Leslie Wolfe ’80G

IN THE NOT-TOO-DISTANT PAST, when a college education was a rarity, student life was nearly monastic. The mostly male student body adhered to a daily routine of chapel, classes, and perhaps military training. Meals were perfunctory, required exercise took place on the sole campus playing field or the single stuffy gymnasium, and then it was off to sleep in a Spartan dormitory room. Colleges operated in loco parentis; expectations for conduct were high, regulations were strict, and discipline was firm.

Those quaint times are far removed from today’s reality. As university populations have grown in size, diversity, and sophistication, student life has become more complex, and it is the students—and the students’ parents—that have high expectations.

To help meet these expectations, offices of student affairs or student life now occupy spaces in administration buildings that are as extensive—and important—as those of academic affairs. Student affairs executives routinely preside over hundreds of staff members and budgets of tens of millions of dollars.

A remarkable number of UMass Amherst graduates have taken the helm of student life offices around the country. These grads include Larry Benedict, ’67, ’70G, ’73G at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT); Michael Jackson ’76G at the University of Southern California (USC); Margaret “Peggy” Jablonski, ’81, ’84G at the University of North Carolina (UNC); and Larry Moneta ’72, ’91G at Duke University. Their extensive experience provides insight into the important issues and trends that affect contemporary students’ lives, the quality of student life, and the total cost and value of a college education.

A Culture of Choice

On its surface, student life is about all the extracurricular things: eating, sleeping, playing, and working. It encompasses the elements of a typical campus tour: safety, transportation, parking, housing, dining facilities, health centers, sports and recreation, clubs, meal plans, expense accounts, and the student union. On a deeper level, it is about choice—about the many opportunities and options laid out before students, and the choices they make.

The choices are more numerous today than ever before, just as a new and demanding generation of students, “the millennial generation,” as some call them, arrives on campus. Described by a vice president at one school as “he most pampered, most gifted, most hovered-over, most
parented population in the history of the world,” these students present many challenges to the same institutions of higher education that court and covet them.

Larry Benedict has a longer view than most; he joined the Student Affairs Office at UMass Amherst while still a grad student in the late 1960s. Benedict remained on campus for 16 years before going on to student affairs jobs at the University of Southern Maine and Johns Hopkins, eventually arriving at his present position as dean for Student Life at MIT.

The first significant trend that Benedict notes is that higher education has become a “very competitive marketplace.” Our affluent society has created student expectations for ever nicer residence halls, student centers, and athletic facilities, so that every college or university seeking to be nationally and internationally competitive must offer these amenities. Now some university dining facilities offer cooked-to-order meals, cater to every taste, and operate around the clock. Many universities today boast of condo-style housing facilities fitted with suites, private bathrooms, living rooms, and fully applianced kitchens. And universities are rapidly building vast recreation facilities stocked with state-of-the-art exercise equipment. This has led to what Benedict terms a “constantly competitive upward spiral” that has greatly increased the cost of education.

Benedict notes that students also have increased expectations for themselves, so that it’s difficult for them to live a balanced life. “The students say you can sleep, study, and eat—pick two.” Most opt out of sleep, which has an effect on their physical and emotional life. Even so, students have increased their extracurricular activities. “They might belong to four or five different clubs, in addition to joining activities in their residence hall or fraternity or sorority.”

On top of these activities, Benedict says, “This is a generation that feels very strongly about community service.” Many students get involved in public service in high school, often as a way to pad their résumés for college entrance, but they become inspired by their work and want to continue through their college years. At MIT, Benedict sees students volunteering in soup kitchens and in public middle schools. Also, he says, “Today students don’t just study abroad, they perform public service abroad. We’re sending students to places like Haiti, Kenya, and the Far East to work on things like water improvement projects, sanitation systems, tsunami warning systems, and so on.” These expensive programs are becoming an integral part of students’ educational experience. Benedict sees them as important because of the need for students to be competitive in a global marketplace when they graduate. “It’s as important as what they learn in the classroom. Our job is to facilitate their desire for community service, to provide resources for them, and help them find resources.”

Michael Jackson, vice president of Student Affairs and Enrollment Services at University of Southern California in Los Angeles, echoes these themes. With a high percentage of minorities and located in the middle of a major city, USC is deeply involved with community service. Given the myriad activities of students and demands on their time, he says that his “first challenge is to make sure my work stays in line with USC’s academic mission. I see student life as an extension of the educational enterprise.”

