Running head: SURVIVING INDEPENDENCE: HOW TO STAY OUT OF THE 1

CONDUCT OFFICE

Surviving Independence: How to Stay Out of the Conduct Office

Michelle I. Otero, Matthew Wright, Andy Babinski

Louisiana State University

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Overview

First-year college students arrive on campus full of excitement, nervousness, joy and of

course expectations for how they expect their first year as college students to unfold. Traditional

aged students are beginning college at the ages of 17 and 18, and this will be their first time

living away from home and being on their own. College is an experience that most students have

dreamed and talked about their entire senior year of high school, while many understand that

college will be stressful and they are there to learn, grow, become an adult and eventually walk

across the stage to receive that diploma. While the student can get ideas about what college will

be like from older siblings, family, friends, teachers and several other peers about what they can

expect, according to Meyer, Spencer & French. (2009) “...students also formulate perceptions of

college from media, and often, these images are incongruent with academics or academic rigor”

(p. 1071). However, they also formulate ideas about college from the media and often these

images can lead to the notion that social aspects of college are more important than academic

achievement. (Meyer et al., 2009) How students formulate their ideas and where they are getting

their information from will shape these students. Unfortunately for some students, their

perceived notion of how college life is or should be ends with finding themselves in the conduct

office, because they are arriving on campus believing it will be easy, or that they can continue to

act the same way as they did in high school.

Up to this point in their lives, they have had a parent or guardian helping to keep track of

what they need to accomplish to succeed not only at academics but in life as well. Someone has

been there to take care of all the necessities, such as cooking, daily cleaning, getting to school on

time, having someone take care of them when they are sick, etc. While they might not realize

how much their parent or guardian does for them at home, many students understand the
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magnitude of all these small tasks once they must do them on their own. They arrived at college

ready to experience a newfound freedom, selecting the classes they want to take and eating what

they want, when they want. They may also have new experiences involving alcohol, tobacco,

marijuana, and other illegal drugs. Many students may perceive alcohol, parties and other social

activities to be an integral part of college, and may view this as more of an essential feature to

college than exceeding academically. (Meyer et al., 2009) Alcohol plays a large part in the first-

year student experience. Not all students arrive at college with the same level of experience when

it comes to alcohol or other extracurricular activities. Students can get caught up in the "college

experience" that primarily revolves around parties and excessive drinking. If students do not take

care and understand the more significant impacts of alcohol, it can, unfortunately, lead them

down the path of misconduct.

One can hope to assume that most first-year students, when arriving at college, do not

anticipate they will be involved in academic or behavioral misconduct. Unfortunately, many of

them will find themselves involved in some form of misconduct within their first year.

According to Yu, Glanzer, Sriram, Johnson & Moore (2017), it has been found that more than

two-thirds of college students have reported being involved in academic misconduct. What

factors play into a student becoming involved in academic or behavioral misconduct? It is not an

easy question to answer, as individual factors and not just institutional factors need to be taken

into account, as well as the relationship between the student and the prevailing culture of

academic misconduct. Younger students tend to cheat more than their older peers because they

are still in the early stages of the cognitive and moral development, meaning peer influences

easily sway them. (Yu et al., 2017) This can not only apply to students who are involved in
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academic misconduct but also students involved in behavioral misconduct, for example,

underage drinking, illegal drug use, identity misuse and so forth.

These are first-year college freshmen who have left home to attend a university and are

on their own for the very first time. If these students do not adequately prepare themselves for

this new freedom and how to manage academic expectations along with peer pressure from being

around new friends in a new setting, these young students are going to find themselves in

varying degrees of trouble, whether their actions were intentional or not. They will be held

accountable for their actions and go through the steps of due process in their respective

universities. Many students will slip through the cracks and be ecstatic for their ingenuity and

ability to survive college, which will only do them a disservice once they enter the “real world”

and find their actions and habits in college will stay with them for a significant amount of time.

To help all students, whether they engage in misconduct or not, whether they get caught or not, it

is essential to attempt to intervene at an early stage in their college career.

