for justice, or a "moral safety valve" as noted in the image above. We must do the best we can, while acknowledging as my friend and hero Dr. Russell Lowery Hart says "We aren't doing enough, we have to do more..." So, I'm not a lot of fun when I see social media posts of families like mine celebrating the joy in "simple things" and the "opportunity" this quarantine has given us to connect to "what matters." I understand where the sentiment comes from, but please don't let isolation cause you to look inward only. I wonder how different all this would look if we shifted from protecting what we have to worrying about those who have nothing? All the inequity this pandemic has laid bare was caused by choices we make about how we run our society. That means we can choose differently. We have to choose differently, don't we?

I'm Scared of "the New Normal"

So, if you read these articles regularly, you've met my friend Sarah (Sarah's story). I've been thinking a lot about her during recent weeks as we have all had to retreat due to the pandemic. I know she's safe, but she's home alone, and she just became an online student even though she didn't want to be. We chat on Facebook, but I worry she's isolated and isolation isn't good for anyone, but maybe Sarah more than most. Sarah has a gift for connecting with people, so being unable to go to church, or help people who are homeless (her great passion), or attend school in person must be really hard for her. So, I'm thinking about Sarah, but I'm thinking more about what she's taught me, and I'm afraid the world might lose that lesson when we come out of our current crisis. I have a dream of co-presenting with Sarah around the country on the realities of poverty and how it intersects with education and everything else. I want to do this work with her because she's been one of my great teachers, and what she's taught me more than anything is the power of proximity. I even wrote about it once before (proximity article), and I'm afraid our current circumstances are going to cause us to lose the importance of this fundamental need to fight poverty.

Sarah is my friend, but we are certainly different. I'm old enough to be her Dad for one, and we grew up differently. I grew up in a mix of situational and working-class poverty, and Sarah grew up in much tougher circumstances. I knew in theory there were different kinds of poverty, and they impact people differently, but Sarah made that theory real for me. Sarah is a person of deep personal faith, and I am not, but she's never given up on trying to fix that flaw in me:) Where Sarah really started to change things for me was when we started talking about how to work with the people around our campus who were homeless. I wasn't sure where to start, but Sarah knew them, and she made sure I did too. She took me (and others) to the Hospitality House right next to the administrative center at my old college. We didn't go to volunteer; we just went with my friend Sarah to meet people. We went to be in proximity to the truth of their stories and their humanity. This led to joining Sarah at Sacred Grounds, a coffee sanctuary where she also helped people who were struggling. I often went with my friend Mandy, and people began to think we might be Sarah's parents... I am not exaggerating one iota when I say being in proximity to the people Sarah knew changed everything for me. Never again have I walked past someone on the street without making eye contact and saying hello if it seemed appropriate. Sarah connected me to people in such a way that I didn't even notice my colleagues looking at me during a recent trip to Nashville when I gave my leftovers to someone living on the street and engaged in a brief conversation. My colleagues are good people, but Sarah had changed my world view, and I forgot my behavior might catch my colleagues off guard. I even sent Sarah a note thanking her for making me a better person during the trip. My friend putting me in proximity to people living outside my norms was powerful, so of the many things I'm terrified of during our pandemic, one of the greatest is we will lose our ability to relate and connect.

I can see it already. I was at Walgreen's a week ago, and I noticed the man sitting by the door. I was emotionally overwhelmed at the contrast between me stocking up on medicine, and him appearing to have nowhere to go. I stopped (as has become my habit) said hello and asked if he needed anything. He declined and settled down next to the building. I had watched several other people walk by him and steer clear and do everything they could to not "see" him. We cannot lose the ability to see each other. This feels like the danger to me as we must practice physical distancing (I refuse to say social distancing because we must still engage socially with whatever tools we have). I cannot stop thinking about the societal divisions becoming more apparent in these times. Some of us can stock up on groceries, and retreat to homes in relative safety, while others are losing jobs, homes, healthcare, or more. The thin nature of the fabric holding our society together is being exposed. Even in my industry of higher education, we know our changes will leave the most vulnerable more exposed than ever. We try with every tool we have, but we are forced to provide online courses to people who go home to places with one device shared between children and adults all trying to go to "school", if they are lucky. If they are less lucky, we are stuck with giving them advice like, "the wifi is still accessible from the parking lot or next to the building." If you wonder why the community and technical colleges were the last to close, it's because our mission is to serve exactly the people being hurt most directly. Even our best solutions are inadequate, and I'm afraid if we lose proximity to these stories we will forget, and we will go backwards.

