The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 2 - 53

College Students in Crisis: Prevention, Identification, and Response Options for Campus Housing Professionals

At an ecological level, campuses
can work to promote a culture
of inclusion and openness
to support-seeking among its
members.

inclusion and openness to support-seeking
among its members (Downs & Eisenberg,
2012). An example of this is found at The University of Texas at Austin, where the "Be That
One" suicide prevention program encourages
all campus members to "be that one" who responds to others in distress (The University
of Texas at Austin, 2013), thereby spreading
the responsibility to intervene to all campus
members. Similarly, Cornell University (2013)
has created the Cornell Caring Community
where campus members "reach out to each
other in times of need and work together to
build a better place." RAs serve as an essential
part of such programs as they may be the first
to notice residents experiencing difficulties.
Additionally, building a sense of teamwork
and collective responsibility among RAs may
help them tap into a variety of ideas and share
responsibility for residents in crisis.
	 Strategies for prevention may also include
collaborative efforts with on- or off-campus
resources to provide workshops for managing
stress, depression, loneliness, and other concerns specific to the residents in a particular
residence hall. Publicizing other support services such as group counseling is another way
to help students preemptively address issues
before they turn into crises. The success of

these approaches is likely associated with the
degree to which they meet the needs of residents. Strategies such as including residents
in the assessment of what peers need in terms
of support, planning and promoting events,
tapping in to residents' creativity to address
topics of interest, facilitating student testimonials to help make the material more relevant,
and using social media to engage students
would likely increase the effectiveness of programs. The best attended events are often
those where the residents themselves encourage their peers to participate. Additionally, it is
helpful for RAs to anticipate that certain events
such as holidays, mid-terms, parent weekends,
and fraternity and sorority life recruitment
weeks may trigger stress reactions among students. This anticipation allows for planning
briefer interventions, such as leaving messages to residents (e.g., actual messages, tokens,
cartoons, and the like) of hope and ways to
manage stress.
	 Crisis management extends beyond the
management at the individual (or resident)
level of the system. As previously mentioned,
university level committees that incorporate
participants from various campus and sometimes community agencies to promote safety,
planning and management of crises have
gained in number. Two additional resources
in developing and implementing campus-wide
crisis management programs include the following: Campus Crisis Management: A Comprehensive Guide to Planning, Prevention, Response
and Recovery (Zdziarski, Dunkel, & Rollo, et al.,
2007) and Enough is Enough: A Student Affairs
Perspective on Preparedness and Response to a
Campus Shooting (Hemphill & La Banc, 2010).
These seminal works have been used by many

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 2
