Building Inclusive Campuses: Insights from Logan Lasher

Conduct professional Logan Lasher shares his journey from musical theater major to criminology scholar to student conduct professional, highlighting the importance of authenticity, empathy, and keen investigative skills in higher education. Discover insights on campus culture, supporting marginalized students, and innovative approaches to educational outcomes.

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Theme music "Fuzzball Parade" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:11

Hello and welcome to Ms. Behavior. My name is Colette.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And I'm Kurt.

SPEAKER_00 0:16

And we're your hosts, and we are here for other college student professionals who work in the student conduct space. And we would love to introduce you to our guest today, Logan Lasher. Logan, hello.

SPEAKER_01 0:30

Welcome, Logan.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Oh, we would love for you to introduce yourself to the world and tell everyone what you do.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Yeah, thank you for having me. My name is Logan Lasher. I use He Home Pronouns, and I work as one of our conduct coordinators at San Jose State University in the housing department. I'm still in my first year in this role at San Jose State. I used to work at the University of Montana as an area coordinator, and then I really found a passion for doing student conduct work and investigating the myriad of things that happen on residence life campuses. And so I get to oversee our part of our residence hall conduct and I read a plethora of reports every day. And I just really enjoy what I get to do to help students have a really positive living experience on campus.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Can I ask which campus in Montana you were on?

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I worked at the University of Montana in Missoula.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Okay. Very cool. I was uh at Northwest College in Wyoming, so Billings was the closest retail area that we could go to on the weekends, so I would always see the signs for um University of Montana at Billings up there.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Yeah, I've been to their campus. It's quite far from where Missoula was, so I only went one time. I think it was like a six-hour drive. So I didn't go that far to the east side of the state very often.

SPEAKER_00 1:53

Logan, can you tell us your origin story? I did a little Google stalking and I saw that you were a musical theater major, which is very similar to students I work with now. Um and then you went into a master's in criminology. Oh wow. So how did you make those decisions as a scholar of like what was kind of touching your heart at that time?

SPEAKER_02 2:18

Well, when I was enrolling in college to begin with, I had no intentions of ever working at a college. I never that would never cross my mind that there were all these people that worked at colleges and had these jobs that existed. My mind was just I grew up performing and being in choir and doing theater, and that was really what I enjoyed. So I figured that I would study that and get to do more of that full time. And I don't know whether or not I thought I was gonna move to New York and be on Broadway. I'm not sure what I thought was gonna happen, but I just knew that this was a starting place in terms of studying musical theater. And then while I was doing musical theater, um, some of my general education classes were where I started to fall in love with things outside of the arts. I was taking general ed classes, um, I took a general education forensics class, I took a uh criminology 101 class, just things that I thought were so different from theater that would be interesting to me, and they really were, and I decided to take more, try to find more of those like criminology forensic, any sort of thought-provoking classes that were gonna not be like science-focused and not arts focused that I could do my general education requirements with, and then I just kept finding more and more of those, and I got to the point where so far along in my musical theater degree that I was like I have to finish it out, but I also was like I should make worthwhile all of the other classes I've been taking. Um, so I kind of minored in anthropology, which um I don't know how much a minor gets you anywhere, but it was at least something for the work that I'd been doing. And then when I was doing all of that as well as when I started to become interested in housing, because I became an RA my sophomore year, and I had a couple of friends in the theater world that were RAs, and I was like, that's so cool, and they were really good at like having that balance between being an RA and being in theater full-time, and so I was very interested in it, and then subsequently, you know, studying musical theater and all of those on the side, and then doing my RA stuff, um, it was a lot to keep me busy, but I started to really fall in love as well with interacting with students in that capacity of being an RA. And when I finished my time in my undergrad program, is when I was, you know, having to think about what am I gonna do after this, and I still was thinking about do I move somewhere to pursue theater? I also liked doing behind-the-sage stuff in theater, so I was like, maybe I'll find a behind-the-scenes theater job somewhere that'll pay well. And then I decided that I was gonna take a chance and just apply to stay at the school that I was already going to school at and continue working there as a professional in one of the residence halls full-time, and that's the route that ended up working out for me. And since then I told myself that first year as a professional would be the year that I decided if I actually liked this or if I was gonna hate it and never want to do it again, and I really enjoyed it and hence why I'm still in the profession. And then throughout my time as you know, the three years I was there professionally in my area coordinator role is when I started to find more of like what my niche interest was in terms of working in housing, and it became that student conduct piece was the thing I fell in love with. And then when I finished my graduate program, um, well, I guess I wanted to go to grad school because I was enjoying what I was doing so much, and I wanted to make it more of a career, so I felt like I should go back to school and try and actually pick up where I left off in terms of studying more of the criminological things that I felt like I was doing a lot of in undergrad, but I didn't just quite get to finish it, so that's why I went back and did my master's in criminology to sort of help me feel like I could complete that puzzle there. And when I finished that program is when I wanted to move to doing conduct full-time and have a new experience somewhere outside of Montana, and that's sort of how I ended up where I'm at now.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

