Training Date: March 3, 2021
Tim Touchette: Hello everybody welcome will give folks a few more minutes to jump in, and then we will get started. I see some some familiar names and faces so welcome thanks for joining.
Julian Cancino: Hello, and welcome. It is my pleasure to welcome you to our gender inclusive housing, I also see some familiar faces and I'm glad to see some new faces. I am Julian Cancino, director of the Gender and Sexuality Center and I am so excited to have this presentation, with our colleagues here at Brandeis so. We'll know Tim and we'll know Mel and I am delighted that they're going to talk to us about their work in Res-life, so the presentation will be brief for about 30 minutes and then we'll open it up for Q and A and discussion, so please join me in welcoming Mel and Tim.
Tim Touchette: Hi everybody good to see you. Julian one thing we forgot to do before we started was host co hosting so I can share my screen. We were just chatting away like old friends and completely forgot to do what we were supposed to do 10 minutes before. There we go alright. Not that I don't want to see all of you. Mel and I are excited to chat with you for those of you that don't know me, my name is Tim and I'm an assistant Dean at Brandeis focusing on community living, which is our language for Res-life and housing, also the orientation program for our new incoming students and I coach here the university's care team. And so that's the work that I do, and I want to let Mel introduce herself.
Mel Smith: Hi everybody, my name is Melody Smith, but I go by Mel. I'm the associate director of operations within Community living, so the best way to describe what I do is pretty much anything logistical that has to do with our residence halls. So I helped oversee posing selection, which is coming up soon, health and safety inspections, move-in/move-out and other just kind of random things and I've been at Brandeis for almost two years now.
Tim Touchette: Thanks Mel so what we're going to give you at the beginning, is kind of the 30,000 foot overview of gender inclusive housing at Brandeis. We will talk to you about what it looks like for first year students. And we'll talk to you what it looks like for upper class students, so that sophomores juniors and seniors. We'll also be able to send you this after the presentation in PDF form because it does contain the links to the two sections of the websites pretty much our world is always split up into what we do for first year and what we do for upper class because there's just developmentally some different things going on and then also the physicality of the spaces really does change what we're able to offer. And that continues to develop, as we continue to look at our facilities. And where we assign students, so I want to jump in and talk about first year so gender inclusive housing for first year students is exciting for us because it's still relatively new, we were able to renovate two of our eight first year facilities, a few years ago, and when we did that we worked with the city of Waltham to go above and beyond what the current building code is and we actually allocated some gender inclusive restrooms into those facilities. We took some older lounge space that really wasn't being used closed it in and added single stall restrooms to those facilities so prior to that there really wasn't a safe and truly inclusive space for anyone who wanted gender inclusive housing, as a first year students, so we always struggled with that. Since then, it actually hasn't really been a struggle at all, and the only struggle we have had it sometimes there are more students that actually. asked for it than we think we can accommodate but, once we get into the process and actually speak with them. We find out there's still some confusion about what gender inclusive and coed means, especially for international students who are not familiar with the concept as it exists here in America. So gender inclusive housing is available it's available for all first year, students and basically what happens is we work with admissions. The admission cycle usually starts for us in the application process around may 1 that's the big date. May 1 is when the application goes live. And there is a little checkbox on that App that asks students if they're interested in this, and we also added a few years ago and consultation with different student groups, the Union and also the GSC at that point in time. A little explanation about what it actually is, and it also links them to the website which better explains what it is and that did alleviate some of the confusion from our international students and other students as well. But there's still some people that do apply for it, that don't actually understand what it what it really means, so this is some of the newer language that's featured on our website that talks about. What gender inclusive housing actually is. And, as I was referencing before the two buildings that we renovated are in North quad so all of our first year facilities in North quad feature --- actually sorry, one of our facilities in North park feature three floors containing gender inclusive bathrooms and then one of the other buildings also has some gender inclusive restrooms on the first floor as well, so there are two facilities in North that are basically the newest of our eight and we hope to continue as capital is made available to us; to renovate the rest of the six buildings and do the same thing to those buildings, as well, which will really open our capacity even farther. Like I mentioned before, there really hasn't been a year when, once we speak with students and confirm that this is what they want-- we haven't ever turned anybody away from gender inclusive housing, as a first year student, we always have the capacity. These happened to be the two larger facilities that we have so we're able to kind of move rooms around and make other rooms available so that students truly have access. So as a freshman yes, this does mean that you can indicate you want to live in a gender inclusive floor and that also could mean that you are assigned to someone else that has a different gender marker than you. This is a common place where students who identify as transgender. work with our office to get assigned into and commonly we are working to make connections with students who identify as trans with other students who identify as trans with their permission, of course. It actually do make some meaningful and lasting friendships as a result of that and truly do create a unique experience and one that is very inclusive. that's not always the case we're not always able to match students, the rooms in these buildings are doubles and singles, so there is always the opportunity for a student to live in a single as well if that's what they prefer. So moral the story first year students, we do allow it all they have to do is tell us that they wanted, and then we connect with them during the assignment process and book them into one of these two buildings so I'm going to turn it to Mel to talk to you about upper class.
