The Myth of Being Too Nice

In this mini end-of-year episode, Colette and Kurt explore the concerns they've heard from colleagues who fear being "too nice" to students. Themes explored include the long-term impacts of clarity and kindness in disciplinary processes. Our hosts explore a misconception that since the outside world is harsh, we're preparing students for life by expecting them to navigate non-optimal educational processes. Please consider clicking our link to write or call in to share your ideas about this important topic.

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Theme music "Fuzzball Parade" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:09

Hello and welcome to Ms. Behavior. This is your host, Colette.

SPEAKER_00 0:14

And I'm Kurt.

SPEAKER_01 0:16

And we are here to talk about college student conduct, and it is a busy time of year.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

It is. How are how busy is it at your your school?

SPEAKER_01 0:27

We are waiting to see reports from people moving out and didn't dump the trash in their room to trashed rooms, or who knows what we'll find.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

We are knee deep in what we call the season of celebration, which I love. There is something every week where we get to celebrate our students in some way. Completion ceremony, student leadership banquet next week, I think uh Monday. So I'm excited for that.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

Listeners, if you're as busy as we are, you're gonna be glad to hear. We're gonna try to keep this episode to about 15 minutes. And we really sincerely want to make a plea. We have some new technology now attached to our podcast. In the podcast notes, there's a link where you can text us a note, or even better, you could do a one-minute voicemail to us.

SPEAKER_00 1:23

I love that we've stepped up the tech game here. Who's our producer? Who's doing all this in the background?

SPEAKER_01 1:28

It's some hack named Khalit Shaw.

SPEAKER_00 1:32

Yeah, I I think you are landing on a full second career here of just podcast producer. You you know it all.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Kurt, it's turning into a second career. The more I learn, the more time it takes.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

It's funny because in my family and generally my universe, I am the the tech savvy one, and I look at this and I think it would be really interesting to learn how to do all this, but I'm I worry that I would become obsessed with it. The AI will get better. I mean, I assume eventually that we can just plug a concept in and AIU and AI me will talk about it uh ad nauseum.

SPEAKER_01 2:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Maybe they'll have a better outfit. Uh my collar's doing something weird here.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

You look fabulous. I'm sporting my Buffalo Sabres. We broke the 14-year playoff drought, and we are in the playoffs, at least as of the recording of this. And we have to play the team in the city that I work in, Boston. Oh, and if you are a good Buffalo fan, you know you hate Boston, you hate New England. So I'm learning to open my heart, just like we talk about in student conduct practice.

SPEAKER_00 2:48

I like the idea of hockey. Um, and I have seen some hockey in person. Um, but you know, now that heated rivalry is still at the forefront of discussion, maybe I need to revisit this.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

It's time, and we have a player named Done on our team, and he's pretty good. Okay. We like Done, and so we need we need another Done in the Buffalo Mafia Kurt.

SPEAKER_00 3:16

You know, I don't know if I ever told you this. Um every I would say about once a year, somebody will send me an article about the Done gang. Um, have you heard of this?

SPEAKER_01 3:27

No.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So uh I have relatives from the 1800s that were outlaws. Like bank robber kind of people, uh, and infamous in the Philadelphia area. So I know we talk about how rollsy I am, but I I do come from a long line of uh is it Rap Scallions?

SPEAKER_01 3:48

Yeah. We have a neighbor across the street, and her claim to fame is that she's like a great great grandniece of John Wilkes Booth.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

Oh, wow. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

It's like this point of pride, which makes us a little uncomfortable. Yeah. If she went on one of those national genealogy shows, and they did they tested her blood, they tested the booths, and she is not.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

And yeah, if she meets a new person, it's part of her intro that oh that oh, and did you know I'm a booth.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

So and now that part of our her identity is just snatched from her?

SPEAKER_01 4:35

No, no, she's not letting it go.

