The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 101

On Becoming Batman

drivers behind corresponding decisions and
actions for that constituent group. Given the
primacy of professional identity in emergency management and the fact that residential
life professionals share unique characteristics in this regard, professional identity may
provide some insight into the matter. Therefore, this study addressed the following question: How does shared professional identity
manifest among early-career residential life
practitioners engaged in university emergency
management?

METHODOLOGY
To explore the research question, a subset of
data was drawn from the results of a larger organizational ethnographic study. The original
ethnography examined the emergency management environment of, and adherence to
emergency protocols by, a residential life staff
at a large public research institution in the
Southern region of the United States (hereafter referenced as Tradition University East or
TUE). The ethnographic strategy allowed for
an immersive experience such that rich depictions of the residential life emergency management culture could be analyzed in context and
in real time (Van Maanen, 2011; Watson, 2011).

Setting and Participants
To carry out the research, I was granted permission to serve as participant-observer (Van
Maanen, 2011) by becoming a de facto member
of TUE's residential life staff for one academic
year. Of the 15,000 undergraduate, graduate,
and professional school students enrolled at
TUE, 2,000 undergraduate students and a
small population of graduate students lived
on campus during that time. Students were
housed in five high-rise residence halls staffed

by a total of 75 RAs and 120 student desk attendants. A majority of the RAs were undergraduate students in their sophomore to senior years.
Each of TUE's five residence halls was supervised by a full-time RD. In contrast to many
other institutions, TUE often hired resident
directors without master's degrees. During
the study, two RDs were completing their undergraduate degrees while holding their posts,
one held a bachelor's degree with one year
of experience, and two held master's degrees
with two years of experience. The RDs were
supervised by a set of three assistant directors
(ADs) who each held relevant master's degrees
and had worked five or more years in the field.
All staff reported to the director of residence
life, a professional with more than 20 years of
student affairs experience. The department reported to the vice president of student affairs
(VPSA), a TUE faculty member with a scholarly background outside of student affairs.
The department served as the level of analysis for this study. Therefore, the experiences of
all student, staff, and administrative employ-

. . . nearly every RA and RD could
. . . repeat the rule confidently
and verbatim: "Keep yourself from
danger." Although the mandate was
clear and the value obviously shared
among staff, conversations that
probed further about keeping to the
rule revealed a more conflicted view.
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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3

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