Staying at Starfleet Academy During Winter Break - How Colleges Support Students Who Don't Go Home.

 

Michael Pillar once said that when working on The Next Generation, he had to write “Family” because he couldn’t have the episode following Best of Both Worlds be back to business as usual because Picard needed time to heal after going through something so traumatic. After the events aboard the Miyazaki, it’s time for a break. Like Picard, the Starfleet Academy folks need time to heal, and that coincides with the end of the Fall semester and the start of Spring. The Academy will close for a few days for the holidays, and everyone will go home to their families.

At the start of this episode, I identified with Caleb. In any college, there are any number of students who cannot go home for a break for one reason or another. Caleb is unable to go home because he does not have a home to go to. There are many reasons, besides housing insecurity, that students stay on campus during breaks, including working on or near campus, the expense of travel, or choosing to stay in a place free from abuse or dysfunctional family dynamics. When we were in college, my wife and I stayed on campus for most breaks, and there were usually 20-30 other students who would stay as well, for one or more of these reasons.

But as I watched on, something started to bother me in the depiction of the Academy in break. It’s really only Caleb and Reno staying? Are there no other cadets who cannot travel home for a break? What about the staff? Why is it only Reno? Where are the RAs on duty? In my experience during winter break, the residence hall was sparsely populated, but it was not empty. There were RAs and an RD present, security and maintenance people, and the person who checked people in and out at the front desk. It wasn’t as unstructured as it seems to be in Starfleet Academy, where Caleb is basically left to his own devices and sets up a tanning bed in the atrium.

So, in preparing to write this entry, I consulted with two of my colleagues who have worked in Residence Life, Andy Adler and Amy Lorenz, to get a sense of what typically happens in housing at a college during winter break. My entire career as a Student Affairs Professional has been on the academic side of things, so both of them provided perspective from their years working in Residence Life.

Colleges closing for break will notify students ahead of time regarding the process for staying over a break, and what services will and won’t be available. Some colleges will require students to apply for approval to stay, while others will simply require a notification the student plans to stay. A college will have a number of RAs stay on campus, perhaps with an expanded area to cover. Andy Adler worked as a Resident Director, and he said that “at every institution I've worked at, RAs received incentives to stay. Though the monetary amount was always different, it was always additional compensation. Usually this was done on a first come first serve basis because we didn't need everyone to stay, just enough for operations. Then, the main function was just sitting in the duty station, handling lockouts, mail (if applicable), and doing rounds in the evening.”

Amy Lorenz, Director of Residence Life at the University of North Florida, told me that in addition to RAs, there are always professional staff and senior staff within housing on call at all times during the break. In our conversation, she told me that at UNF, only the first-year residence halls fully close down during winter break, while buildings for upperclassmen and students who live in mixed-class housing remain open. She said that during winter breaks, around 400-500 people can be around on campus between students and staff, though around Christmas Day and New Years Day, it tends to be a smaller number. There are some facilities which are kept open and staffed, but academic buildings tend to be kept locked up. Electronic logs and security cameras prevent students from accessing closed areas, so it would be very difficult for a student to, for example, break into the science lab and free a warp slug.

And, if a student did do such a thing, there would be a record and the student would be easily caught.

Of course, there are situations that will arise that staff need to be able to adapt to. Amy also said that since certain campus resources are not available, this can lead to certain challenges for students, and for the Residence Life staff working to support them. For example, we discussed that with services like the Counseling Center closed for the break, mental health issues that students were handling well during the regular semester came to a head over break. This necessitated relying on support from resources off campus.

At Starfleet Academy, Genesis is dealing with her anxiety regarding her career path and the fear and uncertainty she has. This comes to a head at a time where there is limited support for her on campus. The only person she really has to turn to is Caleb, and he is dealing with his own mental health challenges regarding his past trauma and how it is affecting his relationship with Tarima. It’s completely understandable that Genesis’ feelings of fear and insecurity would come out now, during a break, when there is nothing but time to think about them. And it’s completely understandable that she might make choices based off of that fear that show a lack of judgement. It’s also understandable that she would struggle with these feelings during a time where she has fewer supports in place.

But, in a real college, Genesis would have a more difficult time pulling off her plan to break into the bridge and edit her application. Colleges would consider this an act of Academic Dishonesty, and there typically would be a process that she would go through, including some sort of a hearing to determine any sanctions. She also would not necessarily have the ability to get into a restricted or closed area, since real colleges maintain more staff during breaks than one Temporal Mechanics Professor. In fact, according to Amy Lorenz, faculty are usually the people you generally don’t see on campus during winter break, since they’re not teaching.

While I appreciate what this episode was trying to do, showing that during the quiet times, the issues students have been avoiding can suddenly come to a head, most real colleges have a more well considered shutdown plan than Starfleet Academy is depicted as having. Showing students that you care about them, that their college can be a home and a refuge for them when their lives outside of school can be chaotic, takes work and thought. There are plenty of amazing Student Affairs professionals, many of whom work in Residence Life, who do that work every day. I hope that, as the series continues, Starfleet Academy will show that side of Higher Ed as well.

 

 

Thank you to Andy Adler, Senior Assistant Director of Advising at Hudson County Community College, and Amy Lorenz, Director of Residence Life at the University of North Florida, for their input as I was writing this.