The Setting

This intervention plan will target first-year college first-year students living on campus

at a large public research institution. This intervention plan will take place at Louisiana State

University (LSU) and be conducted by Residential Life in conjunction with Student Advocacy &

Accountability (SAA), and take place during orientation for new first-year students. LSU is a

large public research institution and the flagship school of Louisiana, located in Baton Rouge.

The Fall Facts of 2018 indicated that LSU had its largest and most diverse freshman class, 8,047

students, bringing the total undergraduate enrollment number to 25,363 students. The role of

Residential Life is to provide a safe and inviting place for its residents to live on campus. They

interact with the students the most daily and they also perform their conduct process, abiding by
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the SAA policies and procedures. The SAA office also communicates with students daily but

deals with all types of academic and behavioral misconduct. These two offices have the most to

gain and lose by creating an intervention plan for these students. The more misconduct, the more

students SAA will see come through their door, and unfortunately, the office will see many

students more than once during their college careers. Residential Life also deals with students’

misconduct but specifically with violations within their housing. Providing an intervention

program during orientation intends to teach and guide students through this exciting first year

and provide them with excellent foundational skills to make it through to the end without being

involved in any misconduct.

It will be implemented by offering sessions every day the week of school orientation

during Bengal Bound as well as providing an info session during regular orientation. Bengal

Bound is the official week of welcome at LSU, giving support to students academically and

socially to help them acclimate to the campus. Bengal Bound offers several events that students

can choose from to better adapt to the campus and college life. The primary purpose of Bengal

Bound is for students to feel welcome on campus and get involved in campus life early in their

college careers. This plan will specifically target first-year students living in residence halls on

campus as they will have the newest experiences on campus. Residential Life and SSA will work

together to create and implement the intervention program but will also need to utilize other

offices/programs on campus like Bengal Bound, such as First Year Experience and Campus Life.

Our goal for this intervention plan is to reduce the number of times students are reported

to the Student Advocacy and Accountability Office or to the conduct process through Residential

Life. We understand that students make mistakes and they are going to have to face the

consequences throughout their college life. By providing them with these information sessions
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throughout their first year at LSU, we hope this can keep students out of the conduct office

completely, or at the very least, keep it down to a minimum of once, and to reduce the overall

percentage of first-year students that have a misconduct case for which they were found

responsible.

Review of Literature.

The educational stakes in college are significantly higher than those in high school, which

incoming students must survive navigating while also navigating a significantly different

educational environment as well. But as foreign as the new educational format and context may

be, the new lifestyle format is often substantially more foreign. Students varyingly handle the

stress of managing new social and self-maintenance waters coupled with the dangers of

indulging in a newfound autonomy and freedom. Some students adapt healthfully and

successfully, while others adapt in unhealthy or destructive manners, or fail to adapt at all

(Estrada, Dupoux, & Wolman, 2006). This combination of managing the freedoms and

responsibilities of autonomy in a college atmosphere and the freedoms and responsibilities of

acquiring a college education itself was found by Nevitt Sanford to often be poorly supported by

many institutions, which failed to make treating the student as a whole person a priority, if it was

acknowledged at all.

Common student academic misconduct resulting from poorly adapting to the college

environment takes the form of plagiarism. The Times Higher Education found in a study

conducted by a poll of over 100 colleges that plagiarism there was common, mainly in copying

from friends but also from searching online (Opinionpanel Research, 2006; Shepherd, 2006).

Studies have found reasons to commit plagiarism varied, such as pressures of time or workload,

academic expectations, or simply the opportunity and hope of succeeding. (Devlin and Gray
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2007; Park 2003). Another study conducted by Roger Bennett found that though personality

often was a factor in students’ plagiarizing, many situational elements also contributed (2005).

Still other studies showed many students allowed others to copy off of their work for social

reasons (Opinionpanel Research, 2006; Shepherd, 2006). The number of these cases could

conceivably be lessened through not only academic support but the psychological, social, and

day-to-day support of peers and mentors, as well as from existing in a culture of such values.

