Alexandra Hughes: Welcome to season three of the ASCA Viewpoints Podcast. The podcast where we talk about the student conduct profession and higher education. I'm Alexandra Hughes, your Viewpoints host. Alexandra Hughes: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the ASCA Viewpoints Podcast. As always, I am your host, Alexandra, and wow. I hope everyone's doing well. I hope this podcast episode finds everyone well. Whether it's the morning, the afternoon, the night. You are getting ready in the morning. You're working out. You're living your best life. You're eating ice cream. Finally watching Tiger King, as I suggested that you did a long time ago. Wherever this episode finds you, I hope it finds you safe, healthy, and well. Alexandra Hughes: I want to take some time to just thank everybody for the overwhelming support of the last episode that I did on this show. As everyone is aware, I like to feature different voices from our field and just get different viewpoints and the last episode featured myself and my viewpoint. It was a lot. It was a lot. It was emotional. It was raw. It was real. It was tremendously scary for me to put out, but I want to make sure that I just thank everyone for all of the support, all of the love, all of the reach out, all of the resources, all of just everything that that episode inspired. I've realized, as I've heard from a lot of people, that just having these episodes once a month is not enough. And that, especially during these times, people really want to have these conversations about social justice, about race, about equity, about all of these things and how this is really a good platform to learn and to have that. And so I think maybe for some time, that's what I'm going to work on. I want to give the people what the people want and, if the people want this, then hey, let's work with it. Alexandra Hughes: That being said, last week, I did a webinar for ASCA titled Systemic Racism...Is My Office a Contributor? In which a lot of these things were being discussed and in which I really asked our practitioners in our field to think about the roles that their office play and I provided a myriad of resources and questions and roles and just different things to ask and things to consider moving forward. I think that that was kind of the jumping off point and I'm hoping that this episode and the episode that I have scheduled for everyone for this week is going to be an episode that takes that step... or that conversation, rather, a step forward. And I am extremely excited about that. Alexandra Hughes: I have a guest here and I think that everyone is going to love her, love her energy, love what she's talking about, and her name is Mikaela Falwell. Mikaela was so gracious to come onto our show and actually provide even more questions, more resources, more things for us to think about as practitioners as we work through the climate of our country at this time and how do we ensure that our offices are actually not contributing to these things and what can we do over the summer to reevaluate and how can we make sure that we're putting our best step forward. So, without further ado, let me introduce our guest, Mikaela Falwell, to everyone. Alexandra Hughes: Mikaela Falwell, pronouns she/her/hers, has served as the adjudication coordinator for sexual violence and sexual harassment cases since August of 2019 after joining the Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs as a judicial officer in December 2018 at UC Davis. Previously, Mikaela worked as the assistant director for the Office of Student Conduct and Civility Education at Towson University, where she heard high-level conduct cases and served as an investigator and hearing officer for Title IX cases. Mikaela's career in student affairs began in residence life at the University of Arizona and American University. Mikaela is a proud alumna of the University of Tennessee's college student personnel program and Mikaela also graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in criminal justice studies. Mikaela's student conduct work is guided by social justice, student development, and care for students. I can guarantee you that everyone here will be able to listen to this episode and take something valuable away. I know I did. I learned a lot just listening and talking with her and I encourage everyone to reach out to Mikaela. She provides her contact info. I will put it in the description box if you want to hear more, if you would like to connect with her, and yeah. I think everyone is going to like it. Alexandra Hughes: With that being said, be on the lookout for more things this summer as we work through these issues, we work through these topics. I'm not going to say that I'm going to have the answer for everything, but if nothing else, hopefully it will be a starting place for all of us to move forward collectively. Please stay safe. Please stay healthy. Please remember we are still in the middle of a pandemic and COVID-19 is real. I will connect with everyone soon. Thanks for listening. Alexandra Hughes: Hello, everyone, and welcome to our show. My name is Alexandra Hughes, as you all know, and we have a very special guest today, Mikaela. Mikaela Falwell. How are you doing? Mikaela Fallwell: I'm doing okay. Not great. Not good. Just okay, to be honest. I think all things considered. Yeah. Alexandra Hughes: Well, we like honesty and we definitely want honesty on this show, so I think that is the most important thing. I truly appreciate you coming on the show. You coming at such a short notice, really just to come here and to talk. I definitely appreciate your time and just energy. Especially in this world that we're living in now. So I think the first thing that I want to ask you before we even get into this... We are still in the middle of a pandemic. I think we've forgotten about that part. How are you doing in the age of COVID-19? Are you safe? Are you healthy? First, let me start there. Mikaela Fallwell: Yeah. Thank you for asking that. Of course, I appreciate the invitation to come and speak with you today. I'm safe and I'm healthy and I really appreciate that. My department is still working from home. Yeah, I've just tried to maintain healthy boundaries. It is a challenge, I think, just to work from home and to not have that separation. I'm just trying to do basic things like hold my normal office hours, go for a walk after work, to create that separation, when I would normally leave the office and walk away. So COVID-19... Yeah, I'm doing okay, honestly, with that. But we're in weird times. Alexandra Hughes: We are in weird times. 