Talking Stick - May/June 2018 - 25

For students already within
campus housing, the switch is fairly
straightforward; for off-campus students it can be a matter of collecting
appropriate and necessary information, but quickly. California State University Long Beach is another campus
that makes the accommodation available for off-campus students. "We have
an emergency intake process in which
a student fills out an application, and
they meet with a staff member within
24 hours," says Jeff Klaus, associate
vice president for student life and
development. "They sign a contract for
the term of the room."
Who can accompany the student
often depends on the room itself; some
campuses are able to take an apartment
offline to serve as an emergency space,
which can accommodate significant
others or children, but sometimes a
room is all that is available. Accommodating pets can also be an issue. "One
young lady had three cats," recalls Corry
Colonna, executive director of housing
and residential life at California State
Long Beach. "We had a staff member
who was willing to take the cats while
the student moved in to emergency
housing." Colonna, who was previously at Amherst College, recalls the
safe room program there being used
for a student who had an operation and
needed a quiet, private place to recover
and another student with a suspected
case of mumps. One student at Amherst, who had left the previous room
in a hurry, arrived at the safe room
without linens and other necessities.
After this, Colonna began stocking the
room with linens and basic toiletries, a
practice he has continued at California
State Long Beach.
The University of Massachusetts
Amherst has safe rooms within their
halls, but an on-campus hotel also
offers swing space that can be used
flexibly. In some cases, a hotel room
has been used to temporarily remove
a person from the on-campus commu-

THE UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
HAS SAFE ROOMS WITHIN THEIR HALLS, BUT AN
ON-CAMPUS HOTEL ALSO OFFERS SWING SPACE
THAT CAN BE USED FLEXIBLY.
nity. "If [we] need to move a perpetrator out of the residence environment
we'll send them to the hotel until they
can talk to the dean the next day," says
Jean MacKimmie, director of residence
education.
All the campus representatives
said their institutions usually try to
limit the length of stays in the emergency spaces, but what that means precisely varied from campus to campus
and situationally. "Those rooms are set
aside for a three- to four-day option,"
says Colonna. "We help the students
understand that. We would at times
extend that, but not often, about six
to eight days, max." California State
Long Beach, like the other campuses
featured here, works with the students
to determine realistic next steps. "We
chat with them . . . What we see is
more than 70 percent of the time students haven't engaged their financial
aid, so they do a full-term contract
with us and move in permanently for
the semester," says Colonna. Klaus
concurs. "Many times, through this
process, we work closely with financial
aid. If a student has exhausted all their
financial aid, it's clear the student
needs a dependency override which
qualifies them for more aid." Often
the need goes beyond assistance with
financial aid and housing. "Our entire
emergency program touches every
division on campus." California State
Long Beach's Feed a Need program
accepts student donations of unused
meals from their meal plans, offers
emergency grants of up to $500, provides hotel vouchers for students with

families, and maintains a food pantry.
"We really feel we've created a very
comprehensive program with wraparound services to help a student get
through a crisis, to transition to services in the community, to get through
the crisis and function on their own
without outside support," he says.
"The safe room is not meant to
be a long-term solution," says Sealine.
"It provides us flexibility . . . For our
family and graduate housing there
are more domestic violence incidents;
we have a lot of international families
there, and there are cultural issues
that get involved. We have the ability
to communicate expectations and get
someone out of the situation." None
of these programs charge students for
use of the safe room, considering it
an investment in the student's future
well-being and academic success.
The program at Kennesaw State
began seven years ago when they discovered a homeless student sheltering
in spaces on campus. "The safe room
initiative has evolved over the years
as we identified the fact that we had
a need. We were finding the need to
have a temporary relocation opportunity for students," Cooper says. They
work closely with the university's Campus Awareness Resource & Empowerment (CARE) Services, which can
provide comprehensive assistance to
students. Cooper speaks enthusiastically of the CARE employees, particularly the director, Marcy Stidum. "I
reached out to her, I said 'We've got
this student in this situation, can you
talk to her?' Marcy did a good job of

MAY + JUNE 2018

Talking Stick - May/June 2018

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