But even students adjusting healthily to a lifestyle of autonomy may fall victim to

academic misconduct through ignorance or misinformation. Hill Pickard found that the

understandings of staff and students on what constituted plagiarism could vary considerably,

where the students’ “innocent” conduct then becomes misconduct. (2005) In cases like these,

firsthand instruction not just about the general consensus on what constitutes plagiarism but

exactly how the student’s own institution defines it, as well as its specific repercussions, can

make all the difference between proper conduct and misconduct.

For his 2010 article “Exploring academic misconduct: Some insights into student

behavior”, Bob Perry conducted a study of over 2,500 college students via questionnaire which

not only corroborated many of the above findings but found that instances of plagiarism were

significantly higher in first-year students than in second-year students. Perry concluded many

factors contributed to this higher incidence in first-year students over second-year students,

mainly handling their increased stress with their less-developed coping skills, both socially and

academically, but also the fact that many of those first-year students failed to return for a second-

year. He also found that many first-year students honestly misunderstood what constituted

plagiarism, particularly when involving group work or one student helping another. He found

that even though all the students had been previously taught what constituted plagiarism, one in
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two claimed never to have been taught so, which again a refresher course and an active culture of

mentoring knowledge about could remedy.

Theoretical Analysis

Nevitt Sanford (1966) argued that students are not able to manifest necessary behaviors

without being ready to do so, but unfortunately traditionally-aged freshmen living on campus

find themselves doing so whether they are ready or not. Their new living conditions and life

responsibilities (classes, independent time management, acquisition and use of resources, etc.)

may propose challenges for which they may be adequately prepared, but many also are not.

Being thrust into something of a “sink or swim” situation; their living on campus may be the

equivalent of a non-swimmer being thrown into the deep end, in which even a student who is not

yet ready may quickly become ready from sheer, forced necessity. Sanford went beyond

readiness as a factor for successful person-environment success with the factor of support.

Which functionally determined how much stress students could handle, whether from the

number of new skills to be learned, the difficulty of learning and implementing those skills,

and/or the pressure of their expectations (as well as those of significant others, such as their

parents). Support techniques could be self-obtained, taught, or simply provided, and could

include interpersonal resources, study-techniques, or life-coaching, as well as help determine

what works best for them, including devising their support systems. Sandford later (1967) called

these supports environmental “buffers” used to aid and protect the student, which can be

beneficial as a student strives for independence and an autonomous identity.

Arthur Chickering believed a fundamental issue with which all students wrestled was

establishing their identity in college, addressed by his creation of what he called vectors of

development. Chickering’s third vector, Moving through Autonomy towards Independence,

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involved developing multiple types of independence, such as emotional independence, which

Chickering and Reisser defined as “freedom from continual and pressing needs for reassurance,

affection, or approval from others” (Chickering & Reisser, 1993, p. 117). Instrumental

independence involved problem-solving and self-direction. Chickering emphasized above all the

importance of interconnectedness with others and interdependence. Chickering’s third

developmental vector, that of Moving through Autonomy toward Independence, applies directly

to the first-year traditionally-aged freshman living on campus we will be considering. The

traditionally-aged freshman has generally not yet lived for any significant length of time away

from home, where their parents or guardians provided them with financial securities (rent, food),

functional securities (the process of buying food and other necessities, creating and managing

their daily and overarching schedules and life-structuring), and emotional securities (immediate,

dependable support).

Chickering claimed that students previously had their “continual and pressing needs for

reassurance, affection, or approval” met by their parents, and while he did not claim those

elements eventually lose their value, he did claim they lose their necessity, or at least the great

degree of their necessity. Parents are generally dependable in providing these things, both in the

consistency of their presence (parents are always there) and its application (they always provide

it). Not only that, but parents were there from the students’ births for traditionally-aged students,

so the students did not need to seek that source of support or secure its continued presence. Now

in college, though, students find they are forced to procure their own resources and develop some

system of accessibility and dependability in receiving sufficient support. In passing through this

phase the students ideally develop the ability to both meet these needs while diminishing their

constant and overwhelming need for those needs.