2020, this is not the year that I expected. I want to unplug 2020, go back to 2019, try re-plugging in 2020. You know when we used to take our phones and put it in rice when they got wet because it was messed up? I just want to put 2020 in rice and leave it for three days and come back and just let the phone restart itself. That's genuinely just how I feel. Mikaela Fallwell: I'm not sure that's going to work, but it's a strategy. You could try. Alexandra Hughes: At this point, it's much better than some of the things people are doing and so I'm just going to leave it that. I'm just going to say that. So, Mikaela, can you please tell our listeners just about your student affairs journey? How did you get to your current role? About you? Whatever you are willing to share on a recorded podcast. We would definitely appreciate that. Mikaela Fallwell: I think that the universal thread for folks who do student affairs work is that none of us grew up thinking, oh my gosh, I want to be a student affairs professional, let alone student conduct folks. Just because it's not something that you realize exists even before you set foot on a college campus. When I was an undergrad at San Francisco State, I was an RA and then I became a senior RA and then I was an assistant area coordinator and everyone told me that I would become a resident director. I was like, absolutely not. I'm not going to be a professional RA. That's not in my cards. I was so wrong about that and I can get to that a little bit later. Mikaela Fallwell: I decided in my junior year... I was a criminal justice studies major and, in my junior year, I worked with an organization called Project Rebound at San Francisco State that allows previously... or that helps previously incarcerated individuals get into SF State and also succeed when they're there. It was that experience, honestly... Even though I loved being an RA, I loved building a sense of community, it was that experience... because I wanted to do social justice work... that allowed me to realize that even though we consider, in a lot of areas, education to be the great equalizer, we have so much work to do in our institutions. And in student affairs, too. So I was like, you know what? This is my calling. I see how I can make a difference. I've never let those experiences, even though it was a short period in my life, leave me. I think about the students that I got to work with, the scholars who were previously incarcerated... I think about them often still. That really was what made me say, "I want to go into student affairs." When I was choosing grad schools, I chose the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, knowing that it would super different. Alexandra Hughes: Mm-hmm (affirmative). In the South. Mikaela Fallwell: Yeah. From my San Francisco State experience. And so I moved to Knoxville from San Francisco and it was everything I thought it was going to be and sometimes a little bit more. Alexandra Hughes: A lot more. Mikaela Fallwell: Take that for what it was. Or what that is. But I really did love my experience at the University of Tennessee. It challenged me and it changed me and it helped me communicate cross-culturally. It was a challenge, but I wouldn't change that for anything and I loved my time on Rocky Top. After that, I knew I wanted to be a resident director. So there we go. I was wrong. That's probably my favorite job that I ever had. Out of grad school, I was a community director at the University of Arizona. Then, after that, I worked as a resident director at American University. I will say that being a resident director or community director was probably my favorite job that I ever had. Just because I got to live in community with folks. I think it really prepared me to work in student conduct because I was a first responder to incidents. I got to see how this played out. Whenever I receive an incident report now, I can literally picture it. I remember what it's like to knock on that door and hear the clinks behind the door or whatever the case might be. It's given me an interesting perspective I think everyone in res life shares and can relate to. Mikaela Fallwell: When I decided that I wanted to transition out of residence life, it was, A, because of balance, and B, because I wanted to continue to do this work and I knew that there were issues in student conduct and I felt that calling. And so I ended up being an assistant director for student conduct and civility education at Towson University and I loved my experience there. After that, I took a little bit of a career path turn that I thought I wouldn't make. My partner got a job as an assistant director in housing, actually, at UC Davis and I decided I would come along. I knew that student conduct was my functional area of choice, so I applied for a judicial officer position within the Office of Student Support and Judicial Affairs at UC Davis and I got that job, of course, and... Yeah, thank you. I started in that role and then, a little bit after I arrived, another position became open in my office and it was adjudication coordinator for sexual violence and sexual harassment cases, so I applied for that job, got that job, and that's the role that I'm currently in. Kind of a long path to get here, but it's all interconnected and I wouldn't change a thing. Alexandra Hughes: I absolutely love it and I just love hearing your story. I can also resonate as a formal housing person myself. I think it definitely makes a difference now being on the... as I say now. I'm on the eight to five side, not the five to eight side. I like to sleep. I wake up. I sit in my office, or I guess now my home, and I say, "Oh, man. At 3:00AM that happened? You were at the door?" Like, oh wow. But I feel like I can say that because, just like you, I can literally put myself back in those shoes. I just think it's so important and it helps so much having that perspective because I understand the rules. Why the RA knocks three times, why we had to wait for the police officer to get here. All of those different things, I'm here for it. So I definitely love your story. You definitely have a lot of experience and so I think that that just holds weight and it shows in your passion as well. So Mikaela- Mikaela Fallwell: Thank you. Alexandra Hughes: ... I know that you wrote a post in the ASCA women in student conduct page and it was a call-out for people to examine their catch-all policies. I'm going to go ahead and read the post for our listeners if you're okay with that. Mikaela Fallwell: Yeah, for sure. Alexandra Hughes: As it says... I have to clear my voice. As our colleagues of color, students, and communities continue to be in pain and fear, what are you doing to ensure that your process is not a duplication of a justice system that is clearly not working for everyone. Are you examining your office's application of catch-all policies like disruption policies that are applied to gray area issues? Do you plan to examine the use of language within our offices, titles, and policies? How will you continue to be a partner to your campus and local police departments while protecting the safety of your community? Do you have a system for following up when a student tells you that their encounter with the police made them feel unsafe or the treatment that they received was not aligned with campus expectations? What about when a