Navigating Challenges with Crisis Management Expert Hanna Stotland

My name is Laura Barr. I am the owner and founder of emerging educational consulting. Our company provides one to one mentorship for parents and students from the beginning to end of the college application process. When I talk about what I do, I talk about I wake up every day to. Raise good humans. And the way I think we raise good humans best is with education and information. So I could not be more delighted today to introduce Anna Hannah Stotland, who is this unbelievable educational consultant who works primarily with students who are in crisis management. I have stalked her at every professional conference that I have attended, so I am going to let her talk. I'm going to have her introduce herself, and then I'm going to start just pounding some questions so that we can be informed. So let's just go. Hi, thanks so much for having me. I'm Hannah Scotland and I've been doing this crisis management work for 24 years and I got into this field because I flunked out of high school, got a GED, had a lot of problems, both with mental illness and with some misplaced, poorly thought through rebellion. I thought I was like a conscientious objector to high school. I thought it was like civil disobedience to refuse to do my homework. So I got a GED. I worked for a couple of years, eventually decided to try to go to college and found a small college that was willing to give me a chance. After two years making A's there, I got in as a transfer to Harvard, Stanford and Penn and transferred to Harvard for the fall of my junior year. And having gone through the admissions process three times in a row, I had become very interested in admissions. So I went and became a student worker at the admissions office that summer. And when you're giving tours, there's a spot in the script where you say, and this is what brought me to Harvard. And I would give a short version of, of that story. And people were very surprised, not expecting to hear this from their Harvard tour guide. And so, after every tour, some family would take me aside and say, you have to talk to my nephew. He just got out of rehab and he wants to apply to college. Can you help us? So I stayed at Harvard for law school and had a six year legal career, but I was always, had a side hustle helping these families that came to me, um, dropped out, kicked out, flunked out. I see mental illness. I see substance abuse, lots of academic misconduct, especially in the last few years. Seeing more and more, Kids in trouble with misuse of social media. I see kids who've gotten in trouble in, in high school, in college and even in grad school. So my work is helping them figure out, how to recover academically, right? There's usually folks, above my level of expertise. I'm working on the education side to try and get, get them back on track and, and especially teach them how to talk about whatever has gone wrong. And what I love about some of the work you do is that one of your core beliefs really is like, even when we screw up, even when we struggle with mental health, even when we make really bad mistakes, everybody has a right to an education and a right to due process. I think one of the things that I am most interested in bringing to light is issues around title nine on college campuses. And really thinking about this cohort of students that I'm getting ready to send. It's like one of the things I always say to parents is listen, your students are going to go to college. I'm not really worried about that. I don't work with in crisis management as much, right? So my, my cohort is like, we're going to go to college, but I want you to do well when you get there. And I think there is such. stigma around these kinds of conversations about consent, sex education, drugs and alcohol. I think innately as parents, we're kind of wired to be like, our kids are pretty good. They're not going to screw up. But as you and I know, cause we have worked together in some situations where really https: otter. ai What do you want these parents who are here today with us and this video will eventually go viral? Sure. What do you want them to know? Like, what do you want them to know right away? Well, at first I want to make a statement about that I, I think I need to approach this with a lot of humility. if I knew how to speak to teenagers in a way that caused them to obey the advice I gave them, I'd be a gazillionaire, right? They're, they're just telling them don't do X. Remember to do Y or scared straight. If you do Z, this terrible thing is going to happen to you. I do want them to have that information. But I, I don't want to come across as though I think I have discovered the secret to get the kids to listen. And if you just Talk to them my way, then I'm going to fix all the problems. That being said, there is a lot of, information out there that, parents should know and that they should talk to their kids about. And one of those is, it may be incredibly obvious to you, the parent, that if the, If your student called you and said, I've been accused of cheating. I've been sexually assaulted when I was completely drunk. I've been accused of sexual misconduct. I've been arrested, any of those things. You the parent, you know, it's so obvious to you that you would still love and stand by your student and that even if you felt some disappointment or sadness about bad choices they had made, that would be enormously outweighed by your instinct to help and protect them. And tell them that experience. If you are arrested, if you are accused of some terrible misconduct, if you've done something that you're ashamed to tell me about because you fear my disappointment, please tell me I want to help you. And I promise that whatever feelings I have about it are going to be. My 50th priority because one through 49 is gonna be helping you with