Mel Smith: yeah so we're getting ready to start this process. Our housing selection application actually just went live on Monday so you're definitely jumping in and getting ready for students to select their housing for the next academic year. baffling that that's already happening, but here we are it's march again friends so with upper class students. We have Oh, I would say, a larger amount of opportunities for students to live in gender inclusive housing, because we have spaces for sophomores juniors and seniors. So basically what happens for upper class students is they actually get the opportunity to select who they want to live with. So they are able to match with students in our housing system and form what we call roommate groups and these roommate groups can be made of students that are all the same gender or they can be mixed so, for example, we have a suite style building or a suite area it's called Ziv quad there's suites of six people and out of that you know group of six, they can all have you know all really pretty much. You know, be mixed gender have you know different identities, but all choose to live together and then choose to live together in zip through the housing process. We do have a couple of our buildings. So village, for example, that has single stall bathrooms so um you know it is pretty much you go in the bathroom you have access to everything and you were the only person in the bathroom at that time, so it does allow our students to have a bit more opportunity and a bit more selection of where they want to live on campus because they are not confined to just Oh, if I want you know, a gender neutral restroom I need to live in village because that's the only building that has this option. They do have the flexibility to again really pick and choose who they want to live with and create the experience that they're looking for for the next year. So a lot of the Tim just clicked over so we do use a lot of different terms when it comes to our housing process so single gender, like Tim was talking about, those are floors within our East quad East quad is made up of hassonfeld and pomerance and mostly sophomores live in that space. This year we do have first years as well, and then North in the cellar our first year quad so single gender again it's all you know all male identifying students are all female identifying students on one floor. Mixed gender a floor or community that has ...you have students of any gender those can be found in all of those buildings listed there, so I won't read all of them, for you, but it is again a mix of our first year sophomore junior and senior housing. And then gender inclusive so housing option, in which two or more students may share a multiple occupancy bedroom and mutual agreement. And so what that is is them forming the roommate groups before they begin the housing selection process where they're actually going into our system and selecting a space. Most of our students who do that choose our suite or apartment style, but we did have a couple. Last year a couple of groups of students who requested to live in a double in a quarter space together which we also allow that but typically they do lean more towards selecting the suite or apartment style so they have a single bedroom and they share a common space and or a bathroom with others in their suite or apartment.
