Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
Welcome to season three of the ASCA Viewpoints Podcast, the podcast where we talk about the student conduct profession in higher education. I'm Alexandra Hughes, your Viewpoints host. Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the ASCA Viewpoints podcast. So today I really want to talk about how we are connecting with our students and if we are defaulting to the idea of fear rather than really living in that of empathy. It never really ceases to surprise me, the amount of students that I've heard say to me after hearings, after conversations like, "Oh my gosh. Wow. You're so nice. You're way nicer than what I thought you were going to be."

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And I always laugh at that because I'm like, "What did you expect me to be like? An ogre? What in the world were you thinking was going to happen when you came into this office?" And now I totally understand that just by nature of being called into my office and the title of the office and the Maxient forms that we're using. I mean, it is scary and I truly get that. But it just amazes me how many students are surprised that I was actually nice to them. And so I always ask them when I say that, or when they say that to me. I say, "Well, what did you think was going to happen?"

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And students, every single time always respond with some type of version of, "I guess I didn't think that I was going to be able to tell my side of the story." So that got me to thinking, if every time somebody comes into the office and they are convinced that they're not going to be able to say their side of the story or tell their version of what happened, is that really something that we are perpetuating as a student conduct office or as people, or is it random, is it rare? Where does that come from? Well, if you think about it every day, and how many times in our everyday lives are we as individuals bracing to not be heard?

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So this could be from an authority figure like our parents, you maybe as a supervisor or whatever that may be, from our partners, our spouses, and the same thing with us, students have experienced this with teachers, they've experienced it with other administrators. How many times through their academic journey, K-12 school system, where they're constantly told that they did something wrong, this is what it is, I saw you, it's over, it's done. And when you think about how many times on a daily basis and how many times we are constantly almost fearing the fact that we're not going to get a chance to tell our stories or be heard, there's no wonder that they walk into our office expecting it to be the same way.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And so what I realized is a lot of it has to do with relationship building. We know that when someone walks into our office as student conduct professionals and really just this higher educational professionals, period, there is about a 30 second window of relationship building that you have to do. And that's, I think there's tips and tricks on how to do that, like how to connect with students in the first 30 seconds of them coming into your office, from how you're sitting, the way you look, the way you talk to them, what it is that you do, the questions that you ask, even the very first things that come out of your mouth can really determine the way that conversation is going to go.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But as an overall broad topic, it really comes back to students getting an opportunity to share their voice. Now, even in these situations that I'm encountering, students are still found to be responsible, in that particular case or whatever it may be, but I still allow them to share their story. Again, it's relationship building.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
Now I fully understand that I am over simplifying a lot here. So this is a skill to be able to connect with someone, to be able to bridge that trust in such a short period of time, because that's what you're doing. As a student conduct professional, you are meeting someone who you've never met before. You're sitting them in front of you, and you are asking them to trust you with their story, trust you with the process that you are going to be fair, you're going to be equitable, that you are going to listen to all parts and all pieces to be able to come up with the best decision, whether it's in their favor or without it, or outside of their favor.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And truthfully, that just takes a lot of experience, trial and error, trainings, webinars, things that we do. I've worked with people, and some people that I've coached through how to do this, I think one of the best examples that I can share with everyone is just the idea of people bringing down or breaking down their barriers.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So I'm thinking about a situation where I was sitting in a meeting with a particular conduct officer and a student, and I was working with coaching her and training her in how to have these conversations. So I'm sitting in the background while she's doing it. And so in this particular case, it was a student that was found to have said some just problematic things. And it was on a recorded audio message.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So the case was truly, it was really open shut. Like he said it, he did it, it was on this recorded audio device. So relatively easy from that perspective, but still the conversation needed to occur. We needed to understand why he did what he did. And still at the end of the day, hear his side of the story. Because all of our cases are just snapshots in time. And so there's pieces around that, that help to create that.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So when he came into our office or into her office and I was sitting in the back, he was very, very adamant about his lawyer telling him that, he was to not say anything, not doing anything. I mean, just completely like, no, no, no. And so I totally understand that his lawyer actually wasn't with him. I couldn't remember why. I think his lawyer had decided or whatever it was. He had gotten a lawyer, but whatever it is, he wanted to come in and meet, and it didn't work with their schedule.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So he still wanted to come in and get the information. And so he was very, very adamant like, I can't say anything, I can't do anything, whatever, and totally fine. I get that. I always like to respect the fact that if a student doesn't want to speak or they're not comfortable without their advisor, their lawyer or their parent, whoever, I'm not going to just make them or force them to have that conversation, because that's not what I'm here to do. I want you to be comfortable as a student. And if you need an advisor there to support you, I'm all for that.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And so I could see in this situation as he was just very walls up, which of course is to be expected. The person that I was coaching with and working with, she shut down to. She was very much so like, "There's really isn't anywhere we can go with this, but you need to talk to me, you need to have this." And you could tell she was like, she was shutting down to that process. And so if you have two people that have these walls up, then there isn't going to be able to be a bridge that needs to be made.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And so she gave me like the little signal, in which she was okay if I stepped in. And so I stepped in and the way that I did it was really talking with the student about the process. And so I told him that I completely understood where he was coming from. I empathized with him and I was able to talk to him and say, "Let me explain to you what the process looks like in our office." So I started talking to him about that.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And one thing led to the next. And before I knew it, the student was sitting there telling us everything and having an entire conversation. And he told us about him, what happened, what he was going through, his childhood, his sister, this job that he had gotten. I mean, it was like an hour later as we're sitting there. So we were really able to get through the whole thing. He realized where we were coming from in our office, that we are not trying to get him in trouble. We're not trying to do anything, but really just make sure that we're upholding that institution's policies and stuff.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And so by the end of it, we were actually able to work through the entire thing. And he ended up telling us exactly what happened. So after that meeting, we were talking and she was truly just impressed. Like, "how were you able to do that? How were you able to sit there?" Because he was so closed off. And so one, training, experience. And I mean, just the luck of the cards. There are some people that are going to open up. There are some people that are not going to open up no matter what you do. And it's nothing personal. It's just, it is what it is.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But what I told her is I said, "Well, I have found in my experience is that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar." And she sat there looking at me and she's like, "But he was not having it." And I said, "Well, it's true. But when we can get people and students to understand that I'm not here to demoralize you, to demean you. I don't think you're a bad person. I'm here to explain what the process is. I'm here to talk to you and hear your side of the story because you are a human being, then it tends to yield results that are more favorable in your process."