You came up through the residence life route, as Kurt and I both did also. But nowadays, in certain student conduct circles, people are asking questions about friction between their conduct folks and their residence life folks. And I've heard it enough times now where I'm like, is this a trend? But you're you're on the ground, like you're doing it. Can you tell us about your experience uh with it now that you're assigning cases and trying to have a consistent cohesive vibe around what conduct means?

SPEAKER_02 6:53

Yeah, I think it's been two very different experiences at San Jose State and then at University of Montana because we actually have a lot more of a pronounced student conduct office that does like campus student conduct here in San Jose. Whereas at Montana, there definitely was a student conduct office, but that campus was you know a campus to 10,000 students, so the office was run by two or three people. It was just a different interaction that I had with that office, whereas here our student conduct office is a lot more robust. A lot of the student conduct issues that they deal with are like Greek life, and we didn't have as much Greek life of a presence back in Montana as our school here does. So I think that relationship that I have is just very different, and then also I interact very differently with the student conduct office here because I read all of the reports and I'm the one assigning cases, but back in Montana that wasn't really my job. I was more still supervising RAs and I was hearing cases, so I had other responsibilities, so my interaction with that student conduct office was just different. I didn't have the same necessity or the same need to be in communication with them as often. But I've really enjoyed the experience in terms of getting to assign cases because it for me it's that critical thinking piece that's really fun to determine when we get some cases that you're like, oh gee, like we just had some with Health and Safeties, we're like, gosh, this feels like it's definitely a policy violation, but like what violation is it? And then racking our brains about how do we actually best approach this, um, like what's the best alternative or what's the best way to do this, and like that's become really fun to be that person that helps make those decisions or help my staff, you know, come to those decisions in terms of I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this case, or just helping them process things has been really fun. And then my relationship with our student conduct office is super fun because the cases that they hear compared to we the that we hear are so different, and so it's really fun to get when we have our weekly meetings to just sort of commiserate sometimes over like this is what we're going through and then this is what I'm going through. Um, and we both like understand that we don't have the same experience, but we have the same experience in terms of man, sometimes it's tough, or man, sometimes things are crazy, and we both acknowledge that like it's hard work, even though I don't hear cases surrounding Greek life or academic um dishonesty, things like that. And that's been really fun because sometimes they will even ask my opinion on what we should do, like what are your thoughts just in general about this case that has to do with academic dishonesty? And because I have a perspective that's outside of outside of that, I don't ever deal with those kind of cases, so that's kind of fun. And then similarly, we ask them sometimes for their perspective on our cases because they're sort of removed from it. So I really enjoy that relationship that we have.

SPEAKER_01 9:45

I have a question. I want to go a completely different route, if that's okay. Um so I'm curious about your experience in bringing your whole self to work with you. Um and for context, when I was in Residence Life, it was the mid-90s. I had just come out and I was feeling like it was a very safe place to be out. But when I was a hall director, I was living in Wyoming and it did not feel as safe. And as I continued to do conduct, I felt like there was a disconnect for me. I felt like I was not comfortable bringing that piece of myself to the table. Less so with my RAs, I felt like I was out to them. That was fine, but to other residents and uh residents in the dorms, it just didn't feel comfortable. So I'm just curious, is that 30 years later, is that still a thing, or do you feel like it is less of an issue for professionals?