student reports that type of treatment from a colleague within your own office? How can we ensure that our sanctions actually educate students and are viewed as an educational opportunity instead of solely a means for holding students accountable and being viewed as a punishment? Alexandra Hughes: We have made great strides in our functional area, but there is still so much work to be done. If you are making or have made positive changes on your campus, I would love to hear them. If you're struggling in your work or in your office, please know that you can reach out to me and I'm always willing to be a listening ear. Most importantly, to my colleagues of color who are making space to do this work every day while navigating your safety and hurt, I see you and I'm here for you in whatever way you need support. Alexandra Hughes: That was, I think, the best thing that I have read in probably 2020. The first thing that I want to do is just say thank you for this because I know, personally as a Black woman, when I am constantly... It's an episode that got put out for the first of this month. I'm constantly asking these questions. I'm very passionate about it. But to see other people be passionate as well and to put in such... I mean, I couldn't have written something better myself. So that's the first thing that I just want to say. What made you do that? What made you think about that? Mikaela Fallwell: These thoughts are always on my mind. Not just in this time right now, when we're processing through the loss of Black lives to police violence. I want to highlight that this is a perpetual issue. The fact is that these issues, obviously, have not been solved and we have a system that isn't working. I chose to work in student conduct because I believe that the work that we do every day matters. I also knew from day one that the way that we actually do this work makes all the difference. We have a responsibility to ourselves, our colleagues, our campus community, to do better when we know better and to look at our work in a critical lens. I just wanted to put not necessarily a call out, but a call in for folks who do this work to think about these issues a little bit more. I want to address that social issue isn't a passion area for me. I really look at it as a critical component of our work. If that's a deficit for you, that's something that you have to work on. We are all continuing to do this work. It doesn't stop after a couple of trainings where you can say, "Oh, I'm good." Mikaela Fallwell: I think about this all the time and one of the ways that we can make a lot of change is through our actual offices and the work that we're doing on a daily basis. I'm always conscious of the fact that student conduct work is historically rooted in a criminal justice system and that's not grounded in student development and learning. It's just not in any way, shape, or form. It's not even that it's broken. It wasn't built to serve folks of color. Neither were our institutions. Because it wasn't that long ago... I mean, literally, I think a lot of us have parents who were around when our institutions were segregated. And so just thinking about processing through that and how do we make a change. Even our institutions are ever changing, too. There are folks who have come into our institution who have held positions for a long time and maybe when they came in, they weren't intending to serve such a diverse student population, but we have to challenge ourselves to make changes to really meet our students' needs. Mikaela Fallwell: Like I said, I'm always educating myself on how students' identities and experiences inform how they perceive and navigate the student conduct process and that student conduct processes and us as practitioners should be tools for attention and engagement and education rather than barriers. When I hear colleagues, whether it be on my own campus or on other campuses, that don't do student conduct work say, "Wow, I could never do that work," I think we might be missing the mark. Because they are not seeing us as doing the same work as them when we're trying to retain folks. I really look at when we hold student accountable and we have conversations with them that are meant to educate them, in that moment, we want more for them than they wanted for themselves. When they did whatever they did that got them to our office. Mikaela Fallwell: So how can we help continue this conversation and move them forward? And help them stay at our institutions. There are so many times when incidents are not a point of no return. There are incidents where it's like, yo, I don't think that this is the space for you right now. You have to take some time away or maybe time away forever. But most of what we do is educating folks so that they can make different decisions. I made that post because I believe our processes continue to be a duplication of the criminal justice system. I think when events like the death of George Floyd... Let me correct that. It's not just a death. It's a murder. I just want to name that for what it is... the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, are given national attentions, folks are called to make changes on a national level and they feel like... and sometimes folks feel like they don't where to start or they're just removed from the issues so they don't do anything. I wrote that post because I want to highlight that there are things that we can do within our sphere of influence and within our daily work that make a huge difference. Mikaela Fallwell: There are hundreds of issues that we can identify and action items that we can create a list for ourselves. For example, if we look at our work with the critical lens... My post was just a really short list of small things that were on my heart and mind at the time, but there are bigger issues and there's a lot more we can do than what I just put into a paragraph online. So I just want to call folks in to do this work with me and to continue to think about these issues and how we're connected to them. It's not just when I leave work, I'm going to put a post on social media and say, hey, this is really important. But it's like, how am I doing this work in my day-to-day as a student conduct practitioner. Alexandra Hughes: Yes. I vote you for president and... I mean, yes. Everything you just said, yes. I don't know if I could have said it any better myself. Pretty sure that you... Everything emotionally you put into actually actionable words and I love that. There's some things that you said that I think people really need to listen to. One of the things that you said is that social justice isn't just a passion anymore. It is a critical part of the functional area that we do. And that is the piece. That is the way that we need to look at this work. It is not an option. It is not a diversity class that we take once in grad school that we learn a little bit of history and we go from there and we never look at it again. You said it. It is not... There