Not a Hero: Professor Tim Huffman is Much More Than That

Saint Louis University Communications Professor Tim Huffman serves the Saint Louis community day in and day out. He shares his perspective on what it means to be a teacher while simultaneously being an activist and discusses the importance of getting involved in your community. Huffman navigates through the topics of social justice and homelessness as an expert but remains extremely humble surrounding his own impact. Huffman is not a cape-wearer, but an informed activist scholar that provides a priceless service to the world.

Image Courtesy of Tim Huffman Provided on Nov. 21, 2021.

“I never really thought of myself as a teacher, because I was… weird.” Huffman reflects on his journey to becoming a teacher. His own professors encouraged him despite his doubts and reassured him that his creative thinking is exactly what students need. “Maybe being a weirdo is great for being a teacher.” Specifically pinpointing his inspiration to a philosophy given to him by his undergraduate professor, Professor Kim. “He inspired me with his own story. He was a young man in South Korea during the war. As a young soldier he was told to march over mountains with no clear end goal. He came upon a town that was in distress and he found a man teaching the children in that town a lesson by using the dirt to write in. I took this story and discovered that even when society crumbles, we have to discover what we need to know in order to rebuild the future.” Huffman’s final reflection on his career choice was summed up by saying, “I became a professor to use the scaffolding of knowledge for the sake of the social good.”

As an activist scholar Huffman is inspired by his predecessors who “thought strategically and inspirationally about the changes that could be made into the world but sought to do so in a way that itself was just. Seeking justice, justly.” Non-violent activists such as Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and Martin Luther King were among the people Huffman listed. “I am inspired by the American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, William James, Richard Rorty, John Dewey, who look at the way that knowledge enables us to act. They encourage asking the right questions of the right people, then we find out how to have the right conversations which result in us knowing how to know and act together.” The intersectionality of Huffman’s activism and his being a scholar and a researcher is of the utmost importance to him. His inspiration doesn’t stop with activists and scholars though, “The people that live on the streets, the people that organize on behalf of themselves and others, and people that run non-profit organizations; those are my people. Watching them think and grow and stretch and dream and challenge and fight… yea all of that is super inspiring.”

Huffman, himself, is extremely involved in the community around him. He discussed his current involvement, “I use a form of community based participatory research. I create long term partnerships with folks in the community across different stakeholder groups like government, community members, people who give services, and people who need services.” Huffman works closely with St. Louis organizations such as Labre, The Saint Patrick Center, the St. Louis Area Regional Commission on Homelessness (SLARCH) and St. Louis Continuum of Care.

Video of Interactive Map with Tim Huffman narrating courtesy of Nina Carlsen.

He reflects on how, essentially, the entirety of his volunteering is in and around the issues surrounding housing, homelessness, outreach and shelter. As a regular member of this social justice community he has developed a reputation. “I just get asked to do shit. If someone needs a neutral convener, there’s a good chance they’ll ask me. Being able to be a boundary spanner is valuable, my activism is a lot of capacity building. I am an organizational communications scholar. I help people organize. This means program evaluation, creating new programs, designing new programs, seeing whether or not they are effective.”

Huffman has had to adjust along with the rest of the world to the pandemic. “COVID caused the rewriting of how human services are organized. We had to find the gaps and then find creative solutions to these new problems. Shit hit the fan in the winter when it was below freezing for 10 days straight so I helped raise the money for the disaster shelters, I ran shifts in the shelters, I helped schedule and train the volunteers for those emergency shelters and then I helped a group of students run focus groups that evaluated the outcomes of these efforts.”

Despite all of Huffman’s very real efforts and significant amounts of time spent dedicating to the community, he touches on how impact is a tough subject to discuss. “Impact as an activist is a complicated thing because what justice is, is a complicated thing. You are not the only actor in society, people are responding to what you do. Sometimes you do something and it is only because you fail that somebody else succeeds or sometimes you succeed but then someone follows it up with a shitty thing that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t. It’s contested, it’s sloppy, it’s complex, it’s contested.”

Huffman’s passion took the front row seat when he said, “I hate “saved lives” as a metric because people fucking exaggerate on that all of the time. I’m very sensitive to superheroism in activism. White savior complex is totally a thing but it is not only tied to race. Nobody says it like this but there are cape wearers in activist life who aren’t there for the behind the scenes shit or the front-end stuff, only when the crisis emerges do they show up and do some fucking stupid stuff and then everything is harder because they didn’t do the real work. Super heroes, if you’ll just allow me to rant for a second, are defined by someone who rolls in not understanding the situation but whose sense of self importance is so great that all they have to do is do something and the world is better for it… that is not how activism works. Activism works because you know people, have long term relationships, understand systems, you have the skill sets, you have backups and support systems and allies.”

Huffman's impact does not go unnoticed despite his modesty. SLU Alumni and close friend of Tim’s, Chris Franco, is able to attest to Tim’s character. “Tim is by far the greatest mentor I have ever had in my life. There are few people in the world who are as dedicated to social justice and the flourishing of communities as Tim is. He has dedicated his life to reducing the dehumanization and destitution that leads people who live without homes to suffer and die needlessly. Beyond admiring him for his dedication to his mission, I also admire Tim for how great of a teacher he is. Tim is someone who fosters within his students a love of learning, a love of life, and transformation of heart that is honestly becoming more and more difficult to come by nowadays.” Colleague of Huffman’s and Consultant at the St. Louis City Continuum of Care Saint Louis Mental Health Board, Tammy Laws, also provided a few words on his character. “Tim brings a positive and inspirational light along with him, his work is so appreciated and without him we would not have nearly as strong of a community.” Current Communications Student at SLU, Kennedy Ewald, said “He is one of the most interesting professors I’ve ever had, he is a man of many talents and I think we could all take a page from his book.”