Tim Touchette: Yeah so basically the biggest difference in any of our housing is the difference between mixed gender and gender inclusive and I think that's where a lot of confusion lies. So the biggest point on this slide is the mixed gender like Mel said it's it's a mixture of genders within a suite or a common space, but not the actual bedroom itself. Gender inclusive is a mixture of everything, including the bedrooms and that's where I think sometimes our students get hung up on that as well. They don't understand the difference between the two, but that's essentially the difference it's mixed gender and a suite or common area or mixed gender inside of a room. Our system currently only marks male or female, as the gender and with the introduction of work day there is a lot of discussion about letting students. Self identify, or at least identify a preferred identity, a gender identity and so that would be really exciting to see come through our system does have the capability for us to monitor. You know, a legal where our birth, gender and then also a preferred gender and that is something that industry wide has really started to take off. And so we're very much in conversations with with the work day team in conjunction with the GSC Julian's around a lot of those conversations as well about not only that, but but preferred names and other identities being logged into the system as well, so those conversations continue but for now, we do have a process for both virtual students and upperclassmen to either self identify or self select with very little assistance from us in the process. And in one of the previous slides there it did mention that brand is really is ahead of the curve when it comes to providing gender inclusive housing Brandeis has been doing this for upperclassman for 30 plus years and really allowing students to book their own spaces --- Book their own suites with exactly who they want to live with, and we really don't get involved as long as they're able to fill the suite. And there are no concerns when there are concerns, obviously we get involved, but a majority of our students. They know and build you know, like Mel said, this is the application period for housing selection and once we start getting into the selection period the anxiety level starts to raise a little bit because everybody wants that premier space with their you know X number of friends and they really don't care about the gender identity of their friends and they book with who they think they're going to be successful, living with and that tends to take the priority in the conversations at least that's what we see. We are stepping into new territory this year with some additional room selection assistance where students can pair up with others who are looking for for roommates or suite mates. We've done variations of this in the past and it doesn't really have to do with gender identity, but it can, if that's one of the identities or or something that's important to the student who's looking for a potential roommate. Because there isn't really any occupancy except, with the exception of a few beds and Charles wherever where students can choose to live by themselves in their own contain department they're always going to be sharing the space with somebody else. And so it's just really important that we offer opportunities for students from any identity to meet with others who might be a person shorten a group or two people short or have no one else to group with which does happen at Brandeis. And so we are creating some new roommate Finder tools and also some connection points for students, which is going to be very difficult, this year, being virtual. But I think students have become more fluid with being online and stepping in and out of online spaces to get business done so I think we'll be okay with that as well, we also do just for for all of your knowledge offer multiple checkpoints with students through the housing selection process, both in person and virtually. So if students do have questions or they really like to get in the weeds, especially with stats This is something we run up against every single year. They want to get in the weeds on stats and they want to know what's my number going to get me. And it's always a shot in the dark, because every year we change something slightly about the process that really makes. The year hard to compare to other things, and this is one of those years, so this year. In the selection process the students had let us know that they really wish, we would just open all types of housing and not separate them by group size and so we're trying that this year, which completely makes it impossible for us to predict what their number will be worth this year and that's going to be hard for them to understand, so we left all the stats up from the last couple of years for them to look at, but it really won't help them understand what their number will be worth we can of course do our best. But we will also be doing a lot of guessing this year, the way we get around that as we tell students always have backup plans, so you can have your pie in the sky, this is really what I want and can't wait to live in Ridgewood with my five best friends, but there are four apartments like that, and so students think our facilities are a lot bigger and and can hold a lot more people than they actually can. And so it becomes a challenge when they don't get their first choice, but we work with them our entire team works with every single student of the process to really get them where they need to be. We do. I want to advance, but I want to, I want to stop sharing, so we can see faces and hands, if they are raised, because. This part is really more interactive and we do have some questions that we can throw out an answer, if need be, but feel free to drop your questions, either in the chat or raise your hand or unmute and Miller, I will do our best to answer your questions. I know, people are eating too that's totally cool.
Dvora Pemstein: Hey Tim, I have a question.
Tim Touchette: Go for it.
Dvora Pemstein: Thanks, so I'm wondering, with the new potential in Workday for people to identify as genders, other than male or female, are there, opportunities for non binary students coming in his first year students to request to be with other non binary students.