SPEAKER_02 10:45

Um I think it really is something that just depends on where you're at, because my experience being a gay professional in Montana has been different than it has been in California. When I was in Montana, I felt like I had nobody forced me to do this, but I felt like I had this responsibility to really show up as my authentic self way more than I ever had because I felt like I was in a perceived position of power to some degree in a residence hall. Um, and one of the halls that I worked in for most of my time there had a floor that was um open to students of any identity. And so I felt like as the person sort of representing that building, that I had an obligation to show other students what it means to be your authentic self and to show up and to still be whoever you want to be in whatever space it is. And I don't felt like I've I never felt pressured to do that, but I just felt like knowing the kind of person that I am, that it was the right thing to do to sort of also see myself as a mentor to some of these students because a lot of students would have concerns about not having a great relationship with their family, not having many connections because of their identity. And so having a shared identity or an identity where we can understand that we feel not always like we're the person that fits in the group with other people. I felt like it was something that helped me feel like I could connect to students a little bit more. Um, even if we had to meet for a conduct violation or for something like a roommate conflict, there was still that shared piece of like I can still like relate to you, I've been in your shoes. And then moving to California, it's been so different because there's not as I see a lot more people that feel like they have the same identity as me, or I don't feel as much of um a minority as much as I did in Montana for being gay. I see so many students all the time that, you know, wear makeup like I I wear makeup a lot, or they have their nails done like me, or they wear fun earrings, or um, and it's just really fun to see that there are people just expressing themselves so freely, and in Montana it was a fewer and far between where people would express themselves in a way that you know would feel like it was outside of what you would expect the normal um way people would express themselves to be. So I think as a professional in terms of how it's changed, I still feel like I can show up authentically in my space. In San Jose, I feel it's such a different experience too, because um in Montana, I was the only gay person on my entire staff for professionals, and there may have been like one other person that I can think of, but they were so far removed from my work that I wasn't really that close with them. But here um on our Res Life team, we have you know 13 RLCs and 11 of the 13 are queer in some capacity. Um, even in leadership, most of our leadership team is queer in some capacity. Um, so it's just I'm not used to being in a space where there feels like we take up so much space as queer people, and that's a really good feeling to have because it's not very often that I feel like um we get that much space and that we can show up as ourselves. And I've never like been in this kind of space, you know, where there's other people that have that same experience as me. Um because even growing up, when I would be in high school, I went to a small private school and there was one other person that I could think of offhand that was also gay. So it's just it's a really cool to have that space and feel like we can all show up as ourselves, and also the way that each of my peers show up, um whether they're gay or whether they identify as lesbian, like we all show up so differently, and that's really cool to see just how different everybody's interpretation of just how you can be yourself really is.

SPEAKER_00 14:32

That adds a layer too to your experience. Um I've been on a couple campuses where people who were visibly queer they had hard jobs, and they knew it was also a job where they would have a long line of people at the door that just knew that it was a safe place. But it also created a lot of guilt for them when they it was time for them to move to their next adventure. I would imagine leaving a space like Montana would have been full of a lot of emotion that went along with that.

SPEAKER_02 15:07

Yeah, there definitely was a lot of mixed emotion because on one hand I was very excited to be moving to a state that I perceived to be a lot more accepting of people that have different identities and a lot and feel like I had more of a community with people that had my identity. Um, but on the but on the opposite side, it felt like I had become really like proud of myself for just existing in the world and taking up the space that I took without apologizing for it. And sort of the experiences that I was able to have, all some of them good, some of them bad, but like those experiences were things that really helped shape who I was when I was in college and those first few years after college. And so I it was a hard thing leaving because I felt like Missoula, where I used to live, is really what helped shape kind of what kind of person I wanted to be and who I like feel that I am in the world. So while I was very excited to be moving and having a new experience, I felt like I still owe so much to Missoula for giving helping me create this kind of self that I am right now.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

