Hard

Hardening of the Attitudes
Robert J. Chapman, PhD
Pennsylvania Regional Coordinator of The Network:
Addressing Collegiate Alcohol & Other Drug Issues
© 2003

The issue-or some might say problem-of managing personal frustration and avoiding cynicism as a student affairs professional is one that may be more pervasive than many in higher education imagine. Confronting the issues of high-risk student behaviors such as underage and dangerous drinking, indiscriminate use of illicit substances, or unprotected sexual activity, to mention but a few of the more frequently cited examples from the media, is enough to dampen the spirits of even the most ardent student affairs professional. Not only can media-reported national stats about percentages of high-risk drinkers and untoward incidents related to alcohol or other drug use on campus prove to sap the SA professional's optimism and resolve to make a difference, the potential threat to their belief in the general efficacy of anything done by SA profession as a whole would appear to be an all too likely consequence of working in a 21st century institution of higher education. A steady diet of bad news from the media and personal stories of heartache resulting from individual incidents of high-risk student behavior on one's own campus can result in more than the occasional question regarding SA's ability to make a difference in a student's collegiate experience. At times practitioners may feel more like a knot tied in the middle of a rope used in a tug-of-war between individual students refusing to change their behaviors at one end and media-reported national trends regarding high-risk or "dangerous" drinking on the other. Yet not only do we see SA professionals refusing to leave the field in droves, but the number of vocations attracting young professionals to a calling in student affairs would seem to be increasing-unlike our human service colleagues in some religious orders have experienced of late.

Regardless if Student Affairs professionals weather the problems on their individual campuses or know something the media do not, we in SA do manage to keep our collective heads above water. True, frustration and cynicism are experienced by some in the field, but this would appear to be more the result of personal perspectives on the witnessed or reported facts rather than the reality of those facts in and of themselves. In other words, dealing with high-risk students and their behaviors may be an occupational hazard associated with being an SA professional, but that does not mean that each professional in the field will succumb and experience the chronic frustration, institutional cynicism or shell-shock of working day in and day out in higher education. As with so many things in life, one tends to find what is looked for-the practitioner that expects to see new prevention strategies fail or individual students refuse to abandon high-risk preferences, regardless of the evidence presented to them documenting the risk, will likely find evidence to support their beliefs.

If this sounds vaguely familiar, I suggest you dust off your old undergraduate general psych text and review "confirmation bias" and "illusory correlation." In the proverbial nutshell, these theories suggest that because one thinks something is true, it takes little hard data, i.e., very few cases supporting the belief to confirm "proof" that one's hunch IS true. The classic example of this in addiction counseling is the belief that effective counseling necessitates breaking through a client's denial with directive confrontation (some call this "attack therapy") in order to enable clients to improve. True, some clients exposed to such counseling techniques respond and get sober, this being the illusion of support for the practice that has allowed a confrontational approach to perceived denial of a problem to become the mainstay of the addictions treatment industry for 30 years. Unfortunately, most clients introduced to treatment via attack therapy drop out prematurely. Ironically, these clients are deemed "not ready" to get sober so the client is blamed for the failure to improve when it is more likely that an inappropriate treatment choice was made by the counselor. This is also roughly similar to what we have seen over that past several years in published research on "binge drinking"-an awful label, by the way, to apply to a student simply because 4 drinks were consumed in a sitting if female, 5 if male. This research reports on the steady if not increasing rates of such drinking and then assigns "blame" to those that would consider employing social norms and other proactive strategies as part of a comprehensive program of environmental management on a campus because such approaches are unsubstantiated. NOTE: Unsubstantiated does not mean "ineffective," it simply means a technique has yet to be substantiated, but this is another essay :)

So how does the Student Affairs practitioner keep from burning out or becoming so cynical about addressing high-risk student behavior when the arena in which we work would appear to be so rife with pessimism? There are numerous ways this is done but I suspect that many in the field employ one or more of several common denominators. Here is a representative sample:

1. Like the bumper sticker on a liberal's hybrid gas-electric powered auto might suggest, "Think globally, but act locally." SA professionals know what they are doing on their individual campuses. They all know that prevention works and therapy groups, policy reforms, and environmental changes make a difference. SA professionals will go to Denver next March and confer regarding what's what in the field, including the "bad news" nationally; they do so knowing that we make a difference. Just like people never change their behavior by thinking of what they have done wrong or times when they have achieved less than total success or obsess on the final goal rather than focus on the process, e.g., one day at a time, so do most SA professionals realize that on their best days they can help others, not save them, but help we do…frequently and with great reward.

2. New strategies of prevention like social norms and social marketing campaigns not only make sense when applied to student misperceptions about drinking, drugging, or other behaviors on campus, but also help curb some SA professional's misperceptions of what's what in our field as well. Recognizing that "most" of us involved in prevention and treatment practices know that what they do makes a difference, both with individual students and campus programming, opens the door to being able to experience the frustrations of the job, but act on them rather than react to them. Having a campus committee defeat a specific proposal that would further prevention efforts on campus or reading a journal article about how higher education is going to "hell in a booze soaked hand basket" and imply we need to spend more time confronting the alcohol industry than embracing the unsubstantiated theories of the liberal free thinkers who proselytize about "feel good" prevention is taken with the proverbial "grain of salt." Just as one can chose to listen to Bill O'Riley's or Rush Limbaugh's on the deterioration of the country's moral conscience and get all upset about the condition of the country, we can simply choose not to watch those programs as well-we tend to find what we are looking for in life.

3. Many (most?) in the Student Affairs field have come to realize that there is a huge network of others who think and believe as we do. This realization results in most of these professionals seeking out these "others" and conversing with them. The best antidote for the "six o'clock news syndrome" is to speak with others about what is really going on in the world. Just like we all know that not, "All 16 to 25 year old members of a particular racial group" are doing what the six o'clock news constantly suggests is the norm, so is SA aware of the myriad opportunities to receive various points of view on the topics affecting collegiate life. As is written in the Bible, "Let them that have eyes see and them that have ears hear!" With listservs, online news services like JoinTogether.com, newsletters like NetResults and The Network's News From the Front; conventions, workshops, and seminars like the National Meeting on Alcohol, Other Drugs and Violence Prevention in Austin in Oct. 2003 and Then NASPA conference in Denver in March of 2004, and agencies like the Department of Educations Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, the field has access to "what's what." This is a powerful antidote to the media's constant barrage of, "We've got trouble, right here in River City, and that starts with "T" and that rhymes with "B" and that stands for BOOZE."

4. We are also becoming more sophisticated as a field. Many (most?) have become familiar with Prochaska's model of change. There are stages of readiness that one passes through on the way to change. The appropriateness of meeting students on the change continuum at the point where they are regarding readiness and then working to motivate their movement to the NEXT stage of readiness and not simply insisting that they instantly move to the LAST stage because it's what's best, is a very empowering and a powerful inoculation against burnout - see my essay, "IF It Walks Like a Duck and Looks Like a Duck, Why Should I Be Surprised When it Quacks?" - (click on "Preventing burnout when working with substance abusers").

Student affairs professionals are a resilient bunch. We know how important our work is and we know that academic success cannot occur without and until student issues that arise outside the classroom are adequately addressed. This does not mean that every student that enrolls in higher education should or will receive a degree after completing the requisite number of courses. Likewise it does not mean that every high-risk student behavior can be anticipated and addressed BEFORE it results in a tragedy. It does, however, mean that SA professionals need to be careful of the informational diet they place themselves on. Just as too much fast food over an extended period of time can result in hardening of the arteries, so to can too much fast information can result in hardening of the attitudes, a condition just as prone to shortening professional careers and sapping an optimistic view regarding the important work that we do.