...and words are all that we've become

I think it's time for some therapeutic blogging. ;)

It's 12:42 am and I'm not the least tired - probably because I slept until 10 am and then took a nap from 4-6:30 pm. My sleeping schedule's been really messed up lately.

But let's start from the beginning....

It all started last Sunday. I was hanging out in my apartment pretending to do work but really just playing around on my laptop. I decided to check the blog of my favorite band (if you want to check it out, go to www.wetheliving.com/blog) and saw that one of the band members had decided to leave the band. I couldn't even believe it at first - well, let's be honest, I didn't WANT to believe it. I called my friend and fellow We The Living fan and we talked and analyzed (and overanalyzed...haha...we tend to do that with everything) and then we did what I always do when I'm upset or very emotional (I also do this when I'm really really happy) - we went and had ice cream. After some delicious vanilla ice cream with chocolate syrup and rainbow sprinkles, I still didn't really know what to think.

We're also trying to organize this campus-wide Invisible Children Challenge, a fundraising competition that will end with a huge Benefits Concerts (to find out more about Invisible Children, go to www.invisiblechildren.com). And of course we'd love to have We The Living perform at the Benefits Concerts - along with some student groups - but it's been a challenge to get in touch with them to set up a date for the show (well, I guess now they have other things on their mind). I'm just getting more and more worried. This is supposed to be a huge deal but I don't know whether or not I'll be able to get enough funding - and who knows how successful we'll be at recruiting teams. We got a long list of students who were interested...but that was a month ago now and if we don't contact them with any details soon, I'm afraid we'll lose their interest. AHHHHH!!!!

So the week wasn't off to a good start and it didn't get any better. One of my students had been caught by the police trying to break into a car (not sure what he was thinking...hmm, was he thinking?!?!). Because other cars had been broken into that weekend, the police got a search warrant for the students' residence hall room. They came over and when they went into the room, they didn't find anything that had been stolen from those cars but they did find some alcohol and marihuana. Not good! I can't say for sure what will happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if this student was suspended. I talked to him after the police left; not a fun conversation!

We also had a very messy and frustrating incident of plagarism in my class. It's a very long and complicated story...to try and sum it up: my RA, who is also a TA for my leadership course, noticed that two students' introductions to papers were very similar/basically the same. The students are roommates but are in different sections of the leadership course.
Instead of telling me what she had noticed (as she should have done), the RA decided to take matters into her own hands and talked to the students because she wanted to "protect" them. She then told me about all this later - too late for me to see the papers (they hadn't been turned in yet as official final papers yet but had just been uploaded to this electronic portfolio thing that we use) and too late for me to think about what our best course of action would be PRIOR to bringing this to the students' attention. Well, from there on things just got messier and messier. I've been trying to work with the other instructor, who hasn't very helpful. When I called him to try and explain that I didn't think we had enough evidence to send this on to the department (here, the academic departments deal with cases of academic integrity), he gave me a lecture on how this student should be facing some serious consequences. When I asked him to send me the students' papers, he didn't. So basically I was dealing with all this on my own, even though it was the student in his class who had copied the paper ("my" student hadn't been aware of any of this). Of course, this whole thing also turned into a roommate conflict and, not surprisingly, I got a phone call from a parent.
And the whole time I kept thinking about why my RA hadn't told me about this incident right away? Was it because, like so many students here, she didn't see academic integrity as that "serious" of a violation? Because I know she would tell me if a student was drinking underage or smoking marihuana. Where does this notion of wanting to "protect" students come from? I mean, I'm not here to get students in trouble. Yes, I tend to be a little stricter maybe than some other staff members, but I always try to fair and I always try to do what I think is best for the student. Sometimes that may mean having to face serious consequences for making a seriously bad choice; but I don't do that to hurt the student; on the contrary, I do that because I believe they need to learn from their mistakes.
I realize that many students will see me as the "bad guy"...but my own RAs???