And I just love that um you were so out in such a conservative space because I think about myself coming up through uh higher education and being in conservative spaces and really not knowing uh if people were going to be accepting and at every turn trying to figure out is it okay for me to be out in this department or in this meeting with other people from other departments on campus, because even a pretty chill campus could have very conservative pockets depending on who we were meeting with. But the gift that you give to students and being out and being a mentor and being visible is just incredible. So I'm so impressed that that you did that. So very cool. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

Most of our listeners download us audio only, but Logan, do you want to describe you were just sharing how you you're sitting in your office and the way you've decorated it and you've welcomed us into your space almost like a student, and you've been very intentional about how you did that. Can you kind of paint the picture for folks?

SPEAKER_02 17:20

I would love to do that. I keep the lighting, I hate overhead lights because one, I think that they are just so horrible, they're ugly. Um so I try to have like dimmer lighting. I have fairy lights behind me, and I have this really cute lamp off to my side that helps keep the room not as bright and feeling as sterile as maybe other spaces I'm used to being in. And then as well, I have a little wall plug that I change out every few weeks that helps bring some sort of element of comfort into the space. I'm very much someone that tries to keep my space in line with the seasons, and so I try to have the smells be something that aligns with what kind of season it is. I have a spring-ish kind of fragrance going right now, and I try to really exude what I can in my office to make it feel like it's a place that. I mean, if I'm gonna be here for like 40 hours a week, I want it to be a space that feels comfortable not just for me, but for the students that have to come in. And, you know, when they're getting these letters, that it can sometimes be scary and have a lot of unknown in it, and especially depending on what we're actually talking about, whether it actually is something that is gonna be a really difficult conversation to have, or even if it's just something pretty low level, I still want each student to feel like they have a comfortable space to be in. And I think that that just starts with you know having my office feeling comfortable, that there's things that they can relate to. I try to have a lot of things that are just don't make sense, they're fun, they're quirky things that students can just feel that not that they don't have to take me seriously, but that they can acknowledge that I'm a person too, and that I'm not just someone that says all of these formal things on a letter to really humanize the experience a little bit because it can feel so administrative and it can feel so punitive, and I try to make it feel not like that all the time when I can.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

Earlier in my career, I I mean I loved student conduct. I had that same like, I think this is my thing. Um, and I I believed in kindness, and I had tried different styles, but interviewing for jobs, I remember being asked, Oh, but can you make the hard decisions? Do you ever get things, Logan? I was telling you, you really stood out for us because of your kindness vibe. Is that ever weaponized against you?

SPEAKER_02 19:46

I don't know if I would say it's weaponized against me. I think I know one thing that I struggle with sometimes is um when a student is talking about something and they're telling me their perspective on an incident or I'm hearing what their version of the story is. Sometimes I know when it's like something that just doesn't make any sense, I know that I try to be aware of, you know, what information I have and what information like that I already have in terms of where I'm leaning towards what makes the most sense in terms of did this thing happen, did this student likely do this thing? And sometimes I meet with students that are just so I don't want to say that they're so good at convincing me or that they tell a really good story or they put on a show, but the way that they interact with me, I can tell that they um are trying to take advantage of the fact that they think that I'm um really nice or they think that because I'm smiling that I'm really going to they can say whatever they want. And I mean I can think of a particular friend that I have that's come through my office many times this year, and I can just I don't know what it is about our interactions, but I can kind of just tell sometimes that I feel like the way that she smiles at me, I can just get the sense that she sometimes thinks that I'm not as serious as I should be. Um and granted, we've just been meeting about things usually to do with noise, so it's not like I'm meeting with her about these really egregious things, but sometimes I do get the impression that students don't think it's as big of a deal because whether it's the fact that I'm wearing what I'm wearing or the fact that I have my office the way that it is or the way that I present myself, some students I can tell that they are not taking it as serious as they they might be. And I don't know if it's because of those reasons or if it's just because that's who that student is gonna be and how they're gonna interact with whoever they're meeting with.