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Other elements in Chickering’s third vector include developing self-direction, real-world

problem-solving abilities, and capable mobility. As with emotional support, each of these needs

was previously provided by the students’ parents, and the students’ simply transitioning toward

providing them by themselves can be tremendously burdensome. But just as self-direction allows

for the use of helpful resources (others, helpful documents, classes, etc.), so can the ability to

self-direct oneself be developed through the same resources. The same is true for developing

one’s problem-solving ability and mobility. Students also can develop their sense of

interconnectedness, not just in terms of their using others as resources but as their own capacity

to act as resources for others, as well as the self-sustaining resources provided by being

connected (such as is provided by healthy companionship). Students will find that actively living

with others may provide much of the emotional support that may have otherwise been needed

from others. Yet that emotional support is still needed from others while moving towards

independence

Laura Rendon defined validation as “an enabling, confirming and supportive process

initiated by in- and out-of-class agents that foster academic and interpersonal development.”

(Rendon, 1994, p 46) She determined from her study of student’s college experiences that

validation may help students participate in campus life and raise their self-esteem. Rather than an

end goal, Rendon identified validation as an ongoing process and found it to be most powerful

when experienced within the first few weeks of students’ college experience, both to aid the

momentum of their confidence and self-esteem and to limit their discouragement from any

growing sense of invalidation. Such a significant life transition as moving from home to college

can easily leave students feeling marginalized when they struggle with finding, developing, or
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even maintaining their independence, as well in “fitting in” with the other people populating

their new world.

A common misperception among many such transplants is that they are surrounded by

others who are successfully managing their autonomy and independence while they themselves

are only putting up a false front, and that they are fundamentally deficient in some human

capacity. In reality, though, such individuals grossly underestimate not only how many of the

fronts of others are similarly “false”, and how such a state is natural, understandable, and not at

all “deficient” in any human way. Early into such situations students often don’t need validation

as much as re-validation to counter the invalidation they may experience under the

overwhelming pressures of their new autonomy. By being presented with nonjudgmental and

supportive evidence of the “naturalness” of such feelings as well as their unrealistic expectations

for themselves, alongside many peers needing such re-validation themselves, students can gain

self-confidence as well as independence skills, a confidence which will actually help in the

development of their independence skills. Once any de-validation is effectively countered

students can resume the ongoing process of validation (for the rest of their lives) to help with the

many new requirements and developments of the rest of their college tenures, and then their

post-college lives. And just as the students’ “continual and pressing needs” for emotional support

from their parents may be curbed and replaced by developing autonomous support systems, so

too can the need for validation from others ideally be replaced by developing an autonomous

validation system. But incoming freshman are often far from self-validating, particularly when

entering the largely foreign environment of college.

Nancy Schlossberg (1989a) considered feelings of marginality which may occur when

someone undertakes different or challenging new roles, particularly roles with which they are
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significantly unfamiliar. Marginality to Schlossberg was a sense of failing to fit in, which could

result in self-consciousness, irritability, or depression. She continued by defining the concept of

mattering as “our belief, whether right or wrong, that we matter to someone else”. She explored

five areas of mattering: attention (feeling noticed), importance (feeling valued), ego-extension

(feeling others’ pride or sympathy for our successes or failures), dependence (feeling needed),

and appreciation (feeling specifically appreciated for our effort itself). Feelings of marginality

are understandable with the students with which we are concerned, which could be alleviated by

cultivating their sense of mattering. Focusing on adult developing through new experiences,

Schlossberg defined a transition as “any event, or non-event, which results in changed

relationships, routines, assumptions, and roles” (Goodman, Schlossberg, & Anderson, 2006,

p.33). She noted the value of self-perception, believing that the individual themselves must

define something as a transition in order for it to be one (Goodman, et al., 2006).

Targeted Audience

The targeted audience for this intervention plan is a wide and vastly unique student

group. The audience consists of all incoming freshmen that will live in LSU residence halls on

campus. This is the chosen audience as freshmen are required to live in LSU on-campus

facilities, unless they meet special requirements.