Tim Touchette: Yeah that actually already exists, it just takes us a little longer to get to that to that. You know place if they are non binary and they indicate they want gender neutral housing they're already going to be in the pool or gender, inclusive housing rather they're already going to be in the pool of students inquiring. So what we do is we actually touch base with all those students to get a little bit more information and in that process that's where we're able to make those types of connections. Ultimately, when workday starts to do what I hope it is able to do, especially with gender markers then it takes out whole part of the process right out and enables us to kind of zoom right in and it alleviates a step really for students to maybe potentially have to tell their story or you know and that's a big deal, especially in gender identity with identity in general. Having to tell your story or feel like you're defending yourself is hard so we try to make that as easy and as smooth as possible and people have really appreciated those conversations, so I do feel we're doing it the right way. But it's hard and we recognize that it's difficult for people to disclose especially starting a new, you know we were actually just talking about this and staff meeting, the other day, when you are in that transition period between an old place you know high school and a new place like college some folks. Especially folks struggling or potentially transitioning with identity. You know development; they're really looking forward to being in a new place because all those new people don't really know anything about what what they may have been identified as before, and we want to make that transition as smooth as possible, so that's something that we look forward to keep having conversations about.
Mel Smith: And Dvora I would say we have had students on last summer before some changes happened, and they decided whether or not we're actually going to join us on campus or not. Do to COVID... Well, we have had students in the past, who before we even get to the point of reaching out to them they've already emailed us and they've said hey I failed on my application this way. What I mean by that is this and I'm looking to be hopefully paired up with a student who also identifies as this, or you know students who are transitioning that say you know I come up in your system, as this, but I actually identify a different way can you ensure that I am placed in a housing, that is-- you know what I'm looking for, and so we always will you know, make a note of those requests, so that we're actually doing assignments, we basically go back and like double check the students on our list to ensure that, where they are is what they were you know what they were looking for.
Tim Touchette: One of the other exciting things to that happened this last year, while everyone had all this free time with COVID... joke, joke, joke, but the we worked really hard with the ID office to make some changes to how ID cards which you're required to carry with you at all times and used to get into your residence halls but the printing and the formatting of those cards changed, so the students preferred name now shows up on the front of the card and their legal name shows up on the back of the card. And so they're able to present an ID card now and that information is also transmitting to all of our systems. It's awesome and I have to say, the number of students who have said, you know it's really cool that I can pick what name I want to be referred to as that that's a real thing and that's, not just for students with with different names and what their their gender marker matches up with or traditional or non traditional names it's also pretty significant for international students, who have a legal name or a name that they're known by at home, but do not use that name at all in America and have chosen a completely separate name. And that is something that is already set up to go into work day so that's pretty exciting. It makes our job is really hard, because sometimes we go to search for folks and we can't find them and it takes a little bit longer, but if that's something that we have to do to meet our students, where they're at we are all committed to absolutely doing that. So it's been... it's been very interesting when somebody says, "Oh, I talked with this person and you go to look them up and you're like. nope can't find that person, so you really have to start doing digging luckily our system lets us look people up by all sorts of different little pieces of information and that ultimately gets us back to their their main record. Jim.
Jim McCormack: Hi Tim, um it sounds like like we're kind of meeting our needs right now, what do we, what are we thinking about going forward you do you see an increase in demand, and you know, like is there a. Is there any kind of outline for what residents, we want to attack next or where we think we're going to need to expand to?
