The D-Word

Friends were visiting from Washington, D.C. this weekend. Actually, it was my first admissions boss ever and her husband although she long ago stopped being my boss but thankfully has remained my good friend. But you can still feel free to blame her for my presence in our profession—she encouraged me!

This was their first visit and so I took them on the obligatory tour of campus—after, of course, the obligatory visit to Niagara Falls. While touring, she commented on the stately grandeur of our d*rms (see, I can’t even type it out!). It was at this point that I struck with the precision of a rattle snake and corrected the error of her ways. “They’re houses,” I exclaimed, and went on to explain Ridley’s residential commitment and philosophy as the largest boarding programme in the province. Being a true and traditional boarding school, you approach your residential program with the utmost seriousness.

Now my friend has since left the world of admissions (it IS possible apparently) and is in project management for a real estate development corporation. Part of her work involves overseeing apartment complexes throughout the mid-Atlantic. As we continued on our tour of Ridley she explained to me that her company is very clear on their expectation that those who live in the apartments are considered residents, not tenants (the T-word). In doing so, they send a message, if only a reinforcing one amongst themselves, about how they do business and how they treat and engage their customers.

These little rules might seem silly or trivial but, in my experience, they aid in creating a mindset and an approach to our work that helps dictate our actions and priorities. At a previous school where I was director, we implemented an internal office motto of “Families First” to remind ourselves that walk-ins, late arriving appointments, and telephone calls were all our top priority and not an interruption to our day or our duties. Our enrollment did not allow us to roll our eyes at any of these people and instead we needed to embrace them. And from my perspective as the objective outsider who had joined this office, it worked. I saw a decidedly different—and better—outlook from the staff and how they approached some of our more challenging prospective families. And, even more importantly, it was reflected in the numbers.

The famous organizational guru Stephen Covey and author of the The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People coined the phrase, “Start with the end in mind.” If we think houses not d*orms, and residents not tenants, then we just may shape the thinking of our staffs and our colleagues towards our enrollments ends.

And wouldn’t our schools (if not the world) be a better place if everyone thought as we did??