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But what this particular conduct officer did, I've seen throughout my work, working with different people at institutions all of the time, people shut down. And I think even us as conduct officers, we shut down and it happens for whatever reason we're faced with a student and we're very much so in a situation of conflict that we're faced with a student who's not having it, and then we mirror that behavior.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But a lot of what we have to train ourselves to do and to learn is how to not mirror this student's behavior. But in fact, set up the situation to where they are mirroring us. And the openness that I exude during our conference or during our conversation is the same type of openness that they then want to share with us in return.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
It's hard. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's definitely a skill that's important and it can make a difference. There is a individual and his name is Dylan Marron. And some of you might have heard of him before. He did a Ted talk. And he actually has a podcast that I used to listen to a long time ago, called Conversations with People Who Hate Me. And I absolutely love the podcast. I think he actually stopped because when COVID happened, he started doing this podcast called, what was it? It was, I should have known this before I got on here. I think it was like small triumphs, big speeches or something along that lines where it's basically a feel-good podcast.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But nevertheless, he did the Ted talk and the title of his Ted talk is called empathy is not endorsement. And I absolutely love that. I love that phrase. I say it all the time and like any good student conduct person, I'm making sure that I'm not plagiarizing and I give him his credit, but he always says empathy is not endorsement. And I think that we can really use that same phrase in our line of work too.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So the thing with empathy and empathy not being an endorsement, is that empathizing with someone you profoundly disagree with does not suddenly compromise your own deeply held beliefs and endorses theirs. It just means that you're acknowledging the humanity of someone who was raised to think very differently. And that's the definition that he has. And I think that applies so much in our work every single day.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
We can still sit down with students and have empathy for their situations without endorsing their actions. And we can do that all the time. We have to stop thinking that having empathy for someone is us saying that we agree with their decisions as students, when in fact it's not. It's just really us being able to sit there and take the time to listen to their story. I want us to stop having empathy for students after they tell their story, or after we learned that they had a tragic event or whatever it may be, but recognize that we all have a story that's prompted us to act a certain way, believe certain things, look at the world the way we do, whatever that is, it's just our lives have led us to believe the things that we believe.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And so we need to understand that from the very beginning, we all have to be willing to have empathy for other human beings. And I think that's the only way we can really make that substantial change as student conduct officers and hearing officers that we want to make. We're often trying to get students to fill out reflection pieces and reflective papers. And we want them to reflect on why their behavior was wrong. It wasn't an alignment with our policy. It wasn't in alignment with what our institutional values are.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But in order to get them to truly reflect, and I don't know how many times I've worked with people who've said, well, I don't understand why my students are not making that reflective piece in there. It's like the writing the essay, but it's not good. It's not reflective. And so I then will ask that student conduct officer, "Did you take the time to listen to their side of the story and truly understand what events in their life led them to believe the things that they believe?" It's getting their viewpoint.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
Again, I'm not saying that they're right. But it allows us to truly understand why a student felt or why a person felt that what they did was right in that time. Like why did they make the decision that they made in that time? It could be just for purely stupid reasons. Or there could be some background information there, some, I don't know, something that they've been through. And so we're trying to get students to change their behaviors, but how can we get them to change their thought processes, which influence their behaviors if we don't know where it comes from? We can't. So we have to have empathy.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