Many freshmen will find themselves in the conduct office as they grow to learn their new

roles in the adult world, and how to juggle the new found freedom of being away from home. As

these students break LSU policies and guidelines, they must face the consequences of their

actions. Many of the freshman students appear to not be phased by the consequences they face,

but instead let the outcomes role off their back and continue to act in the same way.

Intervention Goals
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The overall goals of this interventional plan are for first year students living on campus to

learn early on about different academic and behavioral misconduct that can leave them with

disciplinary records and to provide them with a strong foundation of understanding how every

action has a consequence. The main goal is to keep students out of the Student Advocacy and

Accountability (SAA) Office as well as out of the disciplinary process through Residential Life.

However, many students will inevitably find themselves going through the disciplinary process,

and this plan is to help bring their overall numbers down, with students having one case at a

maximum. We hope to achieve these goals through the following program.

1. Assist students with the transition from high school to college

2. Provide survival support to students throughout their first year as college

freshman

3. Ideally keep students out of the SAA office completely; keep it down to one time

(freshman year) hopefully; and at the least reduce the overall number of times

freshman find themselves going through the conduct process

4. Bring students together in the same room to share their personal experiences of

surviving college

5. By the end of the year, prepare them to be mentors for the next incoming class of

freshman

Intervention Plan: “Geaux Past the Conduct Office”

Geaux Past the Conduct Office aims to collaborate with the Student Advocacy and

Accountability Office, Residential Life and First Year Experience, specifically with the Bengal

Bound program. This program will mostly be conducted during the Fall Semester of each new

academic year but will have two activities during the Spring Semester as well. It will be heavily
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grounded in Chickering's Seven Vectors of Development, specifically the third developmental

vector, that of Moving through Autonomy toward Independence, with an eye toward limiting

misconduct. The focus from Chickering's seven vectors surrounds the transition from parental

dependence to autonomy, developing self-direction and real-world problem-solving abilities.

Rendon's Validation Theory will also apply to our program as students search for the validation

from their college peers and mentors they had previously been given by their parents. Lastly, the

program will touch on Schlossberg's Transition Theory, focusing on the common feelings of

marginality for students starting college, which may add to the difficulties the poor navigation of

which can lead to avoidable misconduct.

Before the program can be successful, and before it can even involve the students, our

program will rely heavily on residential assistants (RA's) in the residence halls, as they have

more interaction with and better access to the students our program focuses on. There will be a

two-hour training session for the RA's before classes begin, provided by the staff of Residential

Life and SAA. The first year of this program will be entirely planned and designed by staff

members and then taught and disseminated to the RA's for them to conduct the informational

sessions, the activities, and the social gatherings. This program will be mandatory for all first-

year students living on campus to prepare them for their first year in college. Students will be

made aware of this mandatory program via email as well as from their RA's, who will place

flyers throughout their assigned floors. Though this program will affect roughly 8,047 students –

a substantial number of students to tackle at once – will be broken down first by residence halls

and then even further by each residence hall floor.

Informational Sessions
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There will be four informational sessions/gatherings during the Fall Semester and two

informational sessions during the Spring Semester. These sessions are designed to educate the

students while also providing time for them to make connections with other students currently in

the same situation. Students will receive information about the events through email, through

communication with their RA's, and through flyers posted in their residence halls.

Fall Semester - Orientation on the Parade Grounds.

The first interaction with the students will be through Bengal Bound week. Given the

amount of first-year freshman living on campus this will be divided up into five orientations, one

per day during Bengal Bound, with the students assigned an orientation day based off their last

name. This orientation, though educational, will also be fun and exciting. The RA’s running the

orientation will give quick introductions and jump right into having the students take a pre-

assessment questionnaire to test their knowledge. They will then provide some facts and relevant

information about the conduct office, such as rough numbers on how many first-year students

fail a course due to academic misconduct, as well as a quick overview of different types of

academic and behavioral misconduct that can occur on campus. The second portion of the

orientation will consist of games for the students to test their knowledge and retention. One game

will be several rounds of tug-of-war. Students will be able to pick their teams consisting of 10-