Tim Touchette: Yeah great question. Actually just met with capital, two weeks ago, and you know full well the the constraints were under with with money and supply of capital for renovations but I did review with the capital request folks that the other six first year facilities are in dire need of repair and renovation and when we do those. We already have an understanding with the city of Waltham that we we go above and beyond bathroom capacity and residences so we would mirror what we've done in those other facilities which would open up more access for students. Meeting the need, on the upperclassmen side has been easy, because all of our facilities can can work for them and it's really up to them, I think one of the things we've talked about to. With the GSC and and with folks in the ICC as well is identity based housing. And there's this interesting space right now that people are in where they there's some energy around that but it's no different than any other year and what we find is students often collect in groups and start to say that they want identity based housing, because they actually think it's a way to one up other people in the housing selection process. And that's problematic for a lot of different reasons, the other thing with identity based housing, which we have had. An all different varying forms over the years is a lot of the places where those communities are most successful happen to be in some of our most expensive facilities. And so it really puts students who might not be able to afford a Ridgewood or or a skyline in a unique position. And so we've worked really hard with financial services to start the conversation to identify if there's any way that we can fill the gap between what they can actually afford and and the program that they might want to be engaged in. So these kind of like to ask there's the money asked for the buildings and then there's also the money asked for potential scholarships or donor funds to help students who might want to be involved in a gender and sexuality common cause community that's what we've called them before they're they're called C threes. Previously, when we actually had the castle in our inventory, there were a common cause communities all over the castle because those were suites. So there'd be a suite of five people that were really interested in gaming there'd be a suite of five people that were interested in gender and sexuality. There was a suite there were two suites next to me when I first moved to Brandeis in 2014 I sold my house and my family moved. We didn't have anywhere to live, so we moved into the castle for a short time, that was a unique experience in and of itself. But the I happen to have a music see three next to me and a gender and sexuality see three next to me. And they used to bake my family and I cakes and cookies and bring them over and invite us over for presentations and things like that-- and apologize for being so loud, because the music folks thought that they're really loud they weren't that loud the walls are rocks and sounded and travel through them, but those are just examples of some of the common cause and identity housing that we've had in the past. We're open to that discussion again in the future, just identifying that there's this strange gap of money that we just don't have an infinite pool of money to be able to help students get into some of those spaces, and so we will continue that conversation and see what we can come up with. You ever have any leftover money Jim, in facilities, you let me know.
Jim McCormack: You'll be the first person I call.
Tim Touchette: I appreciate that. Other questions, comments.
Farrah Rubenstein: Tim sure hi everyone I don't know a lot of you fair Rubinstein I work in I am also an alum class of 97 and I have a lot of fun memories of shared interest housing in Ridgewood like the old yucky (inaudible) which was like a thing. Back then, back in the day and create a lot of Community I'm just, I just wanted to ask him with my I have on I know runs framework talks a lot about residential residential college experience in building community in residence halls and living spaces so I'm wondering would common cause Community or shared interest housing be another layer of that or does one subsume the other within that within his framework structure and potential directive.
Tim Touchette: So the interesting part is the there's kind of like an overlay. What... Best practices in the field right now for first year housing are telling us for retention is that an affinity building for your area that that students that are in cohort models are more successful overall that's not a that's not a traditional university Brandeis is not a not a traditional University in many ways, because our students are super high achieving. And one of the things we run into is if the program if we offer a program that doesn't have any inherent or obvious academic value the students are far less likely to be want to be involved in it. And so we've tried, a number of different ways of doing living and learning communities, which is what they're usually called that and most other schools. We've had leader scholar communities which had faculty members leading small groups of students, they were way too expensive, they were originally a yield tool and they didn't do their job. So what we were already considering prior to the president's framework and then everything got pause to to cope it obviously was. A residential education curriculum which which really encompassed living and learning communities that are theme based. And so the theme could be one of a million different things, I was previously at northeastern and we had about 40 different llc is. About 20 of them were academically based and the other 24 lifestyle based so things like some of the things probably that were existing in Ridgewood when you were there, there are media music performance engineering, stem, math, all of the academic ones nursing pre MED, but then there are also other ones that were wellness housing substance free housing. You know, and the list really can go on and on and and those things have changed so much over the last few years. That it's it's really difficult because the recruitment cycle for first year students is already well in progress it's there, it was already happening back in December. It was already happening back as far as October and so when we make policy changes it takes a full additional cycle for them to kick in and so much happens in that amount of time that you know, the new hip llc that we came up with for this year, possibly might not be contemporary enough for the incoming class the next cycle so we're always talking about that with Jen and the enrollment team, I think a starting point for us once things settle down will be to start to unveil and roll out the different living learning communities will start small and see what the interest is in the application pool and then kind of make the decision from there, but we do need. The supportive colleagues all across the institution, because we don't have a curriculum team in in community living we didn't have a position up for residential education, but it was paused due to coded so there's I mean you know there's so many folks fighting for the same pot of money. But I do think that there is a place for that in the residence halls our residence halls we're also up against the problem of a shortage of common space for programming. And so those eight buildings that we have in the two closet Mel was talking about there's one central programming space in each quad. And so you can't even have a meeting with your with your quad inside because we don't have space for that and so that's another piece of the conversation with the capital team and we start to renovate not only for these issues, but for. For accessibility issues as well, is to try to find spaces, that we can build common space for programming and not to bore you with those details, but if you're familiar with North the way those buildings are situated there is some space in between, where we could connect two buildings together create an elevator and lift stack. But also create some classroom spaces and programming space that could be used for a lot of what we're talking about here so there's definitely things we can do, and things that we've thought about now I don't know if you have any thoughts on that as well.