I'm worried about the fragility of my friend Sarah who has been battling the crisis of poverty herself as long as I've known her. I'm worried she doesn't have what she needs to succeed in school, because a switch to online is a struggle. I'm worried her teachers won't get the proximity to her I was lucky enough to have, and they won't understand how remarkable she really is. I'm worried in a world of typed communication, her syntax and grammar will obscure her giant heart, and her desire to change the world. I guess I'm just really worried the loss of proximity we are all being forced to endure will separate us in ways we may not recover from. I'm afraid distance makes detachment too easy, and people will retreat into their own struggles and assign blame to choices they don't understand. That blame can lead to judging and as my friend and mentor Dr. Donna Beegle always says "If you are judging, you cannot connect. If you cannot connect, you cannot communicate. If you cannot communicate, you cannot break poverty barriers." For those of us worried about poverty barriers, this loss of proximity is terrifying.

This crisis will pass. I'm not a scientist or doctor, but I trust those who are when they say we are going to go through hard times before it passes. I'm not dismissing what's to come, but I am thinking about what comes after. We will have choices. We can choose to retreat further into a world of those who "have" and can protect themselves, and those who "don't have" and suffer greater and greater consequences. We can call it the "new normal" and say there is nothing we can do about it. This kind of detachment is a vision of the future which feels far too likely and scares the heck out of me. I have always believed human nature is fundamentally good, and times like this will put my belief to the test. We do have another choice. We can realize how interconnected we all really are, just like my friend Sarah has always known. We can realize our fate is only as good as the fate of those with the least among us. We can stay in proximity (emotionally if not physically), and we can just do better. So when the next virus comes, and we have to retreat to our safe spaces to take care of each other, we can feel like there are spaces for all. And we can feel like we aren't leaving our most vulnerable students with inadequate tools to make the changes they are working so hard for. So, I'm afraid of the ''new normal" if it means I forget the lessons my friend Sarah has taught me. I promise her I won't forget, and I'm challenging you to not forget either.

It's an Emergency

As I've talked more and more about the idea of poverty informed practice, the concept has solidified around three ideas for me: Meeting basic needs, creating a sense of belonging, and supporting people just when they need it to accelerate their progress. I've been using a "poverty-informed" triangle for a while, but I updated it for my recent presentation at Achieving the Dream. Instead of talking about belonging and belief, I've boiled it down to creating environments where people don't just feel "welcome", but rather know they are wanted. It might seem small, but I think it's an important distinction. If you are somewhere in my age range, you can remember when we used the word "tolerance" a lot talking about diversity and inclusion. When I think about that word now, it seems so patronizing to tell someone you would "tolerate" their differences from you. My prediction is we will feel the same way about the word "welcome" before too long. So, our college is shifting from saying everyone is "welcome" to making sure students know they are "wanted", especially if they have felt unwanted elsewhere. It goes beyond poverty, but it is definitely informed by poverty. Students in the crisis of poverty often feel as if they aren't really supposed to be on campus; we are going to make sure they know it is exactly where we want them to be. And it has me thinking about other well-intentioned efforts many of us get wrong.