15, which could vary depending on the size of the orientation. Losing teams are eliminated, and

winning teams move on to the next round. Each new round, teams will be able to choose students

from the opposing team to have to sit out the game because they were found responsible for

random types of “misconduct,” with the verity of the misconduct determining how many

students have to sit out. This will continue until one winning team remains, likely because of

minimal players losses due to misconduct. Eliminating students from teams as they progress will
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provide a visualization of how many students can be affected by misconduct as well as the

consequences (in this case being forced to sit out, which can be equivalent to receiving a zero on

a test/paper, or, worse, failing a class).

Fall Semester (end of week one) - Informational Session 1

The first informational session will be held at the end of week one of classes. Given that

week one of classes for undergraduate students typically consists of syllabus reviews, resulting in

a week consisting largely of downtime and parties, it would be the best time to gain their

attention to discuss not academic misconduct but behavioral misconduct. This session will take

place by residence halls and specifically the floor each student lives on, as RA’s oversee their

floor. The RA’s will have a short PowerPoint provided by SAA to go more in-depth about

resources from the SAA office and where students can find the information, as well as going

over the more common behavioral misconduct cases that first-year students face. Such

misconduct would include ID misuse (allowing a friend or someone not a student to use their ID

for a football game), alcohol misuse (specifically underage drinking and the definition of

possession), drugs and the tobacco policy (specifically the policy for Residential Housing), and

the rules for living in on-campus housing. In this informational session we will also discuss

potential consequences for these types of violations and how they can affect students for the next

four or more years here at LSU. Once the presentation is completed, to test knowledge and

retention the students will be asked to participate in a Kahoot (a group game-based learning

platform). Students will have to answer trivia questions based on the presentation, with prizes for

the highest scores. Finally, the informational session will conclude with an open forum for

questions and answers.

Fall Semester (one month into classes) - Informational Session 2

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The second informational session will take place roughly one month into the fall

semester. It will carry the same format as the first informational session but will cover academic

misconduct. By this time in the semester students will have had time to get into the swing of

college life as well as understanding what is expected of them academically from their

instructors and professors. Again, this informational session will be conducted by the RA’s and

on their respective floors. By this point students hopefully will have made new friends, be

involved with various campus activities, and are getting their footing handling all their new

responsibilities. This second informational session will focus on academic misconduct and the

most common violations for first-year students – highlighting copying, collaboration, and

plagiarism, among others – explaining what these charges look like and how the SAA office

issues them. The informational session will also speak to the importance of referring to their

syllabus whenever they are unsure about how to complete assignments. As the syllabus is

essential and generally has the answer they are looking for, but also helping them understand the

syllabus is subject to change, and the professor reserves the right to do so. Once the presentation

has been completed to test knowledge and retention the students will partake in Jeopardy. The

students will break up into teams and answer questions about the presentation. The informational

session will end with an open forum, as well as question and answer portion. This is also an

opportunity for students to share their experiences if they wish with the group.

Fall Semester Residential Hall: “Potluck”

This will be the final gathering before the end of the semester. This “potluck” dinner will

be put into place for the students to gather one last time before parting ways for the break. But it

will also give them the time to share experiences about how they either stayed out of the conduct

office or unfortunately found themselves in the office. It will not be required that any one share
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their experiences if they have been found responsible for violating the code of student conduct. If

no one wants to share a story, the RA’s will be ready with examples for the students to discuss

the scenario and talk it through from beginning to end. Providing advice on how the student

could’ve avoided the misconduct. Lastly, the students will be asked to fill out a post-assessment

questionnaire in order to gain an idea if the program was successful, what can be improved or

what needs to be changed completely.

Spring Semester Welcome Back: Hit the Ground Running

Once students return from the break for the spring semester the program will cut back on

informational sessions as it is scarce to have any new students move into the residential hall, it is

more likely that over the fall semester and the break students have moved out of the residential

hall. The students will be made aware that the RA's are available for additional support during

the spring semester in place of the informational sessions. At this welcome back gathering, the

students will be reminded of the importance of their syllabus once again. And as always leave

the floor open for group conversation and any questions that might arise. The primary purpose of

this gathering is to remind the students about some of the hot topics (i.e., plagiarism, ID misuse,

and alcohol). This session is mostly to touch base with the students once more and reminding

them about all the major items from the Fall Semester.