aren't enough certificates and things that we can give people to just take it and say, okay, it's done. Alexandra Hughes: At Gehring last year, Kateeka Harris... She is our incoming, after Martha Compton, our new president of... I should have the right terminology for that. She'll be our president next year... actually said something in her session that she did and she talked about the word of not cultural competencies, but cultural humility. Humility in the aspect of understanding that none of us are ever going to reach competence. I think that's so important for us to remember. And that's all of us. Even me as a Black woman. I have the lived experiences of racial identity in this country, but there are a whole bunch of marginalizations and privileges... privileges I have, marginalizations I have... but looking at what that looks like even in my own personal life. I have a privilege in one area that someone else may not have and understanding that I will still have to constantly do the work to learn and that is okay. Alexandra Hughes: You acknowledged the fact that our criminal justice system really is the foundation for the work that we do in higher education and student conduct. I don't think people realize how truthful that is. Our job in student conduct... and I often say this. I say, "I don't know if I'd have a job in a different country." Now, we actually do have some colleagues in Canada that I've actually spoken to and they're fantastic and I want to get them on the show in the future because just their laws and things are different, but I've always said that. I'm like, ooh, I don't know if I could move to a different country and do my job because my job is rooted in policy, which is rooted in United States of America law. If we understand that we are quasi form or a smaller structure of our justice system, and we're saying our justice system, there's something wrong with that, is it possible that there's something wrong with our student conduct process in education? That's what I don't think people realize. It's related. It's the same thing. Mikaela Fallwell: It is. We are connected to these issues and I think sometimes we like to think that it's not our stink. That we are disconnected. That we are educators. But we need to actively inspect our processes, inspect the work that we're doing, question what we do every day so that we can make sure that, if you don't want to be a duplication of the criminal justice process, then we are actively working to dismantle that on our own campuses and our offices. That's our work. Real quick, too. No matter what identities you hold as an individual, when we are working in our offices, we have power and privilege. We have the ability to remove a student from our campus, to make a decision that changes the outcome of whether they are able to continue on our campus or not, and when we hold folks accountable, that's literally... We have to do better to partner with students to figure out what that looks like, to create that relationship so that they're also holding themselves accountable and it's not something that we're doing to them. The fact that we have ability to do things to their education, to remove them from our campus, that's power and privilege and we have to think about how are we applying that. Alexandra Hughes: I say that all the time. I think so many people come and say, wow, you have the ability to suspend someone, the ability to expel someone. And I said, yes, but to whom is given much responsibility, much is expected. This idea of saying, look, if I understand that I can suspend or expel you, whoever you are, student, let's look at two sides of that. The first one being, what did you parents sacrifice to get you to be able to go to college? We're looking at parents that have given up everything. That have gone back to work. That have worked hours. Whatever those... And I use parents loosely because that could be a village to support whoever that student is. Mikaela Fallwell: It could be everyone at church. Alexandra Hughes: Whoever that is to support them. I mean, I know people that have done literally fish fries in the backyard to raise money to send a child to college. What does that student themself... What have they sacrificed to be there? And I also say, if we're going to suspend or expel someone, how will that impact their future generations? Because we know that if we say that education is this great equalizer, which I argue it isn't, but if we say that it is part of that step, how is that suspension or expulsion going to impact their future and their career and their generations coming after? It is a lot of power and I don't think until we think about it in that sense can we truly, honestly say are we making the best decisions for our students. Now, like you said, there are things that happen and, okay, got to go. I'm not saying that it doesn't hold space and that it's not a learning experience, because that is one, but are we really assessing the opportunities that we're giving to all of our students? Are we giving certain people second chances and not those second chances to others? Mikaela Fallwell: Yes. So much truth in that. And what did that education look like before? What efforts have we made as a community to educate folks before these incidents happen? How are we... I have so many questions and so many things that we need to work on and just actively tear apart in our work. I think that now is a great time to start doing some of that if you haven't been thinking about it or if you have been thinking about it, ask yourself all those questions again. This work never stops. It never stops. Students always find new and creative ways to violate policies and things like that, but we also find new and creative ways to make our policies work. Sometimes in ways that aren't equitable. Sometimes in ways that don't match the education and our own philosophies that we want to impose upon students. Mikaela Fallwell: And so we need to think about how can we call ourselves in and really do this work as educators. Really think about, when we show up every day, are we doing the student affairs work? Are we being educators? Are we developing folks? We have so much work to do. And I'm excited by that. I'm challenged by that. It needs to be done over time. It can't just be that you went to one staff meeting or you did a day-long retreat with your staff and you worked through some issues, you identified some things and you're like, we're going to write a new policy. It's not just policies. Alexandra Hughes: Exactly. It's actionable things. Let's talk about that. Because I want to give people an example. I'm sure people are listening and, if people don't necessarily know or if this may be the first time that they're thinking about it, I am so excited. Let's take a policy. One of the ones that I like to talk about is, for example, the use of a zero-tolerance policy. I like to use that one because I think that's a good example of asking is this policy really equitable