On the right side of the triangle is the idea of accelerating progress and supporting people "just-in-time." Much of the support is academic, but for me it broadens out to emergency support and basic needs support as well. I'm pleased to say there are campuses all over my state and the country with food pantries, grab-and-go food, and emergency funds to bridge the moments that prevent students from succeeding. But I also know we live in culture which wants to make poverty a character flaw instead of a context. And because this point of view is baked in deep, we inadvertently build systems in opposition to their stated purpose. Emergency funds are a great illustration of how we can get this wrong in my opinion. My college has a number of emergency funds, most of which existed before I arrived, but I am proud to say we built one in my first semester through an internal campaign as well. My only request was that it have the lowest possible barriers to student access. In essence, I wanted to say if a student asks for help, we believe them, and they get it. My history says this will be a difficult ask.

I have had to evolve on this issue over the years. 20 years ago, I bought into the idea of teaching "financial literacy" as a primary strategy to help students in financial crisis. I reject that idea now. I often see emergency funds coming out of offices with the term "financial literacy" attached to them. Let me be exceedingly clear, financial literacy works very well for people with money, but in my opinion, it is a bankrupt concept (no pun intended) for people in the crisis of poverty. You cannot manage or be literate about that which you do not have and implying that becoming more "literate" is the solution transfers the blame to the person in crisis. You can see the hard wiring of blaming the poor for being poor. So, when I see "emergency" funds coupled with financial counseling or with literacy workshops, I get kind of irate. This sort of "help" feels like lecturing a gunshot victim on ducking faster before you stop the bleeding. it's ineffective at best and damaging at worst. I know a number of students who stopped going for help because it felt dehumanizing. The irony is the people giving out the assistance genuinely see themselves as good people and helpers. I'm angry at myself for my attitude 20 years ago, and I'm angry at so many emergency aid programs today.

So, what do you do? Well Dr. Sara Goldrick-Rab built the gold standard model with her Faculty and Students Together (FAST) fund, which essentially operates on a sort of "rich uncle" model, where help comes directly to students and does not impact their financial aid. I'm hoping the faculty union at my college will explore pursuing that model, but in the meantime there are ways to run your emergency funds better, even if they aren't gold standard. Number one, stop making people ask multiple times for help. Let's set the default to if you have the courage and vulnerability to ask, we just believe you and get you what you need. If this makes you immediately think people will take advantage, I'd challenge you to examine your view of people. Do you really think people will "abuse" such a system, and if so, how many? Even if there is a percentage, is building barriers worth telling the 95% of people who just need help we think they are suspect and need to be screened. Do we really think there is a benefit to making them tell their story multiple times, and then wait to see if they "qualify?" It is an emergency! That's why we call them emergency funds. The second thing I would do is challenge us to think about how we talk about the students we serve who access these services. Do you know how often, I've heard someone referred to as a "good bet" or "bad bet"? Isn't that dehumanizing and awful? Can you imagine having the vulnerability to say you need help, and how you would feel if you knew people went in another room and decided if you were worthy of betting on...

So, as with so much poverty-informed work, it isn't particularly complicated, it is just hard. Our choice about supporting people "just-in-time" is as much about changing our mindsets, as it is about figuring out how to deliver the help. Instead of helping as many people as we can with the resources we have, we use a scarcity model to hoard resources and develop systems to decide who deserves help and who doesn't. That is corrosive and toxic in my opinion. At my last college we removed all criteria from an emergency fund for GED testing. We simply said if a staff member heard you needed help, you got it. The usage of the fund went up 500%. It strained the resources, but so what? We pursued more resources because we discovered our "criteria" were keeping people from asking. If you have similar systems, you need to ask yourself the big questions. Are you trying to help, or are you trying to pick winners and losers? Do you believe needing help is a normal part of life or do you see it as a sign of weakness and a character flaw? My point of view is obvious on this one, and even if you aren't entirely sold, think about all the energy and effort wasted to sort out who gets help and who doesn't. What if we just trusted the people we serve and redirected the time we gain to making things better. That is how we treat an emergency.