Jackson points to a whole variety of health and wellness issues with which his office is concerned. As at every college campus, advising against and dealing with the consequences of alcohol abuse take up time and energy. Beyond that, though, are more recent challenges—counseling on how to bond and have fun without running the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, for example. And then there are mental health issues, such as counseling for eating disorders and pharmacology—in this age of antidepressants, a significant number of students come to campus on some form of drug maintenance program, which needs to be monitored and used in conjunction with therapy.

 

The Parent Trap

For all student-life officials, dealing with parents is a top priority. “We’ve seen the increasing involvement of parents in the lives of college students,” says Jackson. “We have to help them strike a healthy balance and make sure that they are not too intrusive, so that the students can develop and mature and take responsibility for their own affairs.”

Peggy Jablonski, vice chancellor of Student Affairs for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Larry Moneta, vice president of Student Affairs for Duke University, concur that parent intrusion in the educational process is at an all-time high. “The relationship with parents has changed dramatically,” says Jablonski. “Twenty-five years ago people in our roles didn’t talk to parents, and we didn’t see them as part of the educational process. Now ‘helicopter parents’ is in our lexicon. We have parents’ offices and staff who work with parents’ programs, and we host parents at events on our campus. We want parents involved, to some extent, in what we’re doing. We also want our students to be able to make independent decisions.”

UMass Amherst takes a hands-on approach to dealing with parents: it invites them to campus, keeps in constant touch with them, and welcomes them to visit at any time. According to Mike Gargano, vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Campus Life, the university seeks to make parent allies in the education of their children. “We view parents as partners in their sons’ and daughters’ education. We believe that their children will have a lot of success at this university—social success, success in extracurricular activities, success in research, and so on. We encourage parents to come back to campus to see these milestones in their child’s life.”

UMass Amherst sends e-mails an average of four to five times a month, not only to keep parents informed of campus events but also to offer helpful advice. For instance, they help prepare parents for students’ return home on breaks when they may show up on the doorstep transformed—with new opinions on politics or religion or new forms of self-expression, such as a tattoo or a piercing. Students have gotten used to not having a curfew, so what should parents say when they go out at midnight?

There’s a point at which parental involvement can impede personal growth. Jablonski, Moneta, and Benedict cite instances of “over-involved” parent/student relationships. For example, it’s not uncommon for students to be talking with their parents via cell phone while they’re in a counseling session. In a few extreme cases, mothers have moved into dorm rooms with their children—sometimes even when their adult offspring are attending graduate school.

Benedict says, “Some parents manage every aspect of the lives of their children. Part of my role is to help let them let go.” He tries to teach parents to take a coaching, rather than a managing, approach. “If they’re ever going to let go, they have to do it now. We try to view college students as young adults who are going to make lots of decisions, some of which are going to be wise and some not so wise. They need to learn from both kinds of decisions. We need to be patient and tolerant to allow them that kind of opportunity.”

Still, letting go remains hard for many parents. Benedict notes that parents used to side with the school in disciplinary situations, but today often blame the school or administration if their child gets in trouble. This has changed the legal relationship between universities and parents. When Benedict was at UMass Amherst in the 1970s, the university had one lawyer; now, because of parent lawsuits, universities retain teams of legal experts. Parents have sued for any number of reasons: discipline cases, grades, suicide, housing assignments, medical treatment, and injury or death from substance abuse. This results in student affairs leaders spending a great deal of time managing cases and talking to the press and other constituents, such as the board of trustees.

“Half our job is just managing—managing people and budgets,” says Larry Moneta. “Andthat means we have to keep up with the latest trends, in technology, applications, and services. On any given day we may be in meetings on a new counseling application, on construction of a new facility, or on emergency preparedness. It’s amazing how diverse these managerial tasks are.”

Jablonski says she and her peers are expected to be knowledgeable about and contribute to the discussion of the overall campus plan. “We have to know what’s happening on the academic side, in development, in research, in the medical school, so we have to have some level of knowledge about a lot of information.” Jablonski likens the job to being the mayor of a small town. “We try to coordinate the provision of a lot of services to where students live, eat, play, and go to school. Then resolve the conflicts between all those services for resources and attention.”

But staying personally connected to students is also important. Jablonski says she gets to know many student leaders by attending events or when they drop by during her office hours. She also meets students through their jobs in campus recreation and housing. For her, contact with students is one of the most positive parts of her job. “You see them in the course of four years grow and mature in ways that you and they had no idea they were capable of. They excel in research, community service, or being student body president. They become amazing people. You’ve watched them stumble and fall, but you are so proudof them because they’ve become so great.”