for all students and how does that work? I know that I am a big proponent of saying I'm not a fan of zero-tolerance policies. And the reason for that, for those people who don't know, is zero-tolerance policies essentially came about in this era of drug-free schools, gun-free schools, as a response to the fact that there were a lot of things happening in this country. Alexandra Hughes: Now, let me make myself clear. There is no places for guns in a school. There is no place for drugs... None of these things do not belong in a school. I'm not condoning it all, but I want to look at that because the purpose of zero-tolerance policies at the time was to account for those things that do not belong. What happened over time was that funding... and we still have it to this day... funding for our institutions... and this is also a K-12 system... came from looking at how schools were following these zero-tolerance policies. If they had school resource officers, how many people they were suspending in that disciplinary way. Administrators had the autonomy to make the decision in the way that they wanted to, but they were choosing to suspend people from school for reasons that were not the original reasons of these zero-tolerance policies, but for things like talking back. For dress code violations. For a myriad of things that had absolutely nothing to do with what the original reason for these policies were. Alexandra Hughes: And so I look at there's still some institutions... and even my institution has a zero-tolerance policy that says if you are found with drugs on campus, you will automatically be... It's suspended or suspension of rights and privileges. I believe our system is actually going through an update and when I looked at the model policy that they came out for people... I don't know if it's actually going to pass, but in the draft that they have, they actually took that out. So I'm extremely happy about that. We'll see what that looks like. I'll have to give you an update. But right now, what they're saying is it's zero tolerance. How can something like that negatively impact and not be equitable for all students involved? Mikaela Fallwell: So many ways. I think the issue with that is it removes the autonomy of a person to look at a situation and to make an assessment on it, to look at personal circumstances, to look at what actually happened. One of my former colleagues who was my supervisor... her name is Regina. She does this work, too. She did one of these previous podcasts. Alexandra Hughes: Oo, hi, Regina. Shout out to Regina. Mikaela Fallwell: She taught me this in a way that makes a lot of sense, which is it's not a question of whether they violated a policy or not. That is completely... You either violated the policy or you didn't. But where we have the flexibility and the ability to meet students' needs is through sanctioning. When you have these zero tolerance policies, what you're essentially doing is not listening to people's stories. It makes me think about the folks who are not heard, who are hurting, who are... I think about drugs, for example. You're right that they don't have a great place on our college campus. We have the responsibility to address that. But at the same time, we know that there are folks with substance abuse issues or who are using it as not the best coping mechanism. There are definitely better ones out there. But do we have the ability as student conduct folks to help folks through that? To educate them. To give them resources. To allow them to have a second chance. Mikaela Fallwell: And so when we have these zero-tolerance policies, we're effectively removing people from our institutions who have a lot of promise. There are things where I think... Even in the worst case scenario, like a gun on campus, for example. Our process... It's still very possible that the majority of individuals who have any sort of weapon on campus will be removed even without that zero-tolerance policy. But what you do when you create a zero-tolerance policy is you don't have any room for addressing a specific situation and individual circumstances. Like you, I am not a fan and I'm really thankful that your system is removing that from your policies. I hope that other folks do the same. Alexandra Hughes: Or at least think about it and what does that look like. One of the things that someone's asked me in the past and they said, "Well, Alexandra..." And the same thing that I had to do. If our policy says suspension, how do you get around that? Luckily, my policy says suspension or suspension of rights and privileges. That allowed me to be able to still maintain consistency with each situation, but to look at the elements and hear that student's story to say, okay, suspension of rights and privileges. What does that look like for our students? And so that was the good thing that I think a lot of places and institutions were looking at, too. Because changing those policies and how that works. But I think that's where I have to ask people to get creative. Alexandra Hughes: I have to ask people to say, this summer, since I know... Dr. Patience Bryant and I, we did a webinar. Was that last month? My months, my days, they're all running together. But it talked about being an asset on your campus and what are things that people can do to show right now that they are assets. You can say, look at what's going on in the country of the United States of America at this current time. I saw on the news last night that all 50 states had protests. All 50 states. Part of that says, okay, let me show you how I'm useful in the context and climate of today's America. Let me take our policy this summer. Let's really look at this with a critical lens to see if we are really... how the words are. Words mean things. For all of my read podcast fans out here. Alexandra Hughes: How are we explaining these things to students? Are we giving them sanctions that will allow them to learn and to move forward and to be better individuals and actually teach them why... I guess Regina, like you talked about it, said, policy is easy. You did or you didn't do it. Did you or did you not? We now have the responsibility and the weight to ensure that we are creating a better future with our students. Because they are our future doctors, lawyers, our artists, our engineers. Our citizens. And so we have to make sure that we are creating a better future with them and they know how to go out into this world and things that are right and wrong. Mikaela Fallwell: One of the cool things about working in student conduct, too, is that we have the ability to hold folks accountable to that education. When we have a sanction, for example, we can track that. We can say did you engage in this work? What did you learn? And continue that conversation. Even after we've assigned a sanction, we can still provide additional resources. Maybe they're not held accountable to completing that, but it's like, so based on what you're sharing with me, here are some