It is a sobering exercise, while sat on the platform applauding at a graduation ceremony, to honestly ask oneself how many of those passing before one’s eyes one could genuinely pick out as members of the university in a police identity parade. Ask yourself instead with how many one has had a properly meaningful conversation and a disquieting sense of unease is likely to take hold. Now call to mind the fact that a goodly proportion of these students have regularly shared the same public spaces as you. They have availed themselves of the refectory, propped up the SU bar, sunbathed while revising in open spaces, politely held the door as one passed along a corridor. If chaplaincy has failed to reach so many of these, what hope of pastoral engagement with the ‘hidden students’: those whose caring responsibilities or financial circumstances mean that they inhabit the campus only to access teaching or library resources; those who study on a very part-time basis; those who are taught through other partner institutions, perhaps even aboard?
One obvious answer is that, given the contemporary predominance of virtual communication, any student has equal access to one’s website, twitter account or Facebook page, and therefore could potentially access the chaplaincy service if they so desired. While this is true, it does not offer much comfort. First, because virtual communication effectively requires that one knows what one is looking for in order to find it. How many of our students’ minds will automatically reach for the word ‘chaplaincy’ to place in the search engine? And secondly, communication works best when it stands out from the background. The sole poster of contrasting colour on a wall has some chance of being read; a wallpaper of posters does not. The truth of the matter is that full-time or part-time, present or absent, as far as reach is concerned many of our students remain ‘hidden’ from us.
What is to be done? Chaplaincy always needs to strive for more effective means of communication. Being ‘old school’ I still subscribe to the view that the most successful communication comes in person, and that the chance to stand up, even for five minutes, and address students directly at an induction event is the best way to enable someone to realise that they might, just might in fact require what had hitherto never been conceived as even a potential need (the support offered by a publically religious figure like a chaplain). Yet even this will not help the student studying elsewhere.
No, in the end, one has to reconcile oneself to the fact that, although the chaplaincy may not set limits on its potential reach, others will and that there is little one can do about it! Mentally beating oneself up about what one is relatively powerless to change is a needless distraction from the work that can already, easily overwhelm one’s resources. Learning to live with the fact that there is not a pent up demand for one’s services on the part of the majority is both a necessary adaptation to the chaplaincy task, and, ultimately, a source of grace.
No thoughts yet on “Reaching the ‘hidden students’”