Mel Smith: Do you took the words right out of my mouth when you started talking about common spaces we're actually in the middle of our recruitment selection process for our Community advisors for next year too, so lots of things happening in our in our department for usual and for Community advisors who are currently Community advisors that want to return. We actually asked them to do give us a small presentation we gave them like some imaginary money and said, like How would you improve your your area that you're currently in and I did around 10 interviews and for many ca's who live in these buildings like Tim was saying that lack that actual comments things. That was in every single one of their presentations was we need study space we need allowed for us to do programs, we need you know, like kitchen space we need they need more shared space because it is really challenging for RCA is to try to do programs when the only really open spaces like standing in the lobby. Because there's not actually a lounge in their building, so I definitely I am I am a huge believer that the more open space, you have for residents in an area to come together for a program or just on their own really I think just better builds a community and helps. I think our residents on campus feel like they are at home and feel a connection and a better sense of belonging. Because right now, especially do decoded many of them are just in their rooms and they don't have that common space to go to in the building so it's even more isolating then. It has been in past year, so I hope that that will be something that we can add to those areas, you know, in the future with hopefully some capital that comes our way.
Tim Touchette: I think I saw a hand. Go ahead.
ChaeRan Freeze: Hello, thank you for this presentation I'm ChaeRan Freeze and I'm the Chair of the WGS department and I wanted to talk about an ask about...so WGS used to run a queer academics and activism summer program for high school students for the past two years, and it was done through pre college programs, but they have discontinued that program and we are thinking about transferring this program to pre orientation and I just spoke with Jenny about running this from August 20 to 22nd as a three day pre-orientation program for first years and some sophomores who didn't have the opportunity to be in an orientation and make connections. And I was wondering if it would be possible to work with your office and, with it, with your team to maybe promote this pre-orientation program which focuses on. Both kind of academic approaches to queer issues, some of the areas that we cover in our faculty would teach these seminars on art, health, education and religion, but we also have an activism like minutes well to help students become engaged with social justice and inclusivity. And I was going to talk to you about this tomorrow, but I was wondering, is there space for this kind of pre college pre orientation program some way to advertise it among the students, who might be interested in connecting with other students, before the actual orientation on the I think 22nd it would be like a day and a half.
Tim Touchette: Yeah and Jenna I just talked to Jenny about this this morning, so actually I worked pretty closely with pre college programs they used to be in our division and with this pre college program specifically because they were actually issues with non-binary students and transgender students in housing not feeling safe, so we modified where they were living and also gave them access to one of our more unique first year facilities so that they could have more gender inclusive housing and help walk them through what that would look like you know how we do it during the traditional year and how they could do it in the summer so I'm very familiar with the group. There is a place for pre-orientation programs the program is run in conjunction with Jenny, even if it is with upperclassmen. The-- there is a cost for that there's there's some non recoverable costs for rooms outside of the contract, so we could work with you and get you that information. It's very easy to do with first year students, because of the way their assignment on arrival works it's a little bit more challenging if you open it upperclassmen as well. However, the counseling Center does have a pre-orientation program that uses both it's for first year, students and upperclassmen. So I'd recommend if you want to see if you want more information about how they were able to do their program maybe connect with Amy Scoobey Carol, who's the new Director there. The reality for us is as long as you have a program you're either able to cover the costs or you charge the students, the cost, we can help you with that as well. Then we would approve it for you and make the arrangements to make sure that their rooms were ready it's important to note that they would move into their fall room. For your program they wouldn't move into a special space together, but we would allow the sophomores and whoever else to come back early, we would get them approved. And then we would just work with you on how you wanted to handle the fees So yes, we definitely do that and that's actually something that's been increasing over the last few years. Jenny used to run about for pre orientation programs, and now I think it's up to seven or eight. And there's even more requests this year for different programs, especially after COVID everybody is just so we just want to get back to normal in reach out and create. Better you know transitional programs from outside of Brandeis into branding so it's whenever you're ready just reach out and Jenny can be your conduit she also reports to me, so we would work on that and make that happen for you. Yeah absolutely. That's exciting. Any other questions folks are thinking about.