things that you can continue to do to keep learning. We can continue that conversation on with them and really develop relationships with students. I hate when people say a measure of us doing our work effectively is that people don't like us. That's not true. We are not in the position where... If you feel like everyone on your campus doesn't like you, then that's a bigger question and you have to really inspect that within yourself and within how you're operating in those spaces. Mikaela Fallwell: I think for the most part, we need to call students in as our partners. We want to educate them. What does that look like to build those authentic, genuine relationships, where we're investing in folks? It's cool that we have the measures to hold them accountable to that education that we want them to have and we want them to want to have. And so when we partner with folks to create sanctions, for example, those are things that they have committed to. It's not just us saying, "Hey, you didn't do this sanction." It's like, "Hey, you committed to this and I have a question. What's going on? You identified this as a good learning opportunity for you. We talked about this and now it's not happening. I want this for you and you wanted this for yourself." Alexandra Hughes: I love that. Mikaela Fallwell: Let's build relationships with students. Alexandra Hughes: And it's true. We can change the way our office is viewed and I think that is the biggest... We are all partners in this and I think also partners with other people on campus as well. You're talking about it. If the campus is viewing you as the office that everyone hates... I think everybody understands that there's policies. I don't think that any person... even students. Students know when they sit there and they say, "Yeah..." I put the policy in front of them. They're like, "Oh, yeah. It does say I can't have that." I'm not making this up. It's right there on paper. They get it. Again, it's, after that realization, how do I, as the conduct administration, sit there and say, okay. "We can do this in two directions. I can make you a partner and we can go down this road of education together or I can go on another way, where I'm not effectively impacting you." And that's where it's wrong and we want to make sure we're creating those partnerships with our students. So I love it and I think that if we look at it like that, we can do that. Alexandra Hughes: Now, one thing that I wanted to talk about with you is looking at where can people, and I think I need to... I'll have to do a link. Because there's a lot of stuff online. There's so many resources for people online. If we talked about the fact that, hey, this isn't just one diversity class that you take in college. How do people who say, "I've heard you, Mikaela, I've heard you, Alexandra, I want to start doing this work. How do I go about learning this work? How do I go about doing this work?" What do they do? Where do they start? Mikaela Fallwell: Well, I think one thing I want to acknowledge is that folks are smarter than they give themselves credit for. I think sometimes we allow ourselves to opt out of this work and we act like we don't understand what's going on. We are consumers of media. We have to be thoughtful of what are we following? What are we looking at? What are we hearing? Who are our colleagues? Be thoughtful about who's in your circle. If you go to a church and it's all white folks, if all of your friends are white folks, if all of your colleagues are white folks... There's some questions there. In a really diverse society, why is that? Think about how do we let other folks in. Part of it is making sure that we are exposed to different viewpoints. Mikaela Fallwell: So I think part of it starts with just educating yourself and then asking really important questions. As far as our work goes, there are dozens of questions that we can ask ourselves and just really think about and reflect on. Not just ask ourselves, but then ask ourselves why. One of the things that I'm a big fan of is asking ourselves why five times. That's something that I learned in leadership. It wasn't about social justice issues, but that's the same thing. If you say, when I pulled numbers at the end of the year, it looks like the majority of the folks that we met with and found responsible for disruptive behavior or that we suspended were folks of color. Why? And then break that down even further. When you have that answer, say well why is that? And just keep working through it that way. That's what I mean by we're smarter than we think we are. Mikaela Fallwell: We have a responsibility to do everything in our power to engage in this work. To think critically. Because we know than we give ourselves credit for and if we continue to ask ourselves questions and do this difficult work, I think we'll find some answers. The reality is, too, that... Like you said, it's not someone else's responsibility to educate you. It's not the training. It's not even the presence of folks of color within your office. I only brought that specific of asking if everyone in your office is a white person, for example, or a white female, for example, or a white woman, for example, thinking about why that is and not bringing folks in to hope that they're going to be the band aid or change your policies. Not relying on folks, but why don't folks want to be there? Or why aren't you allowing folks to be in that space? Mikaela Fallwell: So, really thinking critically just about our offices, our processes. I have hundreds of questions that we could ask ourselves. I can go over some of them with you if you want, but- Alexandra Hughes: Let's give people a couple. Let's give them just a couple to see. What are some questions that you can ask yourself? Whether these are things that are in regard to policies that need to be changed, the way it impacts people... Let's give people some examples. Mikaela Fallwell: One thing I think about... and this is a really simple one. Are our policies up to date or are they antiquated? Were they created and written before your institution became more diverse? Before you started serving first gen students? How much have they actually been changed since they were initially written? We have that responsibility. Are our policies clear? When we say things like disruptive behavior, for example, that's one of those gray area policies that I think can be really challenging to look at the application of that. I think sometimes that's one of those that we make it fit when it wasn't necessarily intended to address that specific issue. Is that student then being placed in the position that they agree that they violated a policy when we didn't even write it for that purpose? Mikaela Fallwell: And then how are our policies communicated to students? We know that these policies exist. Most of them I would say are common sense. There are certain ones, though, that you wouldn't know. I think about academic integrity. That's a lot of what we do at UC