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Cook, Kathleen M.

College of Education and Social Services

Ed. D.

The resident assistant (RA) position is one of the most important student leadership roles on residential college and university campuses. Resident assistants play an integral role in developing community on their floors and within their residential complexes. Community building and development should focus on inclusivity of all members, regardless of identities. This is particularly true for residential students of color on predominantly White campuses, who likely experience marginalization in innumerable ways. Many residential life departments across the county engage in diversity and social justice education as part oftheir overall training program for the RA position. Content, format, goals and learning outcomes vary from department to department. At the University of Vermont (UVM), RAs undergo 12 hours of diversity and social justice training during a two-week summer training program prior to the start of the academic year.
This qualitative study examined the experiences of 10 White RAs who participated in diversity and social justice training in August 2009 at UVM. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with respondents to explore several question: What beliefs do White RAs have in regard to the presence or absence of racism on campus?; How do those beliefs support or undermine the educational goals of the RA diversity and social justice training curriculum?; and Does the training curriculum affect their attitudes about creating socially just living communities? Narrative coimnents from anonymously submitted training evaluations were coded and used to support the findings from the interviews.
This study included a literature review around the topics of White racial identity development, White privilege and contemporary racism. Findings were interpreted primarily through the theoretical construct of Helms's (1990, 1995) White racial identity development (WRID) model and were organized into three themes: (a) emergence from racial oblivion to awareness; (b) incongruent message between the training content and deeply held beliefs ofthe respondents; and (c) mistrust of the department's diversity and social justice agenda.
Recommendations for strengthening the diversity and social justice training program include addressing White students' stages in WRID, expanding the training content to a curriculum, and shifting diversity and social justice training from the two-week summer period to a fall, semester-long, credit-bearing course for RAs.