Spring Semester Final Meeting

This will be the final meeting of the year for this program. Unless the student is seeking

out their RA for extra support during the semester, keeping it down to two sessions is the best

option. During this last meeting, it will be purely conversational based asking for students to

discuss their first year as college students and how effective they felt was the program. It will be

a time for the students to reflect on how much they have changed from the beginning of the year
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to the final meeting. Allowing them to again share stories and experiences from the semester that

they want to either reflect on or provide advice to their classmates. During this meeting, we will

also discuss the opportunity for students to become mentors the following year and conduct the

program themselves with the new incoming freshman with the help of the RA’s.

Peer Mentoring

Once the first year of the program has been completed interested students will have the

opportunity to become peer mentors and run the program. It is allowing students to step into a

leadership role as well as developing an array of skills that will be transferable to future jobs —

connecting incoming freshman with students who have gone through the program and found it to

be useful, education and fun. Those involved in the peer mentoring program will have the full

support and guidance of the SAA staff and Residential Life staff. Students will need to go

through an interview process to be a peer mentor. Those who are chosen to be peer mentors will

have regular meetings to discuss the progress of the program as well as address any parts of the

program that need to be updated or removed. Students will also develop assessment questions

that they feel will provide them with a better insight into the success of the program.

Rationale

The intervention is based largely on informational and social support, the type Sanford

recommended for students transitioning college. First-year students will likely be unsure of their

social roles as well as the effective and safe methods of surviving a new educational

environment, and informed leadership (the staffs of Resident Life and SSA) and healthy role

models (their RA’s) can provide both. The new, probably more stringent policies and

consequences in college are themselves difficult to become accustomed to, and providing

information and support collectively and informally may ease that transition.
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This path of social and college survival can provide a strong foundation on which

students can stabilize their autonomy, maximizing conditions to progress healthily through

Chickering’s 3rd vector toward independence. One aspect in this vector’s progress is developing

real-life problem-solving skills, and rather than have the student’s ability to do so impaired under

the considerable burden resulting from being confronted with such problems, the intervention

will pose these problems artificially, in an environment of peer and mentor support. As the

semester unfolds, even without intervention sessions the RA’s and other supplementary

information provided can help students develop skills to maximize their resources, as

autonomous problem-solving need not be enacted in a vacuum (a useful lesson to learn in itself).

The intervention may work as a sort of autonomy “training wheels” at first, but soon become

frequent supportive hands steering and guiding the independent growth, and later a nearby, yet

still available, presence, with the student’s transition from guidance to self-guidance becoming

seamless.

Rendon’s theory of validation undergirds the immediate grouping of transitioning peers,

which not only provides all the students with multiple and general support and validation but

offers them the self-validating role of support-er. By situating the groups in the communal

residence halls and floors, all contribute to and benefit from the supporting, validating, and self-

perpetuating atmospheres they all establish, in line with Rendon’s belief that validation is an

ongoing process. She also emphasized the common misconception that peers are more capable

and confident in areas a student themself may not be, setting a misleading and dangerous

standard of reality (depending on their peer’s choices), and the intervention will not only allow

students to hear others voice their own lackings but be valued in an atmosphere that not only

acknowledges the commonality of such lack but assumes it. And just as Rendon’s danger of
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invalidation may be lessened early on, so too can Schlossberg’s instances of marginalization be

lessened. Schlossberg’s transitions, too, can be more easily guided towards the healthy, first by

the intervention and then from (and to) peers, preparing students to achieve mattering

themselves.

Evaluation Plan

In order to gather information and feedback of the intervention plan, there will be

quantitative surveys throughout the academic year that will receive responses from students on

the effectiveness of the plan, and where they are in their development. Several times throughout

the semester, there will be small groups of residents that meet on their floor in the residence hall.