SPEAKER_00 21:43

I just this morning was talking to a colleague because um they're hearing concerns that students aren't taking us seriously enough. And I I said that that's not my goal. It's not my goal to be for them to take me seriously. It's my goal. For them to get something meaningful out of it. For me, Logan, that sounds great that you've provided that space and um but do you have tricks though for making the education happen, even if the student is choosing? Like, you know what, they're just not gonna tell me the whole truth. But but here we are, like we have this moment.

SPEAKER_02 22:25

I don't know. These are just the things that I typically ask. Uh one thing that comes up quite often is when it's usually roommate stuff that gets reported, and you know it's the third or fourth time that they keep having roommate conflict and it's not being addressed through a mediation process. So at this point, we're taking them through the conic process, and I meet with a student, and the student will say, Well, I have no idea what they're talking about. This is the first time hearing about it, and usually something that I say is like, Well, why do you think that someone else has this concern? And if the concern is that you're not keeping your room clean, if the concern is that you're um messy, like why do you think someone else has that concern? Like, what can you tell me as to where that concern is coming from? And sometimes like it's me an answer, and other times it still is just, well, I don't know. So I work with it as best I can with whatever they're giving me, and then another thing that I do is when I talk with them, I read them the policies that we're meeting about, and I usually ask them, I'll tell them what the policy is, and I'll say, Can you tell me how this policy applies to our situation? Or how does it not apply? Do you think it applies at all to this situation? And that sometimes students will agree that everything applies, other times they give me a little bit of pushback and say, Well, actually, I don't think that that actually applies because of XYZ. And so that's really interesting because whether or not I think they're right or wrong in whether or not it applies, it lets me know that they're at least trying to think critically about the policy and they're trying to at least process it because a lot of students I feel like they just remember what happened or what they think happened, and that's all they think about. And there are some students that really take accountability right away and they already come into the meeting knowing what they did was wrong and they shouldn't have done it. But some students do need a little bit of help getting to that point. So those are some of the things that I do to try to help bring the student into a different thinking process. Does it always work? No, but I have found it that it does help students change a little bit of their perspective or at least open up a little bit more when I feel like they're not as forthcoming with information as I think they could be.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

I sometimes will even ask, um, will you just humor me? Because even if you're not the one that covered that smoke detector, I just have to get it off my chest that I'm really worried about the smoke detector, and you know, neither one of us wants to kill somebody, right? Right. So and they'll be like, right, right, we really care about fire. Like, that's all I need to hear. I don't have to find you responsible to to hopefully touch your heart a little.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

Yeah, I like that too.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

Yeah, I don't always think we have to have a finding to get the good work done.

SPEAKER_02 25:06

Yeah, sometimes just having a conversation is what I feel like is the most important piece. Um, because I would love to still talk to students. I I mean at the end of the day, we have findings and we have sanctions, but I I feel like a lot of times the most impactful piece of the situation or the experience for them is that meeting that we have with students.

SPEAKER_00 25:27

Also, you're talking about something I I call outsourcing some sometimes. Like, why are you having them write a paper about this topic instead of talking to them while you've got them at the table with a real human being? And you're kind of outsourcing the learning instead of helping generate the learning together with the student. I love I love what you're saying.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Logan, I'm curious about your uh your career trajectory here. So where is is this home for you in higher education, or do you see yourself going outside of higher education with your criminology degree?

SPEAKER_02 26:04

That is the million-dollar question, honestly. I really enjoy what I'm doing, and I think that it could be something that I can continue to do. But I there are times where I do think about what it what kind of skills do I have and what kind of skills can I apply to something in a different environment entirely. I really enjoyed the case investigation piece. That's one of the fun things for me because it's where I get to put my head down and sort of be removed from having to socialize with people, and I can just it's something between me and my computer and reviewing notes, and I I really enjoy that piece sometimes. And so I think about like what other opportunities exist that I can use those skills in outside of the residence life setting. And every once in a while I come across things online, just trying to think like what exists out in the world. The other day there was something that I saw that existed about identifying threats on Chat GPT. I didn't know that that was a job, but you would like investigate things that are um being said in a chat GPT space and whether or not there's any credibility to things that are being shared for harm about things. And so, like that kind of stuff, I'm like, that's so interesting. So I'm not exactly sure where I would land outside of this, but I do think it would I would like it to be with something that requires investigating or researching sort of well, I say researching lightly, I don't like researching, but um researching the information I have given in terms of what decision needs to be made, is it this, is it that? Um, deciding like yes and no on those kind of things is something that I feel I'm good at. So um any kind of job that it involves that, and I think would be something that would be fun if it was not to be in this setting currently.