I think that we are trying to get respect from fear. And I'm not saying that it doesn't have a place. I'm not saying that it doesn't work, but we all know that. I mean, as soon as a student gets a letter, they're automatically scared that they're getting kicked out of the institution. And in some cases it is that serious. But I really want to challenge people to take that fear concept, recognize that the moment someone's coming into your office, they're already fearful and scared to death.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And so as a result, like anybody who is fearful and scared, they're going to have their own version of a fight or flight instinct. They're being forced to come into your office. Now you're going to get students who may have a particular attitude with, and I'm not saying that you can't be stern. I'm not saying that there are not times when you may have to match the energy of the person that's coming into your office and get them to understand, like the gravity of the situation.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
But a lot of the times I've learned that you can actually, instead of just calling people out, call people in as well. So when they come into your office and if you happen to be with someone who is being more defensive than not, call them in. Sometimes part of that conversation becomes addressing what they're doing in your office at that time and calling their attention to why they are speaking to you in a particular way, why they're acting in a particular way, whatever that may be in the first place and making sure that they truly understand really just all of the pieces and what's going on.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
You'd be surprised how many people are just confused of the process. They feel intimidated by an institution saying that they are being investigated for a particular charge, and what that does to their own impact and defensiveness when they come into your office. And if we can really take that out and allow students to understand that this is a space where we can talk and we have that conversations, that really, really helps.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
One of the tips that I always give people, whether it's in student conduct. This tip works in housing and residence life as well, is a lot of times we need to talk people through the process before we even get to the meat of what the situation is. A lot of uncomfortableness that people have comes from not understanding what they're, especially what their rights are. Like not understanding what this process is, how to play the game.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
We know as student conduct officers, as housing professionals, we know the rules of the game. We know how this works. We know what's going to happen, whether it's a hearing and whether it's the standard of evidence. Like we know all of that stuff, probably better than... I know how to use my Google email. But I know the processes and I know Maxient much better than that. So there's already an inherent power difference between you and that student that we often forget about.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
And because we do this every single day, day in and day out, we get burnt out by it, overwhelmed by it, frustrated by it because we're having to repeat the same things. But we have to remember that, that is that person's very first time dealing with this particular type of situation. And so they'd never heard it. And since they've never heard it, we have to have empathy for them as well. So those are some thoughts, really how we as practitioners can really embrace the idea of empathy.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
Hopefully try to get away from that of fear. I'm not saying it doesn't have a place, but I'm saying that I think we need to look at, and re-imagine the way in which we yield that tool and use that tool in our offices. So some tips to keep in mind, number one, empathy does not mean endorsement. Number two, call people in and not out for their behavior. Number three, choose to understand how people's life circumstances may have caused them to believe that, that was the best decision in that moment, in that space and at that time for them. And number four, let's use this information to help them plan how to make better decisions next time, therefore allowing them to truly understand and reflect on their behavior in our offices.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
So with that, I hope everyone stays safe, especially during these times and try it out. This is really just a good way to try out some of these things when you're meeting with your students. I'm not going to say it's going to work every single time and I'm not going to say it's not going to be something that's hard to do or implement depending on what their behavior is, but try it out. See what happens. Let me know if you find that it is successful for you. I want to hear about it. Please feel free to connect. If you need some more coaching on it and want some one-on-one time, please feel free to connect with me as well. Until then, I hope everyone stays safe, stays healthy, and I will connect with everyone on the interweb soon. Until next time.

Dr. Alexandra Hughes:
This episode was produced, edited and hosted by Alexandra Hughes. That's me. If you're enjoying the podcast, we ask that you like, rate, and review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. It really helps others discover us and become more visible to our podcasting community. If you have suggestions for future guests or would like to be featured on the podcast yourself, feel free to reach out to us by email at ascapodcast@gmail.com, or on Twitter @ascapodcast. If you'd like to connect with me on Twitter, you can find me @Alexandrasview. Talks to us. We talk back.