Of course, Jablonski and her colleagues also meet students in trouble, those who are facing the discipline system for academic or social problems. “Some students have a higher level of need,” she says. “You set expectations, give guidance, have them make choices and try things and sometimes fail, and then help them put it together again and go on to the next thing.”

Last spring, Jablonski and Moneta met in Durham, North Carolina, at the Washington Duke Golf Course. In the late afternoon sun, surrounded by undulating green fairways and blooming azaleas and dogwood, they watched the Duke University Women’s Golf Team, dressed in immaculate white shorts and powder-blue shirts, pose for their official National Champions photo.

Moneta was proud of the team, but his feelings were tempered by a controversy that embroiled his campus. Earlier in the week, some Duke lacrosse players—members of another championship-caliber team—had been accused of raping an exotic dancer at an off-campus party. It is a public-relations nightmare: the accused are white, male, and privileged, while the alleged victim is black, female, and poor.

“No student is going to leave Duke this year without having been confronted by issues of privilege, race, and gender,” Moneta says. “It’s unavoidable—you can’t walk around without having a microphone thrust in your face.”

The incident provoked a discussion between Moneta and Jablonski, former colleagues at UMass Amherst, about how students come to campus already “socialized”—sometimes in ways that are contrary to the fundamental missions of the institution. For example, students arrive on campus increasingly sexualized. “How men and women interact at the high school level is much different from when we were in school 25 or 30 years ago,” Jablonski notes.

“We are not working with a clean slate,” Moneta says. “Half our job is deconstructing certain attitudes.” He has observed a greater degree of moral relativism among incoming students. “This is a generation for whom 55 miles an hour means 65 miles an hour. Rules are starting points for negotiations. I don’t think we have any illusions that overnight we will transform our students into dramatically different folks, but we try to have them reflect on the decisions they make, good and bad, and learn from them. Then the next opportunity they have to make a decision, make a responsible one.”

“Yes,” Jablonski agrees, “that’s a modest way to describe what we try to do. Making good choices—that’s what we try to teach.”

All the student affairs alumni agree that a university’s discipline system should be designed to aid in students’ moral and character development. Benedict says, “The judicial process should help a student understand what went wrong so that it doesn’t happen again. If it’s designed simply to punish, with no time for a student to reflect on what went wrong and learn, then that system is not very useful.”

Moneta knows that setting rules and enforcing discipline can make you seem like the bad guy. “In some ways, I’m the most demonized person on campus. If you believe the student newspaper, I’ve killed social life here.”

Frequent, positive contact with students balances his role as an authority figure. One of Moneta’s joys is getting to know the entrepreneurial students on campus. Because he’s on the faculty as well as in a leadership position, many students come to him for money to fund incubator projects and service ventures. He’s also been a good sport about being recruited for such events as a recent amateur version of “Dancing with the Stars.”

Moneta and Jablonski work at very different universities (one public and one private) that share an intense athletic rivalry. They also have a long-standing friendship rooted in their parallel careers and a shared affection for their alma mater. It was UMass Amherst that inspired and prepared them for their careers. Both from working-class families, they had opportunities at UMass Amherst for which they are still grateful. Jablonski worked in a dining hall, lived in a sorority, served in student government, and was president of the honor society. Both she and Moneta also worked in student housing, which was how they started their careers in student life. Colleagues and supervisors, such as Benedict, inspired them, as did the campus atmosphere. Moneta fondly recalls the social justice issues that were raised on campus at the time and how he tries to apply those principles in his job today.

Benedict, too, remembers lessons learned that affected his career. “UMass Amherst was a place where anything was possible, and I was there at a very exciting time. Students had lots of autonomy and lots of support from the administration to do all kinds of things.” For example, his theatre group had the authority to do its own productions, hire its own directors, and do its own set design. “That was a terrific learning experience. It meant a lot to be able to experiment with things without having strict guidance from administration or faculty. It was a terrific training ground for life, not just for this profession.” Those experiences influence how he tries to work with students. “I don’t make decisions for them but facilitate their opportunities to experience as many things as possible.”

While enjoying autonomy as a student, he also experienced some turbulent times as an administrator in the 1970s, when, among other events, students occupied the career center in protest over on-campus military recruiting. “I realized that there had to be some balance between laissez-faire and strict administrative guidance,” says Benedict. “Trying to find that balance has always been the challenge in my career. All of us in this profession feel the tension between empowering the students and providing sufficient guidance and advice so that you don’t end up with chaos.”