this crisis. So I see many, many students who are, who are accused of, of academic or behavioral misconduct, who are trying to go through a discipline process themselves thinking, I don't wanna tell mom and dad, I'm just gonna tell the truth and everything is gonna work out. Then they get suspended or expelled. Now you have to tell mom and dad and frequently they say, or if you get some help from me or from a lawyer, this, this was a winnable case. If we had been able to advise you. And yes, in some senses at 18, 19, 20, in some senses, you're an adult, but these college disciplinary proceedings are very serious, um, can really affect the rest of your life. And it, it makes a lot of sense unless you fear. You know, if you have a reasonable fear of that, your parents are going to beat you up, right? Of course, students need to use their judgment about that. But if you just, I want parents who know that they would never let anything get in the way of supporting their student. Tell your student explicitly and you may get a lot of eye rolls, but behind the eye rolls. There's a good chance they're hearing you. So that is the number one thing I would, I would tell parents to tell their kids. That's amazing. And actually, I haven't heard you say that before. So I love that. So it's like the advice that I would say on my launch checklist would be, before you go to college, almost just say that, say, there are some sticky situations that could come up. Please know if they do, please. Communicate with me because things mitigated before kind of it gets worse so that you talk to the police. Yes, please tell a trusted adult before you talk to the police and that includes campus cops. Okay, that's really helpful. one of the things I love and all the, my stalking of you that you talk about is your courage around talking about the gray, like there is no black and white, there's gray and especially around sexual misconduct, sexual misconduct with drugs and alcohol on college campuses. I've never heard anybody have the courage to speak about it the way that you do. So I'm not exactly sure what I'm asking, but I'm wondering if you have a moment to just kind of do your thing around these things can happen, there's not black and white, there's gray, alcohol involved, like however you say that so beautifully. Sure. And there are black and white cases. It's just that I don't usually see them. Right. So the famous case with the Stanford swimmer, we have sober eyewitnesses and an unconscious victim. Easy case. That's black and white. And notice there was no discussion at all about whether he's kicked out of Stanford. Of course he's kicked out of Stanford. The, the debate and, and there wasn't even debate about whether he gets a felony. The only debate was about how long he stayed in jail. Right? So that is from a title nine perspective, an extremely easy case and they do exist, but that's not mostly what I see. I mostly see, Interactions that everyone agrees began consensually, sometimes concluded, apparently consensually. But one party either says after the fact, actually, even though I was walking, talking, texting, signing you into the dorm, climbing to the upper bunk, however I appeared, I was in fact too drunk to consent. Or, there were of the ten different sexual acts that we did, this one I didn't consent to among the nine that I did. And there may be a dispute about, for example, at the moment that I withdrew consent. for this particular act. How rapidly did you respond? You the accused student respond. And I see a lot of cases where the dispute between the two parties about how rapidly there was a change. The dispute is measured in seconds. Not minutes. But that's it. That's a heartfelt disagreement about, whether an assault took place during those seconds. I also see many, many cases where, the accused student, it is beyond question that they were a jerk. That they did not treat their partner with sufficient respect or kindness. And whether or not there was also an assault in addition to the unkindness, a student who is really kind to everyone who they're having any kind of sexual contact with is in a lot less danger. of being accused of any kind of sexual wrongdoing. So for example, he dumped her by text and I'm going to use male and female pronouns, although I, about 10% of my cases involve same sex couples. He dumped her by text. He slept with her roommate. He let her think. that he was actually interested in her when actually he just wanted to hook up. all of those behaviors are not against Title IX. I would consider them both not what even my own students who are accused of this, not, not what the behavior that my students aspire to in terms of kindness, but also taking big, big risks in terms of contributing to,, The interpretation of a gray situation, like, yeah, okay, we, we had some kind of, you know, we had oral sex, we were both drinking, what was four beers too many for me that night, that is not really a question with an absolute answer, even if we were breathalyzing everyone. There are many. You know, 1. 1 is too much to drive. Is it? But right. But the person might be perfectly capable of making reasonable decisions. Someone who is an experienced drinker, may be functioning well with a much higher blood alcohol content than someone who's a novice drinker. So I would say number one, kindness, kindness, kindness, is a best practice all the time. And if you are treating people with respect and care, you are much, much less likely to get accused of misconduct. also I will say this with the awareness that it will sound hypocritical coming from almost any adult safety in college requires students to separate sex from alcohol as much as possible. About. 95% of my cases involve intoxication. 