The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1 - 47

Admonitory Norms in Housing and Residence Life

professional role expectations provide an important social control mechanism and indicate group norms (Merton, 1968). Therefore,
one strategy to discover normative structures
is to identify the behaviors group members
deem as unacceptable and serious enough to
deserve sanctions (Braxton et al., 2011; Durkheim, 1995 [1912]). These norms create moral
boundaries. Behaviors that result in harm and
prompt disapproval elicit varying degrees of
moral indignation (Durkheim, 1995 [1912]),
and the severity of sanctions individuals
regard as beﬁtting such proscribed behaviors
signals the degree of moral outrage they experience. Inviolable norms are behaviors that
require severe sanctions when crossed; ad-

Bray (2010) stressed the importance
of studying college administrators
and their behavioral expectations,
and this study responds to that call.

monitory norms are inappropriate behaviors
deserving of less harsh sanctions (Braxton &
Bayer, 1999).
The Association of College and University
Housing Ofﬁcers-International (ACUHO-I)
has promoted the establishment of professional standards through a variety of documents.
For example, the ACUHO-I Standards and
Ethical Principles for College and University
Housing Professionals (ACUHO-I, 2014) document provides explicit standards and guidelines for practice and policy. Although such

professional standards detail ethical principles, Friedson (1975) argued that informal
rules are a stronger means of social control
than formal rules. Informal rules or norms
among group members comprise normative
structures to guide professional behaviors.
These normative structures are an organized
set of values that governs group members' behaviors (Merton, 1968), and these structures
offer guidelines for appropriate and inappropriate professional actions.
In the companion article to the current
study, Hirschy, Wilson, and Braxton (2015)
identiﬁed six inviolable norms for HRLPs:
Careless Safeguarding, Self-Interested Action,
Insolent Insensitivity, Negligent Leadership,
Moral Turpitude, and Public Indiscretion.
Careless Safeguarding is the failure to protect
the welfare of others. Self-Interested Action
involves beneﬁtting oneself or one's family
or friends at the expense of clients. Insolent
Insensitivity demonstrates disrespect toward
others and a lack of support for diversity. Negligent Leadership is inadequate oversight, communication, supervision, or management by
directors or advisors. Moral Turpitude refers
to egregious abuse of authority or responsibility. Public Indiscretion indicates criminal
or ill-advised actions demonstrating a lack of
good judgment. These inviolable norms were
identiﬁed using the same statistical analyses
described in the ﬁndings section to identify
the admonitory norms.
An understanding of admonitory norms is
important for two reasons. First, the normative structure for HRL includes both inviolable
and admonitory norms. Therefore, this article
is a necessary companion to the one on inviolable norms (Hirschy et al., 2015). Second, the

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The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 43, No. 1

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