SPEAKER_00 27:49

I gotta imagine though you're using your master's, like the stuff you learned in your criminology and sociology background in this job, like explaining systems behavior and um it seems like there would be a lot of theoretical crossover.

SPEAKER_02 28:06

I certainly try to think about um how those things that I would learned in my criminology program apply to this, because some of it a lot of it my program was also uh tied in with the sociology program. So a lot of the things that I studied to were sociology-based in terms of like the people aspect, and one of my favorite classes in my grad program was about it was called like so uh inequality in education, something like that. And that class really talked about like what barriers people that have that people that are a minority or they're marginalized, like what barriers they face in terms of getting access to education. That to me is like one of my favorite classes, and I think about it all the time when I'm doing this kind of work in this setting, because um one thing that I remember from that class is what things are really setting up obstacles for students. And one thing we talked about was like if there is a process that you have in place for a student to seek support, or if they have to fill out this form, or if they have to read this thing and then submit that and then talk to this person, like how many barriers are you placing in front of students that maybe didn't grow up with those kind of resources to know how to navigate some of these things? How many barriers are you placing? That's then creating an inequality and access to things because they don't know how to navigate, filling out these forms, or talking to these people. Um, so I try to think about that when I'm doing this kind of work to see where I can limit the amount of time students are thrown to this office, to that office to fill out this thing. Um, because I recognize sometimes with my higher level sanctions, higher level cases, you know, there's sometimes four or five different outcomes, and making sure that the student is able to digest and understand the information, um, because I don't want them to leave and then have a hundred questions and just not know what to do, so they just don't do anything, because that doesn't actually make their situation any better if they just don't do anything. So I think about that part of the class a lot, just what can you do to reduce any barriers for students, or where can you identify things that students feel things that might not even be like you would think are putting up a barrier for a student, but what can you do to reduce those barriers? So um I don't have all the answers by any means, but that's something I think about a lot and this kind of work specifically.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

I have found when something goes wrong, at least it felt this way, everybody's looking at the conduct office to fix it. These aren't conduct issues, they're human issues. As you're doing reports in the morning, how often you're seeing things. Well, you you talked about those room inspection cases of everything doesn't have to be a case.

SPEAKER_02 30:43

Yeah, I mean we just got one this last week where these students who are athletes, they felt like they didn't have adequate locker space because of the sport that they play, and so they had been keeping all of their equipment in their room, but in turn they're not keeping their room organized, and so the disorganization on top of all of their sports equipment failed them for their inspection because the room was not cleanly and it was a fire safety concern, and so then it felt like we were becoming this middle person. The issue is that these students don't have place to store their gear, so like we became in the middle of trying to help them figure out what they're supposed to do with that, and that's one of those things where it's like, yes, they failed, but also like it doesn't really feel like it's my responsibility, but also it is my responsibility to help students because I feel like it's wrong to fail them and you know take them through conduct for failing, but then also tell them just figure it out. We want to support them and help them navigate figuring out the next step, and so that's one of those situations where it's not really like I don't really know how this became my thing, but I understand how it did become like in my lap essentially.

SPEAKER_00 31:51

But thank goodness it did, because you are solution-oriented in a world that is not.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

And you have to be a systems thinker too, because if you're just being presented constantly with problems, uh, you know, the inclination is you either fix what's in front of you or you go back and figure out, well, where is this all this starting? Uh, what's the starting point of the problem, and can we solve it at that level versus having it become an administrative issue that it doesn't need to be.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

Right, because you don't want to just slap a band-aid on something. I don't know, that's my big thing right now, is just slapping band-aids on something when you actually need to like sew it together or do something more than just a band-aid. And I feel like it's so easy to just slap band-aids on things anymore.