Policy and Unintended Consequences

At the end of my first semester as Vice President, I learned I had a duty I was not aware of. It turns out if students run out of appeals to return from academic suspension, their last chance is to reach out to me. I had roughly half a dozen students contact me in December and January desperately seeking to return to school. Our current college policy is you are on academic warning if your semester GPA is under 2.0. You are academically suspended a first time if you have two consecutive semesters under a 2.0 GPA, but that suspension can be appealed to a committee. The committee is full of great folks who look at the circumstances and work on a plan for a successful return if they can. Most appeals are granted, and the student returns with requirements they must meet. If they don't meet those requirements, the policy says they are suspended from school for a year with no opportunity to appeal. But there is a backdoor appeal (students are resourceful) and it involves reaching out to me. As I said, I had a few to review before spring term and I agonized over it. It brought up some memories, and more so it brought up concerns we weren't accomplishing what we meant to.

The memory is a story I had not thought about in a while. In 1991, I had transferred from UW-Madison to UW-LaCrosse. My Madison experience is a long story, but I left there with extraordinarily mixed results. I was academically eligible, but there were giant GPA swings, and switching between part-time and full-time status, and I had never spoken to an advisor or had anyone reach out to me about my odd record. But that is another story, and in 1991 I had transferred in search of a fresh start. I signed up for a full-time schedule, had a full-time job, and wanted to get my life in order, sincerely. But my demons resurfaced. I didn't have a name for it back then, but mostly I was struggling with a pretty serious anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, in those days, I thought I was just a procrastinator and lazy. Whatever it was, after about 6 weeks I stopped attending classes and went into avoidance and hiding, which was not a new behavior for me. Unsurprisingly, I got a 0.0 GPA for the term and over the Christmas break I got a letter. It said due to my academic performance, I was suspended from the college for the next 2 semesters... I'm guessing the letter said other things, but I don't remember them and that is the point. All I knew was I had failed, and I was in trouble. I'm guessing the letter probably had an appeal process, but I was never going to do that. I was ashamed, and I would have done anything to hide the truth from people I loved. This means there were probably wonderful staff at the college just waiting for me to come in so they could help me get on track, and I'm sure the policy was intended to do just that. Realistically, I was never going to come in. Instead let me explain how that first brush with policy started a series of events that defined most of the decade for me.

With my new suspension, I knew I needed to have a cover story. So, I quickly told my family I was unsure of my future and I needed to take "time off" from school to get my plan straight. It was plausible and felt like it might buy me time. But you don't know what you don't know. I had student loans, and apparently you must start paying those six months after you drop out; who knew? I didn't have any money (I worked 3rd shift at a fast food restaurant), so I needed another plan. Being broke sometimes steals your ability to make decisions which make sense to others. It's part of the context of being in crisis. My decision was to quickly enroll at a school up the road which was on a quarter system and could take me in March, staving off the student loan problem. Of course, I was still broke, and it would add miles to my commute, but between anxiety and financial difficulty the short-term decision was the one I made. I enrolled at the last minute, with no real financial plan and unsure how my suspension in one state impacted enrollment in another (this was pre-internet, I'm old), and this was obviously a recipe for failure. My term did not go well, but the policy at my new college said I was just on a warning. That meant a letter I could ignore. I felt like I'd dodged a bullet and enrolled for fall. And still in three colleges, no one had reached out to me except with a letter. I'm sure the letter had all kinds of resources in it, but shame makes it easier to throw those things away and hope for a fresh start on Monday (like dieting).