90% of my cases, intoxication is the only theory. In other words, there's no accusation that the complainant said no, there's no accusation that they were unconscious. There's no accusation that they were obviously incoherent. The accusation is I acted like I was just buzzed but actually I was, I was too too drunk. And that leads to both an entire spectrum from bad sex to assault and I would say, well I would even go a wider spectrum from unwise sex to assault. Sex that is not going to make you feel happy the next day, in addition to, sex that unfortunately changes your life either because, you've experienced assault or because you're accused of assault, and all the people who are punishing kids for doing this. Most of those adults are mixing sex and alcohol in their own private lives. Hopefully wisely, but I think there isn't really a safe way to do it. in college environments today. And so, if you are excited about somebody you just met and you're hoping to get laid or to find a new partner, see if they're still interested tomorrow. I love how bold you are. In that I just think it's so important. I have four kids and two boys and two girls. And I often, I say this in my practice, I say, I am a feminist and I believe in the rights of all women. And I love title nine. And I actually, when I was in, my boys were in college, I felt more anxious in some way for them than I did for my girls. Is that a fair feeling on my part? Or is it just Made up. I mean, I think that it's, it, this is very painful because, uh, blaming, victim blaming is a real thing that really happens. Right? And the fact that someone made unwise decisions about how much to drink does not mean other people were entitled to rape them and doesn't make their experience of being assaulted any less valid. And at the same time, I can say that even in a world where we eradicate sexual assault, drinking yourself into a stupor is never going to be safe. And we have to live in the tension of those two things being true at the same time. That it's it's never your fault that someone took advantage of your drunkenness, and if you're less drunk, you will be safer. Those things are both true. So, in other words, I think there is a lot we can do as, Well, I shouldn't I shouldn't include myself in the in the category of young women anymore. But there are things we can do to be safer. And that's true. Both of this true for young women are pardon me for young people of all genders. Thinking in advance about not only what kind of sex life we want, but what role we want drugs and alcohol to play in our own lives, is enormously helpful to students. And I think this is something particularly that young women are not socialized to, that you have a right to think in advance about what you want your sex slash romantic life to look like, and be empowered to seek the things that you want. And. If you feel permission to do that, and you know what you want, and perhaps what you want is experimentation, what you want is discovery, but if you If you know going in, what you do and do not want, and you have thought about it, you may feel much more empowered in decision making situations to have sex or lack of sex that you feel good about. And that you can look back on and say, I learned, I, I had a positive experience, I learned something from this. I, I chose to do X and discovered that I don't like it, but putting yourself in the position of I deserve to be in the driver's seat for my own sex life. And maybe that means I maybe, maybe that means there's a ton of experimentation going on. Maybe it means I'm going to be very celibate. Or I'm going to wait for true love, but the more that I think particularly young women feel permission to do that because I, I don't think that message is, is getting to them in the culture in, in sexual sex ed in high school for those lucky enough to get it because there are a lot of American students who don't have any or who have only a judgmental kind of abstinence only sex education. So that's, that is a huge, area that is missing, I think, particularly from our young women's lives. And it, it hurts, it hurts us in all kinds of ways. Do you have, Resources for like, I'm thinking about my own parents that, will be watching this and then also, IECs, you know, educational consultants who have these relationships with kids that are really unique. We have an incredible opportunity as IECs to kind of. front load boys and young men and women and, you know, all genders of like what, how to make some of those thoughtful decisions. Do you have resources or is it just something you've created like in your own practice? I think there's, there's a, there's a book out that I think is extremely enlightening for parents in terms of what the culture is like on campuses, as well as some public health experts, ideas of how to, address it. It's a book called sexual citizens. I can't recall the, the names of the authors right now, but they are on, faculty at Columbia. And did a, really interesting, set of research or multiple, Experiments and interventions and interviews, with undergraduates at Columbia and Barnard. And, I don't, I don't agree with them on absolutely everything, but I think it's, it's an extremely enlightening book. And I think the concept of being a sexual citizen where it comes with rights and responsibilities is a, is an extremely helpful frame for putting students,, in the driver's seat to make smart decisions. I love that. I can't wait. My apologies to the authors whose names I don't recall, but the book is called sexual citizens. Yeah. Perfect. Um, I'm trying to think of, um, you know, one of the other things is IECs is we build college lists, right. And thinking about. Colleges, is there a way to research either as an IEC or parent on what colleges do this really well? And are there colleges that like, if we know we have a student, let's just say who maybe is already experimenting with drugs and alcohol and we have a little bit of concern, like are there colleges that we