SPEAKER_00 4:38

Oh, okay. Even though she has been genetically disproven.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

So that's funny because I work not so far from uh the house where I think he lived. Oh, which I didn't know until I think uh this year. Somebody said, Oh, that's the the the booth house. I had no idea. No idea.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

So loyal listeners or new listeners, if you're wondering, I thought this was a college student conduct podcast. We do bring our whole selves to this work, don't we, folks? But also I think there is a theme in here about students and sometimes their misconduct can be a point of pride. When do our practices make misconduct more exciting, more alluring to students instead of having the purpose of what we sometimes say changing behavior? So in my neighbor's case, it's exciting for her to be attached to fame, notoriety. And I meet students sometimes, and I think if I am not careful here, I am just gonna add to the excitement that they've got another story to tell about the nice lady they met with, that they fooled with their story, or she's not gonna tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_00 6:11

You might end up in a TikTok.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

And maybe rightfully so. Like I I think that's something that we all think about, and I would love folks' ideas on this of how do you walk that line without condoning behavior? What did our guest last week say? He had a quote by Napoleon brute force never made anything better.

SPEAKER_00 6:34

Yeah, I yeah, I it was something like that. I my takeaway what was that you know providing additional structure and pressure doesn't necessarily result in the thing that we wanted to, yeah. Compliance isn't learning. It is uh you're just getting, you know, a short-term fix for what may be a long-term problem.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

And I I've been thinking lately about this myth that if we're nice to students that we are going to make things worse. And I I really do think that is a myth. That yeah. It looks like your wheels are turning.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

Yeah, it makes me think of the whole thing they need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. It's almost like hazing. Like I had it rough, so I'm gonna make sure that they know what it's like out in the real world. Bring the real world inside to the college.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

You can't get away with this. Well, sure you can. We have lots of national and international examples of rich people who can afford good lawyers who get away with all kinds of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 7:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Or never even have to be held accountable for it.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

So, what's an example that you think is often cited when you're thinking of this, that we're we're too nice to students? Because I feel like I see the opposite.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

There was a case this year that I heard about at a school where uh students were stealing uh directional signs in a building. And it was a lot, and it was expensive and it was causing damage. It wasn't great. We like it could put people at risk. Like if first responders are in the build in a smoky building and they can't find where the stairwell is. It reminds me there was an old freaks and geeks episode where the father was like, people are gonna die. Everything was if you smoke a cigarette, you're gonna die. If you drink a can of beer, you're gonna die. And so there is a small chance that something could happen and someone could die. But I really wanted to get my hands on that case because I thought I think niceness is the way in. Finding a couple students, like, hey, t what's the sign thing about? There are like 60 signs missing. Is this like a prank? Is there a game going on? Is this revenge because they students feel like they've been treated poorly by staff? Is this just random? It doesn't seem 60 is not random.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

Awesome artwork. I mean, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:21

And that rebellious part of me thinks, ooh, that sign is a trophy in somebody's room. And so that's uh one where I'm like, I think I could crack that case. And right now all the threats and the guilt trips uh are not cracking the case. It's causing some doubling down.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Uh, there's somebody in my neighborhood. We we walk around at night and they had the garage open the other night, and they had two street signs hanging in their garage. And it's odd to me. You know, I I I think about when I was in college, there were the k the guys down the hall had a bunch of signs from you know, no parking and somebody stole a stop sign. Makes sense in college. These are adults who own houses that are doing it. Right. And it does it makes me wonder like what what what's the point? Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:19

And I guess now that you say that, downstairs in my basement, my husband, and he swears he found it like they were changing out the street signs where he lived, and he wanted one of those. And so he still has like a childhood street sign. Which for me feels different than a stop sign where somebody could get T-boned and somebody's gonna die. But that's a conversation I would love to have with a student.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

Because I'm positive that's not their intent when they take the sign.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

No, no. I I mean I would hope not. I'm sure there's you know, there's a sociopath in every crowd that uh is maybe trying to cause chaos, but yeah. I I do wonder about colleagues who think, you know, that folks are too nice to students or that having that conversation uh in a constructive way is is being nice versus trying to come to a productive outcome.