To make the story shorter, and since it isn't fun to remember, the next term didn't go well, and I received a one quarter suspension. I remember the letter said you could appeal or just sit out, so I sat out. And when I returned, I didn't make the standard again, and this time the letter said you sit out a year. I vaguely recall some language about an appeal, but c'mon, was I really going to do that? After all my failures, now I would go ask for mercy? I was an intelligent guy, I had all the test scores to prove it, and here I was. I also grew up poor, and it made me defensive about asking for help. We blame poor people for being poor, and we celebrate "boot strap" stories about overcoming obstacles life has put in the way. The combination of those two things made it seem like seeking help was a weakness, and it was my job to fix issues caused by my deficits. My year suspension turned into three years before I returned. In between was default on student loans and the destruction of my credit. So, in 1997, the bright, talented 18-year-old from the fall of 1988 returned to his third campus as an emotionally beat down 27-year-old. And that 27-year-old told himself when he was scared he would seek help, and sometimes I did, but even though my grades were good, it was still a struggle financially. I was certainly past believing anyone thought I might "deserve" extra help. And in the spring of my 2nd year back, I was out of money, and it was over. Maybe it was desperation, or maturity, or maybe my confidence had returned a little bit in the prior year, but for the first time I looked on campus for assistance. I went into the financial aid office and asked to speak to someone. It's hard to explain how ashamed and anxious I was. I still remember his name. It was Greg and he had a beard, that's all I remember. But he asked what I needed, and I said I was out of money and didn't know what to do. I'm getting teary eyed writing this, but he didn't judge me for a second, and he told me about unsubsidized loans, and suddenly I had a lifeline. I didn't have to work 40 hours a week, I didn't have to quit. I didn't have to fail. I never told Greg, but he changed my life. I'm where I am today in large part because he was kind and solutions oriented. I was a former loan defaulter, and I was 11 years from when I started college. I don't know what the policy said I deserved, but Greg saw me and gave me hope.

So, what's the point? The point is policy has impact, and it doesn't always match the intent. My colleges had policies of letters with wonderful information in them. And if I'd had the courage to read them, maybe I'd have shortened my journey back in 1991. I wonder how many students read those letters, no matter how well done they are. How could I know most appeals are granted? Who knows there is an appeal to the Vice President not really spelled out in policy, but just in practice for those who navigate the system? When I think about the half dozen students who came to me, I wonder how many didn't. Our policies are supposed to help, not punish. I don't think we design punitive policy on purpose, but I think being poverty-informed means we need to look at what we are doing very carefully. My own behavior plus some policy impacts kept me in difficulty for much of my 20's and wasted a lot of college resources too. Although I was not well off, my parents are college educated, and I suspect the reason I kept returning is because they had made it through on their crooked path. I can't help but think of everyone who didn't have an example to follow. It would have been very easy to just go away and stay away, so I guarantee people make that choice every term. How many could be pulled back with a personal touch like I got from Greg? How do we build resources and policy to make that happen?

So, in the meantime, we have to agonize over policy, and I needed to suffer with the students who came to me. I didn't let all of them back into school immediately. I did speak to each of them in person or by phone, and if my decision was to delay their enrollment, I asked them to meet with me personally to make a plan. I'm not saying I did anything magic or even the right thing. I'm saying a poverty-informed college doesn't hide behind policy, we wrestle and agonize with these decisions because being a professional requires it. I'm not anti-policy, on the contrary, I'm advocating for understanding the power and implications of policy choices. I'm advocating for transparency and for policy with a student success focus at every turn. And more than anything, I'm advocating for human connection in policy to normalize help and remove stigma from struggle. We all want better outcomes, and careful policy making and application can give us those.

The Problem with Policy

Since last spring, I have developed a habit of using the slide pictured here when I present to groups. I heard someone say love your students not your policies when I attended Amarillo College's Poverty Summit in May, and it stuck with me. As I ask people to get comfortable with uncomfortable realities of our students' rates of success, I'm often drawn back to this notion of what do we love more. And if we truly choose to love the people we serve (I wrote about the topic a while ago) more than we love our policies/rules, what does that mean in practice? What does that even look like? This part of my presentations always gets mixed reactions. There are of course, nodding heads and smiles as people picture a situation which might have gone differently, but there is always a sense of discomfort and maybe even disapproval I can feel in the room. I've spent a lot of time thinking about why that is, let me try to explain.