Dvora Pemstein: Um I have one other question just with my family liaison hat on. Which is to what extent do you work with admissions to make sure that they are adequately describing to prospective students and to their families, what our options are and how we offer Community for folks who are looking for gender inclusive housing I'm... Just that's you know I asked that both as as with my family liaison hat on, and also as my person with two kids looking at college, right now, and knowing how different schools do a really good or bad job at describing different things. But you know just feeling like there's such a variety of students and staff who are interfacing with prospective students and I think that what we have is not -- it's not exactly cutting edge but it's very important and for the people who are looking for it um you know they might not want to have to ask. So I guess I'm just wondering like what that vibe is like and how, how is admissions using this information to support new students coming in, and also, therefore, to support you guys.
Tim Touchette: Yeah. We know, and I usually interface with admissions at several points throughout the recruitment cycle, I am on an enrollment strategies group that meets every other week, and so I keep the more senior folks in the loop on any significant changes. To either this or other things that would impact the recruitment process that they're doing, but then we also have the opportunity kind of in two different ways, one to work with the person who is spearheading the entire recruitment processes which is usually a director or. A collaboration between a couple of associate and assistant directors and so those folks Mel works with really closely on the portal and the the... All of the information that's on the admissions facing side that a student would see and they really do redirect a lot of these types of questions to us, specifically the other way, that we are able to communicate is the live chats the virtual. Open houses and different things like that that admissions hosts. And actually now that you even host as well is, we have a bunch of different checkpoints and opportunities to share this information with students. I remember it comes up at least once during the cycle that that a parent or a student will ask us this exact question and just want to know what it actually means. And Mel are you do you think of any other ways I mean we get a ton of emails on this as well, mainly from other schools, asking us how we do it.
Mel Smith: It's yeah yeah I definitely think that there is like a just general like you're asking question question about housing so we're going to send you directly to housing to get the answer. I definitely think that there's always room for improvement, and like actually like it may be giving admission somewhere answers they feel like they can at least give like a running start and then also refer them to us. I think that that's just something that I think sometimes first years as they're also trying to get answers, then they're being bounced from place to place or also like: "Wait but now I'm confused like what what I don't even know what my question was anymore," so I definitely think that there's always still room for for improvement, but yes, for the most part, it has been a connection from admissions right to. Our DC email inbox or even directly just to my inbox of like you know the student has a specific question, can you help them. And usually it's responding in an email if it's like a quick question or me asking you know for a phone number, they want to set up a zoom and chat so I've had. You know a few conversations with parents or students and their parents about you know kind of the difference, the differences in housing options and things like that for for incoming first years it's great Thank you.
Tim Touchette: It's funny in 2016 - 17 when that was the really the first year we were doing it for first year students, that was the biggest change because now we had. Truly gender inclusive housing for first year students, we would get random G chats from admissions people on the road back when people used to travel, think of that. And they would be like I'm at a college, fair and West, you know West Maryland and the students asked me what is it can you just explain to me one more time and we had already done a lot of training with with the admissions folks at the time it and there's a ton of turnover and admissions similar to our world admissions community living, these are all stepping stones into the profession, so a lot of the admissions counselors who were assigned to different territories, they either move up or move on and admission, so we are consistently reaching out and making sure if there are any questions. They're getting the questions to us and I'm pretty confident, they are getting to us to Mel's point they kind of do the housing and they like shoot the messages sent off, I mean you see this every day before, but there are there are enough folks there that I think understand the process, it does make me think maybe we should touch base again.