Davis. Some of those things, students wouldn't know unless you tell them. For example, about posting a professor's course content online. Unless the professor told you about that, you might be a little bit confused. Especially when you see it happening so often. So who are those folks who are being reported for that and why? And how are you holding them accountable? And then do you find yourself stretching policies to apply to different issues that they weren't intended to cover? That's really related to that gray area issue. Are staff and faculty being held to the same standards as your students? Why or why not? How are your policies actually being enforced? Mikaela Fallwell: Are the reported parties disproportionately scholars of color on your campus or a specific student population and why is that? We can think about who is actually reporting incidents on your campus. Do marginalized folks feel safe to report incidents to your office? These are easy ones to look at, as far as who's actually being reported, with most of conduct systems... unless it's a homegrown one and, even then, you can probably still pull these numbers... but that's where assessment can really get to the heart of some of these issues and you can have a good place to start. And then ask why after you figure out that's an issue. Mikaela Fallwell: What does police involvement look like when they respond to incidents on campus that are later reported to your office or when they're not reported to your office? What does your relationship look like with the police on campus? Does your office... and I asked this in that post. Does your office has a process for reporting when a student has an interaction with the police that's problematic and that they've shared with you? Of course, there are always two sides to the story, but we have the opportunity and the responsibility to bring that forward. Do we have a process for that? And if you don't have a process or you haven't thought about that until you're faced with having to make that decision, that's too late. We can't just be responsive to these issues. We have to think about this before these things happen. Mikaela Fallwell: In residence life in particular, how are we training our student staff and our professional staff to respond to issues? Are they actually responding in the way that they were trained to? Does a student have a different experience in our process if they have an advisor? What if their advisor is an attorney? Thinking about access to resources. Alexandra Hughes: Privilege. Mikaela Fallwell: Yeah, and privilege. Absolutely. What's that outcome for them? Is it different? We have to really ask ourselves that. Do I speak differently in my meetings if I know that you have an advisor that's an attorney? If so, you have to really break that down and why. Every student deserves that same experience no matter who they're represented by. Who's making decisions regarding the outcome of a hearing. What does their training look like? Have they been trained to actively disrupt their implicit bias? Not just recognize that it exists. We have to move beyond that. I mentioned this earlier, but what's your office's honest reputation on your campus? Find the truths in that and then actively work on addressing those issues. Not just scratching the surface for changing how your office appears to others, but really changing the work that led to that reputation. On a day to day basis. Mikaela Fallwell: This is a big one for me. Is a poorly written appeal given the same weight and consideration as a well-written appeal with the same core point? I think that that's... When we think about folks who... Oftentimes, there's so much intersection between identities. I think about our first-gen students, for example, and our first-gen students of color. These issues are all interconnected, but I think about when a student has surpassed their parents' level of education and now they might not have that person to ask, hey, Mom, Dad, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt, Uncle, church leader, cousin, whatever. They don't have that person to ask, "Can you read over this appeal for me?" Or maybe they don't have an attorney secretly ghostwriting it in the background because they don't have access to those resources. Are they still given that same chance? We have to look at that and think about that. Are we stuck that this isn't a well-written appeal, what a joke? Or are we still thinking, wow, maybe I can call this student in and have a conversation with them? Because I think I know what they're getting at, but I want to talk with them about it further. How are we responding to these issues? Mikaela Fallwell: This is a big one, too. Are we assigning our staff of color specific places? Are we having other people hold these conversations that we don't want to have ourselves? Why do we feel ill-fitted to respond to certain cases? We really need to inspect these things. I have a couple more. Do folks in your office have officer in their title? Why was that title chosen and does that truly represent the work that we do as educators? We have so much work to be doing and we need to ask ourselves these questions honestly. And when we arrive at an answer, especially one that challenges us, instead of walking away, we need to work towards a solution to address these issues. And then we think we've fixed it, we need to revisit that again and ask ourselves these questions. We can quantify some of these issues by pulling reports. Assessing issues by doing focus groups. And then just genuinely being introspective and dismantling our process to build them back up to be more just and thoughtful. I hope that we can do this work together. I'm in this with you all. For real. I want us to be able to look at our processes and feel proud and to feel confident. If they are questioned, that we really... We're not trying to make the situation right by what we're saying, but that it was right and we can reflect on that and honestly say that. Mikaela Fallwell: One of the things that I think about sometimes why we don't ask ourselves these questions... When I did my master's thesis, it was on transgender student inclusion through student affairs and court services. One of the things that I realized in my research was that some of the reason why that research exists is because... or does not exist is because if folks had answers to some of these questions, they'd actually have to respond to that and make changes. I think that's the same with why some of these questions aren't asked on a regular basis. It's work to change these processes. It's work to realize that you have a deficit. I'm not perfect. I ask myself these questions all the time and there are times that I fall short. I have to actively work on that. That's my responsibility. And that's not just for me to wait for my supervisor to do an eval. They didn't identify that as an issue, so it must not be an issue. Well, who's your supervisor? We all have issues. So we need to be working