The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 50

Bryan K. Hotckins * T. Elon Dancy

"Safe Zone Trainings" for the LGBTQIA community. As the findings indicate, participants
suffer from a perpetual homelessness due
to an absence of Blackness reflected in residential halls and having to locate safe spaces
away from domiciles. Although the process of
passing campus communal memory proved
beneficial to incoming Black students, informed residential staff should also become
knowledgeable so they, too, can participate in
warning others about hostile campus racial
climate locations. If residential staff understand their halls to be sources of environmental racial microaggressions, as experienced by
Black students, accountability can take place,
followed by thoughtful, informed program
trainings designed to identify and lessen or
eliminate racial trauma.
While we recognize that Black student engagement in acts of self-preservation work to
ensure that communal enclaves, like ethnic
organizations, thrive, we also acknowledge
the task of doing so is not solely that of Black
collegians. To decrease Black student exposure to hostile residential climates, it is essential that White staff educate themselves
about practicing visual, cultural inclusiveness
in geography and place, re-centering historically marginalized group narratives through
Afrocentric event programming and by restructuring housing organizations like RHA
to include representations of communities of
color. Further, in an effort to counteract the
adverse effects of hostile racial climates in
residential halls, we call for increased hiring
of Black students in positions like residential
assistants to provide nuanced perspectives
about ways to better housing environments
and to serve as evidence of an active marker

for the pursuit of inclusion through employment. Since Black student residents utilize
historically Black organizations to share communal memory about their holistic needs on
campus, we recommend the formation of collaborative partnerships with organizations like
RHA to determine the most effective ways to
serve this particular demographic. We offer
these interventions as essential to the meaningful participation of Black students on PWI
campuses. Finally, once the abovementioned is
accomplished, Black students can begin to experience PWI residential halls as possibly safer
places where their voices and presence are appreciated, valued and welcomed.

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http://carnegieclassifications.iu.edu/definitions.php

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3

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