Dvora Pemstein: No, but actually something you just said, maybe want to give you what I think is really good feedback like really like positive feedback, which is that um you're saying that admissions and sending people to you, and that is so good, because what we see at some other schools is that when you ask these questions you're actually immediately sent to the gender and sexuality Center which makes it feel like oh-- I'm special and I need to go to the special office to be accommodated rather than this is a housing issue and the housing folks are familiar with it and are able to answer it like any other question about housing, and so I just want to give you guys huge props because that is, it is definitely I think as a as a parent and for students, it just feels a lot better when it's normal.
Tim Touchette: That's great to hear and that's what we're trying to do so that that really works thanks. We don't get many compliments so.
Dvora Pemstein: You guys know I love you.
Tim Touchette: People understand and know what we do, but we don't get. Very many compliments.
Mel Smith: It might be true I would also say I am I'm a huge believer that especially for the work that I do like being a little logistical side, sometimes things that make sense to me do not make sense to other people who are outside of what I'm doing. So I always like to use our website and our social media as like a test, so if you are on our website if you're on our social media if you see things that you read and you're like. I don't understand what this means, please send me an email directly and like link the website page and be like I don't understand what this means because. If you don't understand it students won't understand it, and so we are definitely working on ensuring that the information that we're putting out there is like clear and concise but also. Explaining and like supporting the students, so I just wanted to put that out there as well, that if anyone sees anything feel free to just send me an email, and we can look into it, to ensure that information that we have out there, makes sense to students and their families.
Tim Touchette: Anything else anybody's thinking of.
Tara Whitehurst: Tim, this is Tara sorry I'm in a place where I can't have my camera on now, but um well you're talking about the engineers or housing and I know people also may self identify POC and I was wondering that you know, at some point that we could talk about maybe also connecting...
Tim Touchette: We lost you for a second there. Technology. Are you still there? Ah maybe she'll come back, I would have loved to know at the end of that statement-- oh she's gone all together now.
Jim McCormack: You're like a news anchor right now just waiting.
Tim Touchette: Like wait it's just in. What to do? Where where do you look? When things.
Jim McCormack: Let's go to whether.
Tim Touchette: I'll follow up with Tara to see what the actual question was. Any other questions thoughts, the other piece, you know offer that we would send from the department is just if you ever have somebody. That you're working with who needs a little bit of help, or they need a safe space to be able to talk. Our team has an extensive amount of training in dealing with all different types of students in varying identities and many of us have had a lot of personal experience with students and helping them through. This is the discovery phase, and this is the time of their lives, where they have a safe space where they can actually be who they want to be, asked the questions that they want to ask and not feel judged and that's for any identity. And, and we really do try to foster that environment a COVID has made it very difficult for us, we don't get to see the students as much as we used to. In our office, but our staff is still very much dealing with students out in the residence halls, our team has been there, the whole time through all of it with several other offices as well, so. If you're ever working with somebody and they just they need somebody to talk with or they want to just talk about my favorite thing is, when people reach out to us in there, they have hypotheticals. And you're like: this is about you isn't it? And you have to kind of like move through that conversation at the right moment to to bring that up, but once they feel comfortable with you and know that you're actually a human being, who cares. The guard comes down and then often they they actually just present what they want to present or they bring the friend that they're asking about. We offer that in either virtual or real life capacity, however, we can help, not just around issues surrounding gender inclusive housing, but anything at all our team really is committed to making sure that students have a successful and fun time at Brandeis whatever that means for them, and we really do take that to heart. Julie, do we leave any unanswered questions on on the list.
Julian Cancino: I think that we have covered of the questions that we had said, so thank you so much for your presentation I seen the chat that people have found it to be informative and I'm so glad that there was a lot of conversation among different offices, so thank you again, and thanks all of you for joining us we'll see you next month and have a good night.
Tim Touchette: Everybody. Have a good day.
Mel Smith: Thanks everybody.