through this together. If anyone wants to talk about that... I know I put that call in in my post on the ASCA Women in Student Conduct group, but I really mean that for anyone. Yeah. We have a lot of work to do. We do. Alexandra Hughes: I mean, literally, I truly believe that people will be able to take everything that you have said and hopefully let that be the place where they start. You have proposed some phenomenal questions that I think will really, really, really, if they already haven't, be the foundation for change to start. I want to encourage people to be comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. Be comfortably uncomfortable. I think when people start doing that, then we're going to definitely see a change in what we need. Alexandra Hughes: Well, I truly appreciate this. I always ask people on our show, and I want to ask you, what is something that's been giving you life? Is it a book? A song? Anything that you'd recommend to others. A podcast, your favorite podcast, I.e., my podcast, since I'm just going to throw that out there and say that's what it is. It probably isn't. What's something that you're doing? I've been on the cricket making bandwagon. Cutting vinyl and putting vinyl on everything. What is something that you are doing that you would recommend to people? Mikaela Fallwell: I'm re-reading one of my favorite books. It's actually right along the lines of this conversation and our work and that is The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues by my girl, Angela Davis. It's a collection of 12 speeches by Angela Davis. It is timely even though it was written in 2012, I think. Hopefully I got that right. 2012, and the essays that are in there, essentially the speeches, are from before then. So it wasn't like she wrote it in 2011 and then published it. They're from over time, but they still speak to everything that's going on today. So I'm re-reading that. Trying to have an open lens. Trying to question the things that I do in my day-to-day life and just be thoughtful about that. She really writes about intersectional issues and just breaks things down in a way that really... because she breaks it down so simply, it does give me hope that these things can change because they're not as complex as we make them to be. Anytime I read anything by her... I'm a fangirl. Anytime I read something by Angela Davis... I mean, there is a piece... It's not the most uplifting read, but it does make me think that change is possible. And I know that it is. That's giving me life right now and then of course there are other little things like Little Fires Everywhere- Alexandra Hughes: Oh, it's so good. Mikaela Fallwell: I finished it. Alexandra Hughes: I finished it, too! Mikaela Fallwell: I want them to have a second season. I literally started watching it again, so. Sometimes we have to take those little things and also find time for joy. There's a show that I watch that I don't think anyone watches, so I'm going to give it a shout-out so hopefully it gets continued on. Songland. It is a really good show. It's basically this show where songwriters pitch a song to an artist and... It's a good one. Alexandra Hughes: I think it's on Hulu, right? Is it on Hulu? Mikaela Fallwell: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You can access it on Hulu. It's not a Hulu show, but you can access it through there. It's an NBC show, but I watch it on Hulu because I don't have actual cable- Alexandra Hughes: Me neither. Mikaela Fallwell: ... or a TV, so. Yeah, so Hulu. That's a good one. It's just lighthearted. So if you need that type of break and maybe reading The Meaning of Freedom and Other Difficult Dialogues won't be the break and the joy that you need right now, that show is a good one. Alexandra Hughes: Wonderful. Mikaela, where can people find you if they want to be connected with you. Are you on the inter webs? Are you on the social medias and the Twitters? Are you not? I always like to ask. Mikaela Fallwell: I'm not super active on Facebook, so it's interesting that I posted that post and that led to this because I literally... I usually do not log onto Facebook. But you can find me on Instagram. It's really easy. @mikaelafalwell. You can find me on Facebook still. Mikaela Falwell. I don't use Twitter. I have a Twitter, but gosh. The last thing I probably posted was from like 2016. Alexandra Hughes: It's fine. Mikaela Fallwell: You can visit me there, but I'm not going to respond, so sorry about that. And then of course you can email me on my work email. It's mafallwell. That's F as in Frank, A, L, W, E, L, L... at ucdavis.edu. I look forward to connecting with folks and I really mean that. One thing that I want to make really clear is that I know that at our core we all entered into this work because we care and love students. I think that's even more clear from the fact that we didn't come into college thinking, wow, I want to be a student affairs practitioner. That's just not our calling, but at some point, we had some positive experience where want to serve students. And so I know that we can work together to do this work, to make change, and I really want to call folks in. Let's have these conversations even if they're difficult. It's not about you. It's about serving our students and moving forward. It is about bettering yourself, so I guess, in that sense, that is about you, but it's not something that's... I don't want folks to think that they have a deficit so that's why they have to do this work. We all have to do this work no matter what identities we hold. Mikaela Fallwell: I really hope that we can do this together. I'm excited to connect with folks. Please, please, please write me. If I said something that you're struggling with, let's connect. Let's talk about this further. I so appreciate the invitation to be on this podcast to have this platform. Thank you so much for the invite and for your wisdom that you shared today, too. You're dropping knowledge. Alexandra Hughes: I'm just here to help and I think collectively we work together. I learn every day. I learn from you. I learn from people. I think what I enjoy about doing this podcast more than anything else is that, for every person that I interact with, I can learn something, to take something from, and so that's why I'm so passionate about these episodes, this podcast, and continuing this conversation. Again, I appreciate you. As always, I'll put all of your contact information in the description box so people can click and stuff, just so they have it. I really have no closing. You said everything. I'm just going to end it there. Take care in the time of coronavirus and we will stayed tuned and see everyone next time. Mikaela Fallwell: Yeah, and take care of yourselves, y'all. Alexandra Hughes: All right. Bye! Mikaela Fallwell: Bye! 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 podcasts. It really helps other 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 @AlexadrasView. Talk to us. We talk back!