The Art of Confrontation

I was an RA for three years at Anderson University in East Central Indiana. I am now a RD at Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. It would be pretty easy for me to say the things I learned directly correlate with what I do now, and there is definitely an element of truth in that. However, I learned many things during my time as an RA that benefit me as a human being, not just as an RD. I hope to highlight a couple areas of my life that have grown because of my time in student leadership.

I have learned not only how to confront but also the benefits of confrontation. Many people under the age of thirty that I have come across are not able to confront because of fear. Our generation cares more about what strangers think of us than about doing what is right. It seems like whenever someone does get confronted it is always by someone over 50. I think that is largely because of our generation’s fear of conflict. I had a great experience at the Grove City YMCA the other day. I was deadlifting and a YMCA employee around my age (24) came up to me and asked me to please stop deadlifting because the weights were making too much noise. I was so surprised to see someone my age confronting me for what I was doing. It was pretty nice to be on the other side of confrontation. I wasn’t even mad; I was just surprised. Did I agree with the rule? No. But, I appreciated seeing someone do the right thing and not caring what a stranger thought about her because a greater community standard was at stake.

The benefits of confrontation, in my mind, are clear: we are providing accountability to rules and structures that allow us an opportunity to live into the type of people we want to become. Accountability is not about confronting someone when they are wrong. Accountability is an opportunity to point people to the way we want people to be. I had a couple of accountability partners in college and without their help, I don’t know if I would have grown the way I did in college. They had a vision for me of who God wanted me to become and used accountability to help me to become that man. Our goal in student life is to use the structures and rules around us to point others towards being the type of people God wants them to become. I believe this is something that we all can bring into our lives and to those we live around.

My hope is that you will use your time in leadership to develop some skills that are dreadfully lacking in our generation as a whole. My hope is that we will be people who value the community over whether or not we will be liked by someone. My hope is that we will use accountability not to name someone’s mistake but rather to push others to what God wants them to become. My hope is that your time as a student leader will develop you in a way that has a profound impact on the rest of your life, like it has had on my life.

Ross Harris,
Smith Hall RA, 2009-2012

Ross and the Smith Hall staff, 2011-2012.