should like, Stay away from and I'm not actually asking you to name them. Maybe I'm asking you, how do we find that out? So they're not all this. So first, I want to just acknowledge that you're right. The colleges are not all the same. I mean, if you are visiting colleges and you ask tour guides or admissions officers about this, they're going to say something that is true, but not helpful. They'll say, well, of course, it's a college campus. And if you're looking for a party, you're going to be able to find one. You want drugs, you're going to be able to find them. That's true at BYU, and it's true that at the University of Alabama. It is not equally true at those schools, right? and so, I think, Student to student communication is often the best way to get the scoop for the most part, the students who are living this are not going to tell any adults, you know, you're lucky if they tell their parents, they're certainly not going to tell, you know, people visiting a college campus much about that. It is. not worthless, to look at Cleary access statistics. This is C L E R Y. So this is a rule that applies to basically all schools in the U S where they have to report what kinds of crimes have been reported or discovered on campus. And, this is more insightful, I think when it comes to, Alcohol transports and and drug arrests than it is to sexual assault because, sexual assault reports, are often highest per capita in schools that have made enormous efforts to, Both to create safe spaces to make it easy and safe to report, and many of those schools in my personal judgment have also participated in, in broadening the idea of what's a sexual assault. So, for example, I had, a student who was accused of an unwelcome hug. or others who have been accused of, a makeout session on the dance floor freshman year when their partner was too drunk. And the, the more inclusive definitions of sexual assault are gonna get you very high reporting numbers. So you see very high numbers at places like Wesleyan and Oberlin and Brown, which I do not believe are the sexual assault capitals of America. but it is, but it is a good way to begin the analysis, especially when it comes to, drug and alcohol related crimes. Great answer. how do you how to parent? Well, I can ask you this, but I think you'll be able to answer really. But how do you or parents or I. E. C. State updated on the latest developments around Title nine and Crisis management. I know, in D. C. We're speaking about like the changes from, let's see. Obama Trump Biden. And I know we only have four minutes left, so maybe we can end with this. But how do we stay up to date? Well, counselors going to conferences and talking to your colleagues who specialize in these areas is probably the best way because, you know, most most of us don't have the bandwidth to be following Thank additional press outlets that are carefully covering this, for schools that are near you or that you have a relationship with. I read, campus newspapers pretty frequently. I think that is, you know, it's not it is. It's not a perfect measure of any kind of statistical pattern, but it can tell you something about What topics are on students minds? What are they talking about? What are the controversies and, can tell you a lot about the culture of schools, which is very important when we're advising students, either are either our own Children or our, students as counselors. I love that that. So let me summarize. Today, some of the advice that you gave us in, What I heard is, is that read Sexual Citizens. Amazing book. Maybe some things you might agree or not, but at least it starts the conversation. It fits perfectly with our practice because we're in the, I feel like we're in the business of raising citizens. So I love that. Sexual Citizens. reading campus newspapers. That's one of the ways we and our practice encourage students to do that zoom out, zoom in research, like get to know by reading the newspaper. So I love that. And then what is the name again of the website where you can research? I use more data set for that research. But what is the one that you just mentioned? I had mentioned the Cleary Act Cleary Act. Which which isn't a website. It's it's a law mandating that universities and colleges report, annual statistics of what crimes were reported on their campus and of and of the the inherent flaw. There is. That unreported crimes will not be on a Cleary Act report, but I still think it's it's a useful to use all of these different sources to make your best guess about what a student's experience might be if they actually were accepted and enrolled there. That's great. And then finally, that just lovely piece of advice you started with is have a relationship with your student where you can say, trust me, I love you. I stand by you. It doesn't, I wouldn't be maybe disappointed, but I still have your back because I'm your parent and love you. Is there anything in the last minute that you didn't get to say? I think encouraging our students to think of themselves as the drivers of their own experience, and that they have the right to do that, they have the responsibility to do that. And that the more ownership that they take and telling your parents that you need help can be a very mature adult thing to do, realizing when you're in over, over your head, is, is, totally a mature adult thing to do. Acting as someone who wants to be responsible for your own decisions is empowering for the students and increases the odds a little bit that they will make more good choices than bad ones. Beautiful. Thank you. Hannah, so much for your time and your words of wisdom and I will continue to stalk you at either or Tampa. Are you going to be there? I did either of those. Probably not NACAC, but probably Tampa, probably IECA in Tampa. And you'll see me there. Yes. All right. Thank you so much. All right. Bye bye.