The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 3 - 74

C. Daryl Healea * Patrick J. Hale

I think recruitment also includes the
mechanism of selection. There were good
things that were done. I saw that in my
group [interview] there were two other Asian
Americans, and it made me feel validated that
I belong in this process. If you encourage a
more diverse array of people to apply, then you
would get the kind of pool you're looking for.

Institutional Forces
All three data sources pointed beyond the department to larger institutional forces that
influenced recruitment of a diverse RA staff.
In particular, members of the focus group
with professional staff noted the challenges of
hiring a diverse staff when the numbers of underrepresented students were low at the university. "If the numbers look low, it's because
they are low campus-wide," said one professional staff member. In response, another professional surmised the following:
I think there is a bigger issue. When I think
about hiring practices and what we are
trying to achieve to create a more diverse
group of students, I can think of two different
approaches. First, there's the admissions level
to achieve more registrants. Second, there's
the cultural level, and culture can help us
to provide a more inviting environment to
bring students in. If the goal is to diversify
the student body, we should employ both
approaches.
Our participant observations and documentary evidence also pointed to larger institutional forces in that some departments appeared
to compete for students who were low in
numbers. If an underrepresented student, for
example, chose to study abroad one year, then
that decision would preclude the student from
serving as an RA during the same year. The

ranks of those studying abroad would diversify,
but not necessarily the ranks of those serving
as RAs. This might have had little effect on
recruiting a student from the majority population at a PWI, but when recruiting underrepresented students it entailed further limiting an
already limited pool of potential applicants.

Professional Staff Influence
When reviewing our data sources, we also
found a meaningful connection between the
professional staff and the RA staff. During
his participant observation, for example, one
researcher noted that professional staff from
racial and ethnic minority groups tended to
hire more RAs from racial and ethnic minority groups. Though the documentary evidence
did not provide the necessary details to verify
this observation, data from the focus group
with RAs did show that underrepresented students felt a strong connection to professional
staff who supported their unique identities
as underrepresented students. For instance,
one RA, who identified as African American,
recalled how a professional staff member responded during nationwide protests over Ferguson, Missouri, and Staten Island, New York.
"When Ferguson happened," she said, "I felt
supported by the . . . hall director, asking me
what we can do to address this issue." Another
RA, who also identified as African American,
chimed in, "That was what my director did,
and he was awesome! He opened the floor for
discussion, which was great. If that were a consistent thing, I think it would be good."
When members of the focus group with RAs
discussed the support of their professional staff,
the discussion shifted quickly to what could be
done to stimulate a more diverse RA applicant

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

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