SPEAKER_00 32:35

Restorative outcomes require some time and trust building. And yeah, maybe it saves you time on the other end of the endless chicken and the egg, the students being set up to fail with the equipment and then being blamed. Who's to blame here? It's uh it's everyone or no one.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

This is why we do this though. It's fun too.

SPEAKER_02 32:59

It is fun and it can be frustrating, but I also feel like it's very rewarding when I feel like we have figured out the problem or we solved the issue. It's a good feeling, I think, when we accomplish those difficult situations because we often learn a lot from them. I learned a lot about who actually I should be talking to about sports equipment and access to spaces for athletes, and maybe who's the best person to even be doing that outreach and what is the student's role and their responsibility. So it it's learning a lot, even though athletics is really nothing that has to do with my work typically, but it's learning some of those different things that I wouldn't really get to learn otherwise. So I try to take from those situations what I can in terms of what did I learn from this, even if it was stressful, even if maybe we didn't actually solve the problem, but what have I learned and what can we hopefully take and from this to apply to other things moving forward.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

We didn't ask about like, do you have a most interesting case that you would uh be able to share, you know, with all the redacted pieces?

SPEAKER_02 34:07

Hmm. I would say one of my most interesting cases it involved me and a coworker because um it got to the point where I had met with the student so many times that she had to start meeting with him just because I felt like there was a either a bi perceived bias or that I was just not getting paid to the student. But essentially, this case, there was one student who emailed our office back at the beginning of the fall semester and said that he didn't want to live on campus anymore and he wanted his housing contract canceled, and so we did that for him, and then we noticed that he was still trying to access the room because his card swipes were showing up that he was trying to cart swipe into his room. So we reinstated his room at access and gave him back the space and started charging him again, acknowledging that, oh, he actually wants to access this space because he keeps using trying to access this space, and his roommate had been documented for something and he was in that space with his roommate, so we're like, oh, he's living here. His belongings were still there when the staff was in that room for that incident. So we started charging him again, but then he emailed us saying, Why are you charging me? I don't live here, but we have his card swipes, so we see him on the cameras, and so we're like, but you do live here, and he's like, No, I don't, I'm moving out, so we canceled his contract again, and then the same thing happened, where he's still in this space, and the staff keeps going back to make sure that the room is empty because what has been happening is now that we think the room is empty, people are trying to move into the room, but there's people's things on the bed that's supposed to be empty, and it's his things. Every time, two or three different times that the room is supposed to be empty, it's his things. And we still couldn't figure out how he's getting into this room because we turned off his axis, so we're like, How are you getting in? And we're meeting with his roommate, and his roommate is when I met with him, he told me that he has a roommate. And I was like, But you don't have a roommate. Your room is empty, you're the only person assigned to it, so you can't possibly have a roommate, and he said, No, I do. And I said, Well then how is that person getting in? Because if you don't have a roommate, there's no way they could be getting in. And he said, Well, they use their own code. And I said, But that's not possible, because their card is deactivated. So how are they using this room? And he said, I just assumed he was supposed to be here, and it just none of it was making any sense. Um none of it was making any sense, and then another situation's happening where this student has been now prohibited from being in our building, but he's seen in our building hanging out with other people, and so he's going through the process again of being in the building when he was not supposed to be, and we're meeting with the roommate again because he was in this roommate's room again, and this time it was reported that this student was um having sexual things happen with another person in the room that he used to live in when he's not even supposed to be in the building. And they go to the room and the roommate is not there. Um, it's just this student and their girlfriend, and so it gets reported again, and we meet with the roommate, and the roommate has no recollection of the conversation I had with him, where I told him that he doesn't have anyone living in the room. He says I never said that. Um and now he's meeting with my coworker because I I just felt like it he was lying to me. And eventually this case concluded with us deciding that he was not telling the truth and that he was letting his roommate into that room, because there was no other way that this person could be getting into the room. It just was not possible. He didn't leave the door open accidentally and the person snuck in. Like we had more reason than not to believe that this person was intentionally letting the other person in there. And that was going on for months. It was a month-long case that we had. So I think that was probably one of the most interesting cases I've had here.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

I thought there was gonna be a twin reveal, or like somebody was cloned, or you know. That would have been so fun.

