FIRST PERSON

This Dean Gig

When you become a dean of students, be prepared to be viewed as the problem and the solution

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By JACK SLAY JR.

On my first day as dean of students, I walked into the office confident, invigorated, ready to dean. My new boss, the vice president of student life, welcomed me and, simultaneously, reached into a bottom drawer and pulled out a Ziploc bag bulging with what looked like green lawn trimmings.

"Maintenance found this when they cleaned the residence halls," she said. "I need you to deal with it. Here's the student's name and number."

"Those aren't lawn trimmings, are they?" I asked.

"Welcome aboard," she grinned.

It came to me, this dean of students gig, unbidden. I assumed the job experientially naked. I had a trio of degrees in English literature and nearly 20 years behind the podium (12 of those at LaGrange College, a private liberal-arts college in southwest Georgia) as a professor of writing and literature, a job I genuinely enjoyed.

Along the way, I'd taken on the task of chairing the freshman seminar, which, in turn, brought me into cahoots with the student-life crew. I worked summer orientations and during freshman welcome week, assignments that provided frequent contact with students far outside the classroom.

When the college's current dean of students left (lured, I think, by the siren song of California and corporate law), the vice president came a-calling to offer me the job. I thought about it, said no, thought some more, and, eventually, crossed over.

I spent the rest of that first morning on the telephone in my new office discussing the color, size, and shape of parking permits, and trying to order new ones for the campus. As a faculty member, I had received a tag in the campus mail at the beginning of every school year. I would slip it onto my rearview mirror and never think about it again. Parking and its litany of headache-inducing details were for others to worry about.

Turns out that many of those headaches belong to the dean of students.

I learned that quickly during my first week as students began to file into my office, parking tickets and excuses in hand. My first complaint came from a student who had parked in a fire lane — but only because it was in front of the library and he had to return a stack of books that were already several weeks overdue. Another student who came in had parked in the president's spot (the sole reserved slot on the campus) — but only for a few minutes and only because the business office had insisted that she come by and take care of a billing situation. Technically, both students explained, the tickets were the college's fault.

Arguing the tenets of parking, it turned out, was decidedly different from arguing the rules of grammar. Everyone has an opinion on parking, and the campus regulations are not quite as clear as The Elements of Style.

For lunch (which didn't come until nearly 2 p.m. that first day, something that had never happened in my life as a faculty member), I dashed over to the cafeteria for a quick sandwich and encountered another pair of students and their complaints. One wanted to contest an alcohol write-up. Yes, he had been drinking in his dorm room, and, yes, he understood that ours was a dry campus and that any form of alcohol was against the rules, but he had taken the beer to his room only because it would have spoiled in his car overnight and he didn't have the money to buy more.

The other student explained that, yes, she did have a small Labrador in her campus apartment, and, yes, she did realize that pets were prohibited, but she had the dog only because her mom was allergic and her dad was fed up with the creature's incontinence.

Between bites of my tuna on rye, I explained campus policy, all laid out in the student handbook — which I had read (well, fairly significant chunks of it) for the first time the night before.

None of that prepared me for what was to come in the days ahead.

Writing about public reaction to "The Lottery" and the numerous letters she and The New Yorker received in the days after the story's publication in 1948, Shirley Jackson said, "Judging from these letters, people who read stories are gullible, rude, frequently illiterate, and horribly afraid of being laughed at."

I would say much the same about certain parents I have had to deal with, although I would add "angry" and "obstinate" to the catalog. As a professor of English, I often received a thank you or a passing compliment from visiting parents. As a dean of students, I get mostly bile and complaint.

My first parent encounter came after a few months on the job. I entered my office one morning to find a student's mother, a woman furious and fed-up beyond consoling or reasoning. Her son "Trevor," a freshman, had been beleaguered by a series of unfortunate events, one of those poor souls perpetually in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Just a couple of weeks into the semester, a rowdy band of students thought it would be funny to run roughshod through the campus parking lot and egg some cars. Trevor's truck was one of their targets. The attack caused more damage than you might think, chipping paint and creating dents — a yolky hailstorm. A few weeks after that, Trevor decided that he had had it with his roommate, a young man with a penchant for midnight Jazzercise marathons and weekend slumber parties. The straw that broke Trevor's collegiate back occurred when someone slipped into his unlocked room and stole his collection of state quarters. Why he brought it to a campus dormitory, or why he left his room unlocked when he ventured to class that morning, I never ascertained.

The tsunami of ill fortune proved too much for Trevor and he, unfortunately, withdrew before completing his first semester. His mom was there seeking retribution, perhaps vengeance. She wanted an apology and restitution. She was angry beyond words, furious that the college had failed her son — and every blessed ounce of her ire was aimed at me. For Trevor's mom, I was the college and all of its mistakes and missteps.

After a long hour, Trevor's mom left, dissatisfied and still angry.

Several days later, I received a phone call from another dissatisfied customer. "Is this the dean of students?" the caller asked. "This is 'Billie's' dad."

Long pause.

Sigh.

"We have a problem," Billie's dad said.

I have since come to know the long pause, the sigh, the tone. None of them bode well for a dean of students. Turns out that Billie was a student who had lost her academic scholarships the semester before and, as a consequence, had transferred. Her father was calling to clean up behind her tumultuous first year.

Billie's dad: "Billie really needed tutoring."

Me: "We have a tutoring center and a writing center, both open every evening, both staffed by — "

Billie's dad: "She stopped attending two of her classes this spring and got F's in both. The college should've contacted me after her first absence."

Me: "Well, we stay in touch with each student as best we can, but — "

Billie's dad: "Billie also accumulated over $700 in parking fines. The college should have contacted me after the first ticket."

Me: "Billie apparently chose to ignore the tickets and as a consequence — "

Billie's dad: "The college should have done more."

What I discovered in those encounters was that, for some parents, the college will never do enough, and that, as dean of students, my contract, between the lines, states that I am "the immediate solver of all student woes, the calmer of rough academic seas, the blower-uponer of every collegiate scrape and boo-boo." Parents apparently receive that version of my contract in triplicate.

Few problems that land on my desk, I've learned, are resolved quickly. But with time has come experience, and with experience has come knowledge and realization. The "pot" from that first morning turned out to be green tea (as verified by my resident expert, a certified counselor and former drama major). Parking decals, I now know, should be ordered early, but even if you do, that will do nothing to alleviate the legion of complaints. With tickets and fines, I've learned to stick to policy: If you violate it, you pay for it.

With parents and others who come to me with complaints, I now understand that it is rarely, if ever, personal. As an administrator, I embody the college for these folks: I am the problem and I am the solution. I've learned patience, perseverance, empathy. In the end, it's not really me they're upset with; rather, it's the college, the system, the infernal way of the world. So I nod, I listen, I seek compromise and solution.

Several years down the academic road, with those first weeks just a memory, I'm still plugging away as a dean of students. And far more often than not, I find myself quite proud to be this college.