And then it was Saturday morning. I heard the phone in my office ring (my apartment and office are connected), but I don't usually pick up my office phone on the weekends (I do check the messages but not always right away). A little later (I hadn't checked the voicemail yet), I got a text from one of my RAs informing me that she heard a rumor that one of our residents in the hall died in a car accident. I asked her to find out the students' name if she could. I also went and checked my voicemail to see if it was something related. It was. It was the mother of another residents - a friend of that student - who just wanted to inform me about what had happened as well as ask what her son's options were in regards to postponing some of his finals if he needed to.
I went into work mode. I called the mother back. Then, I called my supervisor to inform her about what had happened, so she could start the process of informing everyone at the University who needed to know about this. I shared all the details I knew with our Associate Director, so she could inform the Dean of Students. We talked about the best way of informing the hall - sadly, the student had not been very connected to the hall community, so I didn't anticipate much of a response from the hall. There were three students whom he knew from high school - one had already been home (his mother was the one who called me), the other two had left for home that morning. I checked the students' Facebook to see who else he was friends with - but out of a hall of 280 residents, he was only Facebook friends with four other students.
I called an emergency staff meeting. I informed the staff. They seemed shocked and didn't really know what to say - but there wasn't much of a reaction. After all, none of them had really known the resident. I, as his academic adviser, probably knew him best - and I hadn't had many interactions with him.
The staff really wanted to inform the hall community though. Apparently our Housekeeping staff had found out and had started spreading rumors about what had happened. Some students had gotten text messages from friends letting them know what had happened. While we were still debating about what would be the best way to inform everyone (the staff thought an e-mail would be too impersonal), the fire alarm went off. What incredible timing!
We evacuated the building - and while I was standing out in the cold, I decided to call our Associate Director again to run some of my thoughts by her. In the end, I decided to hold a very brief all-hall meeting as soon as the fire department would let us back into the building. So we pulled all students into the Lobby. I got up on a chair and let students know what had occurred. I explained that I would be available all day if anyone wanted to talk; I also offered to call a counselor if anyone would like to talk to a counselor. I got a lot of blank stares; it was dead silent in the room; but other than that, there again didn't seem to be much of a reaction.
I asked the staff to be around as much as possible, but also wanted them not to forget about their own finals coming up and prepare for those.
After the brief meeting, I walked through the corridors to see if anyone wanted to talk. Most doors were shut and students were preparing for finals. I checked in with the resident's RA; he was doing alright. He had checked in with the residents in his corridor and said they all seemed to be doing okay. We also checked in with the other students, who were friends with him on Facebook, but they all seemed to be okay.

I hung around the hall for the rest of the day. Whenever someone knocked on my office door, I jumped up, bolted across the living room to get to the office, ripped open the door - just to find another student with an unimportant advising question.
I kept busy. I listened to music loudly.

A few people called me to check in. But these phone calls annoyed me more than anything. They all asked how I was doing and when I said I was okay, they didn't seem to believe me. But the truth was that I was okay. I felt numb. This whole thing seemed - and still seems - very surreal to me. But I couldn't even figure out for myself how I was feeling, so how could I ever explain it to a colleague?

I took a nap Saturday late afternoon/early evening, then stayed up half the night; finally went to bed just to get up early and finish some staff presents for our End of Semester Celebration. I was running late Sunday morning (we were going to lunch as a staff) and then, of course, our Director called me because he had talked to a family friend and we needed to set up arrangements to have the students' belongings picked up.

I went to lunch with my staff and we talked and laughed - and the topic of the car accident never came up.

I spent the rest of the day procrastinating - I read, I took a nap, I responded to some e-mail, I watched TV and I listened to music. I just didn't feel like doing anything. Then, a colleague stopped by to check on me - which was really sweet. :o)

And then I had the usual Sunday-night panic of realizing that I didn't get any of the things done that I wanted to accomplish this weekend. So I attempted to do work but didn't get very far. And finally I decided to write in this blog.

This has really been the first time I allowed myself to slow down and think about all that's happened over the past few days. To think and to feel! And I'm not so sure anymore if I'm okay. I didn't know the resident very well - I didn't have a close connection with him or anything. But why didn't I? Should I have reached out to him more? This whole thing was an accident, so yes, I couldn't have changed anything. Or could I? Was there alcohol involved in the accident? I knew he had an alcohol problem and was trying to deal with it; he said he was seeing someone and was getting help. But maybe I could have talked to him more about that - made sure he was actually doing better.
And how sad that he had barely any connections to the community. We pride ourselves in the close-knight community that we've built in our hall and here is a student, who was not part of that community. Was that because he didn't want to be or because we didn't try hard enough to draw him out?

How can my students feel so little about the death of someone, who was a member of their community? Someone who was living right down the hall from them? What does that say about us as a community?