SPEAKER_01 11:23

Yeah. And I think about long-term outcomes versus short-term outcomes. I think when you use threats, you might get some compliance at the start out of fear. Uh but I'm I'm thinking about some posts I've seen recently from Dr. Tony Miller at Old Dominion University where he's been posting on his social media regrets that he has about sanctions that he's given that that hurt students in the long term, and definitely it hurt the relationship, it hurt retention. So there's yeah, there's a lot that goes into the calculus of those decisions.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I'm thinking about some of our our recent guests, and I I really have been pondering some of my takeaways from those episodes, which were um about creating environments where students succeed and but truly succeed, not success as in we're going to get them to do what we want them to do. But that we are trying to create an environment where they learn who they are and how they are going to navigate through the world. I think about how we have things set up on campus. Uh we're I think one of the ongoing discussions at our school is are we a student-ready campus or are we trying to make sure that students are college ready? And this did the distinction being, you know, I think some people can take that to the extreme that if we want students to be college ready, that they come in with they know how to do math, they know how to do English, they understand implicitly what we mean and how to navigate through our systems. They don't need our help to do that. And the reality is that college is confusing, even for people who have parents who went to college. And part of our role as folks who work at colleges should be to help students navigate that and make it, I don't want to say easy, but help them navigate, help them learn how to navigate on their own. To me, that's not being nice, that's doing that's doing the work of a student affairs professional.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

I've heard recently in some national round tables about the letter templates that we use to invite students to meetings, and like, can we make them nicer? Can we make them more easy to understand? And I'm hearing people say, well, we we don't necessarily need them to be nice because the real world isn't nice, and we're preparing students for the real world. And that infuriates me because I'd like to take what you're saying about success, not just success for the student individually, but for them to make the world better for other people. I want those students to experience something where they're like, oh, this doesn't have to be confusing, this doesn't have to be nasty. There can be a better way. And I I want them to go out and change the things that are broken, not just prepare them, like, yeah, it's broken.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Deal with it. They're they're gonna be the people making decisions, they're gonna be our bosses.

SPEAKER_00 14:37

There is, I think, in the past decade, just this growing sense of people accepting this malignant form of discompassion. Just that uh they seem to take joy in cruelty, and I think it is you know, to me it entered the narrative through our national politics. Um and I think it's it's trickling down into almost every aspect of life, and you know, my hope is that we can stave that off in higher education, that there is a you know, proverbial gate at the front that that keeps that from happening, but it is it's difficult to navigate uh just as a person out in the world. And our students are navigating through that too. So it to me, it's not necessarily being nice to create an environment on campus where they can put that to the side and learn. It is creating a an optimal learning environment. It's taking that piece of the conversation away for a little bit so that they can get their bearings and figure out who they are and learn. Hopefully, a uh living wage skill and go back out in the world and make it a better place. It's like the real housewives of something, you know. Everybody's ready for a fight. Boom. We're gonna have a fight.

SPEAKER_01 16:04

Yeah, so as we are all wrapping up our school years, and there's always this dream of the magic summer over the summer. We're gonna change everything and make it better for the next year. Let's make that real, folks. Uh, text in to us or send us a voicemail like, what are some things you're gonna do this summer to just welcome reflection, welcome learning, welcome success, retention. And it's not hard. Some of these things are so easy.

SPEAKER_00 16:37

I like the reflection piece. I like that. So you mentioned that we have some great technology, so maybe folks can write it in. Tell us about what's what's something that's going on in their college that maybe is more negative than they want.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

That's great, because innovation starts with what spill the tea.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

What's happening? Yeah, spill it.

SPEAKER_01 16:57

What's ready for innovation? And let's let's really use our imaginations this summer. And I have a feeling we're gonna have themes around imagination uh as po people are doing staff retreats, re-looking at materials, reinventing themselves. It's exciting times.

SPEAKER_00 17:16

Love it.

SPEAKER_01 17:17

All right, thanks, Kurt.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 17:25

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 msbehaviorcollege at gmail.com.