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Or it was a man, yeah, like this hallucination. There was an article. I gotta go find it now. At the end of COVID, it started with this story about how a woman had Zoom interviewed for a job. They hired her, and then she showed up at the first staff meeting. And people are like, that looks like a completely different human, like not even close. But they're like, it must be Susan, because that's who we hired. And it went on for months, and it was like totally different, like one person was getting a paycheck and somebody else was uh doing the work. But it was about how your brain can convince you that even something absurd is true because you just go along with the logic.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

I thought it was gonna be something like that, like they were living in a ceiling tile or something.

SPEAKER_00 39:06

So will you go to your grave not knowing really what was going on there?

SPEAKER_02 39:11

I think so, because the student just doubled down that they had no idea, and the other student also doesn't live with us anymore, so we don't really have any as the housing conduct, I don't have there's no reason for them to meet with me. So we might not ever know who is telling the truth, and I'm I'm pretty sure that the student was letting the roommate in, but I will officially never know unless that student comes back to me in ten years and says, you know what, I've been thinking.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

Logan, I I think we just found a use for your criminology degree. I think you need to leverage this. I think there's some vague fake badges involved. I think uh, you know, you could get this information.

SPEAKER_00 39:55

Yeah, that's a case that needs to be cracked. I even wrote down the very first thing you said is you you just like investigations so much.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

You can send me all you can send me all of your cold cases, I will crack them open.

SPEAKER_00 40:10

I do like the detective work part of the job.

SPEAKER_01 40:13

I did too. I think my favorite case was there was a fight at an off-campus bar, and I had never been, and I said, Well, let's go. I think we need to map this out because they were talking about this happened over here, and then somebody got hit with a bottle over here, and I'm like, I can't even picture it, so let's go. Took pictures, somebody was sketching out the the layout. This is the best case ever.

SPEAKER_00 40:39

I love solving cases. Get some camera work, get some social media searches going.

SPEAKER_01 40:46

I mean, a reenactment would be the height of you know, I think this is gonna be my my swan song. I'm gonna go back into student conduct as my exit career, and I'm gonna be the person that does recreations and investigations. That's what I'm gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 41:02

I think, Logan, there's a career for you that takes your theater background and your sciencey, like STEM stuff, and social science, and just like mashes it all together into one thing.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

This is a reality TV show waiting to happen.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

It might be the one that people usually say when I tell them all the different things I've studied is they say that I should write a crime scene musical. That's like I don't know why that's the thing I've heard so much, and it's definitely not impossible. Um I just don't think it would be the thing that I would first think of in terms of how all of those um intertwined together. But it's I guess nothing is off the table, so.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

What about the traders?

SPEAKER_02 41:49

I think they I've never I've not seen it yet. I know all about it, but I've still yet to watch it. But it seems like that would be such a good a good fit.

SPEAKER_00 41:59

You have homework to do, my friends. I do. I'm so happy. So ASCA, that was your first one, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:10

It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:11

I sure hope we see you again next year there, because um you bring a lot to our field.

SPEAKER_02 42:18

Well, thank you. It was a lot of fun, and it was really cool to be in a space with other like-minded people, because usually I've been to housing conferences, and there are conduct people there, but I feel like the focus is typically more on the housing residence life aspect. So it was really nice to see that I'm not alone and get to meet really other a lot of other cool people and hear their really cool ideas. So I do look forward to being there next year if I can help it.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

You definitely made a positive impression on us, and we're so grateful to have gotten to spend more time with you.

SPEAKER_01 42:52

Yes, thank you for joining us.

SPEAKER_02 42:54

Yeah, I'm so glad that you reached out. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Ms. Behavior is written and produced by Colette Shaw and Kurt Doan. Theme music was written and performed by Kevin McLeod from Incompatech.com. You can contact Ms. Behavior at Ms. BehaviorCollege at gmail.com. That's MSBhaviorCollege at gmail.com.