RAs are required to have built close relationships with their floor members, so these RAs would

be trained to facilitate open group conversations.

The survey for the students to complete during this intervention plan will be a

quantitative survey, as it provides an easy way to interpret large amounts of information, which

will be received from freshman students. This survey will serve three purposes:

 Understand what developmental point most of the students are at in their college career.

 To measure the effectiveness of the program from the student’s perspective.

 To discover what resources and information the students feel that they are lacking

through their time as a part of this program.

The questions on the survey will begin through asking demographic questions to help

assemble similar groups together, and then will be followed by questions discussing their broad

experience at LSU. After these initial questions, there will be questions to allow the chance for

the facilitators to learn what development stage the freshmen are at in their college journey and

will end with questions to reflect on their experiences with the program and the conduct office.
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The small groups will happen multiple times, and the RAs will facilitate the

conversations. During RA training at the beginning of the year, intervention plan facilitators

would have the ability to hold a one-hour training session to discuss what these small group

meetings will look like for the floors. This training should focus on instructing RAs how to:

 Effectively gather feedback from the group

 Convince residents to share their personal experiences

 Share student personal statements as examples

If further training is needed for the RAs throughout the semester, this would be possible

through the consistent training sessions that RAs have during the semester to enhance their

professional development and group leading skills. These small group meetings would provide a

time for the floors to continue to build close relationships with each other and provide a time for

them to lead the group in sharing their stories. During this meeting the RAs will have the ability

to:

 Learn the needs of their students

 Lead group-sharing exercises

 Gather feedback on the intervention plan

The goal of these small groups is to provide freshman residents with the opportunity to
bond with other students that they have similarities with, and to provide an opportunity for them
to talk in a facilitated environment. The students should be able to take advantage of this
opportunity by communicating and sharing their personal testimonials.
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References
Bennett, R. (2005) ‘Factors Associated with Student Plagiarism in a Post 1992 University’,

Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 30(2): 137–62.

Chickering, A. W. (1969) Education and identity. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Chickering, A.

W., & Reisser, L. (1993) Education and identity (2nd ed.) San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Devlin, M. and Gray, K. (2007) ‘In Their Own Words: A Qualitative Study of Reasons

Australian University Students Plagiarize’, Higher Education Research and Development

26(2): 181–98.

Estrada, L., Dupoux, E., & Wolman, C. (2006). The relationship between locus of control and

personal-emotional adjustment and social adjustment to college life in students with and

without learning disabilities. College Student Journal, 40(1) 43–54.

https://www.canva.com/. Flyer Designer.

Goodman, J., Schlossberg, N. K., & Anderson, M. L. (2006). Counseling adults in transition (3rd

ed.). New York: Springer.

Meyer, M. D. E., Spencer, M., & French, T. N. (2009). The Identity of a “College Student”:

Perceptions of College Academics and Academic Rigor among First-Year Students.

College Student Journal, 43(4), 1070–1079.

Opinionpanel Research (2006) ‘The Student Panel Times Higher Omnibus’, 1 March.

Unpublished.
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Perry, B. (2010). Exploring Academic Misconduct: Some Insights into Student Behavior. Active

Learning in Higher Education, 11(2), 97–108.

Pickard, J. (2006) ‘Staff and Student Attitudes to Plagiarism at University College

Northampton’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education 31(2): 215–32.

Rendon, L. I. (1994). Validating culturally diverse students: Toward a new model of learning and

Student development. Innovative Higher Education, 19, 33-51.

Sanford, N. (1966) Self and society. New York: Atherton Press.

Sanford, N. (1967). Where colleges fail: The study of the student as a person. San Francisco:

Jossey-Bass.

Schlossberg, N. K. (1989a). Marginality and Mattering: Key issues in building community. In

D.C. Roberts (Ed.), Designing campus activities to foster a sense of community. New

Directions for Student Services, no. 48, pp. 5-15. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
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Appendices

Flyer Handout – Reminder of Meetings

Example Survey Questions

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