So, first let me say I get the uneasiness when we start looking at policy. My current job is Vice President of Academic Affairs, which means I have responsibility for a large number of policies. In fact, one of my year-one tasks is to review all academic policy for my college with my team. Colleges are large, complex organizations, and policy and procedures are needed to keep us open and able to do the work we do. I think some folks get nervous when I talk about students vs. policy because they think I mean anarchy:), but I'm really talking about embracing the gray areas and the difficulties of the work we do. In fact, my colleague Josiah Litant and I had the opportunity to spend a day at the Minnesota State System office early in my tenure visiting with our Vice Chancellor. Our wide-ranging discussion touched on a number of topics as I oriented to the system, but we were particularly focused on the statewide initiative called Equity 2030. In the course of that discussion, we talked about eliminating achievement gaps and barriers to doing so. I honestly can't remember who said it, but eventually someone said policy was, by design, inequitable because it tried to make blanket rules that treated everyone the same. We can quibble about the truth of the statement, but it seemed profound to me. If being poverty-informed is an equity-minded approach, we need to consider our policies and our use of them very carefully. I think we find our next point of discomfort right there.

Policy can save us from personal pain. It's not fun to make a decision which impacts someone else negatively. I will be spending this week analyzing appeals from students who have struggled academically who want to return to school. Our policies on this are pretty clear, and if I wanted to, I could use them as the reason I am choosing to take away someone's opportunity to go to school. That's what I mean when I say policy can save us from pain. The simplest thing would be to figure out if students were in compliance with stated policy and then decide if the student "deserved" to be reinstated. Well, anyone who has read my writing knows I hate the idea of "deserves", so I'm going to agonize over those decisions. I don't know if I will get them right, but I think we are obligated to live in that discomfort and look for the spaces in-between our policies if those spaces support students, particularly students built for norms they might not match. In a business like education, we can't run things strictly off flowcharts and decision trees. If we could, we could just be automated. I would argue gray area decisions are what makes us professionals, those difficult decisions where we have to wrestle with outcomes mentally and emotionally. So, I think asking people to love students more than policies can make people uncomfortable because owning the consequences of our decisions is difficult. I agree it is hard, but I believe a poverty-informed college commits to being in that difficult space.

Ideally everyone in education would be there for the right reasons, but we know it just isn't true. So, I think there are darker reasons some people attach to policy without evaluating it for equity, fairness, or desired effect. These reasons can include wanting to be in control of others from a position of power and using policy to do so. I sincerely hope this is a small number of people, but I've run into it personally, so it seems worth bringing up. This tends to manifest in a mentality that people have to "earn" what they get, and when they don't, we talk about their lack of commitment or "grit". This particular branch of bad policy use is very dangerous in my opinion because it can always be couched in words like "it's just policy." On a micro-level, this can be course requirements for students which ask more of students than we would ever ask of staff. On a more macro-level, this can look like policies built on middle class norms that make students in the crisis of poverty "other" and deficient by definition so when they fail, it is their fault. A policy which puts blame on the less powerful is a very convenient way to absolve ourselves of responsibility for helping. The poverty-informed approach I'm advocating for has a default to helping and an ownership culture as opposed to absolution through policy. Dr. Donna Beegle challenges us to look at policy and assess if it supports students or punishes students. I would agree her approach is a great place to start assessing policy and how you implement policy.

Reconciling loving students, equity, policy, and being poverty-informed isn't easy. I don't think it will ever be, but it is what is required if we want to add humanity to our organizations in the way I think we should. The folks at Amarillo College have a talent for finding a turn of phrase worth envying, and I do have some envy. "Love your students more than you love your policies" is just about a perfect summation. It acknowledges the need for norms to run a large complex organization, while challenging us to look at policy through an equity lens. I would say it pushes us to go even further. It not only gives us permission to make exceptions to policy, it challenges us to examine policies and see if they are helping us move where we want to go. Policy at a poverty-informed college might look very different than what we are used to, in fact I would expect it to, given our current results. Thinking about the work of building policies like these (and living with the exceptions) gives me excitement and anxiety at the same time. As I get comfortable being uncomfortable, I suspect those feelings mean I'm on the right track.