Huffman organized “Winter Haven”, which kept un-housed people out of the cold during the coldest point of the winter, he also initiated the effort to get women’s shelters to build walls as “privacy is super violated by the way that we imagine shelters”. Referencing "Winter Haven" Huffman said, “It was super beautiful to see the relationships that had been created because of COVID, materialize into very vivid forms of partnerships that wouldn't be possible without those relationships. Relationships first, relationships last, relationships always. Create mutual relationships, where all that you want and dream and feel is what I want and dream and feel.”

After being asked to pass on any advice to others interested in getting involved in activism, Huffman said, “Ask questions and use that knowledge to build power. Be thoughtful, strategic, respond with the wholeness of who you are and bring your best self to it, not just your spare hour. Go out and fucking do it. Be the person that the world needs you to be.”

Without Huffman, the Saint Louis community would look a lot different. He truly is what he claims to be and so much more, an activist scholar with so much knowledge and dedication going into his every move.

Alcohol and Accountability on Saint Louis University’s Campus

Saint Louis University student Keegan Beatty was charged with underage alcohol possession in an on-campus residence in 2018. The resident advisor or RA reported this to DPS who handled the violation with the help of the Office of Student Responsibility and Community Standards. Beatty’s case is extremely typical of SLU students. Beatty said, “When I lived in an on-campus residence I got caught with having alcohol in my dorm room when my RA heard my friends and I playing music over a speaker on a Friday night before we were going out to downtown St. Louis. The RA wrote down my name and information as well as my friends and then I received an email with the information about my hearing. I found that being sincere and apologizing for my actions led the hearing to go fairly smoothly for what it was, and I received a disciplinary warning as a result of my actions.”

Going into college provides many with excitement and feelings of nervousness as it is a huge change that comes with a great amount of freedom. With this freedom many students, like Beatty, make mistakes, “I wasn’t expecting to get caught, but when I did I found out that I was one of many who had already been busted in my grade.” When informed about the number of cases similar to her own at SLU Beatty stated, “It makes sense to me why the numbers in the report would be so high because we all do it, we’re in college what do you expect?”

This question of expectation is an important one as one analyzes the Saint Louis University Fire and Safety Report. We see numbers in the 200-300+ range each year, for the past three years when we examine the on-campus liquor law violations resulting in disciplinary action. Clery Compliance and Emergency Preparation Officer Mike Parkinson is in charge of gathering the statistics for the referenced Fire and Safety Report. Parkinson says, “Our numbers are higher because we report law violations based upon Missouri’s laws. Missouri is unique because the stomach is a vessel for alcohol, as in, an individual does not have to have alcohol in their hands in order to be charged with an alcohol violation.” Parkinson clarifies what a violation typically entails at SLU specifically, “At SLU 99% of the cases just require disciplinary actions and do not involve the St. Louis Police who have many other issues on their plates. We like to handle our cases on campus the best we can without involving outside parties.” “A disciplinary action is a violation that goes through student conduct, whereas a law violation is where a summons or arrest is issued and then passed on from DPS to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police who then charge the individual(s) criminally, which rarely occurs.”

Image of DPS vehicle taken on SLU's campus Oct 19, 2020.

Resident Advisor Kyle McGrady said, “As an RA we are taught to report things such as underage alcohol or drug possession, abuse or assault etc. through DPS and the conduct office. I spent my time as an RA on the sixth floor of Demattias Hall in 2020, we had a few hiccups, but I think I had a relatively easy time and did not have to write up more than just one or two individuals. In order to write someone up it would take a very clear disturbance of peace on the floor, I rarely ever had to intervene with my specific floor, but I am sure just based on human error that I missed out on a few opportunities to get my residents in trouble related to alcohol. I had other RA friends in other residence halls who had plenty of alcohol related issues. It does seem like these violations are some of the most common, if not the most common of all among freshmen and sophomore students here at SLU.”

The prevalence of these alcohol related violations on campus occur at a high enough rate that DPS and the Office of Student Responsibility and Community Standards should be prompted to take preventative action such as providing or even requiring the implementation of plenty of educational resources, speakers, information sessions etc. for students to utilize during their undergraduate years. When asked about the possibility of including alcohol violation awareness talks etc. Parkinson said, “Due to COVID we have been limited as to what we have been able to deliver to students. We need to do better now that we are back in person for the most part.” Doing better is a fine goal, but we are almost through midterms here at SLU, so it is necessary to know what is concretely being implemented to reduce the number of violations this year.

Assistant Director in the Office of Student Responsibility Bill Bowey was able to provide more information on SLU’s alcohol related preventative efforts. Bowey said, “Our office has three particular prevention offerings. First, we administer AlcoholEdu, which is an online program that each new student must complete. Second, we offer SHARP (SLU Harm and Alcohol Risk Reduction Program). SHARP is offered as an outcome for students who are found responsible for a policy violation related to alcohol, and as a preventative program for groups of students and organizations. Finally, we have staff trained in BASICS, which is a research backed, individualized, harm reduction strategy.” Bowey was also able to provide insight into how SLU RAs are trained to deal with these violations, “Student staff members receive robust training from Housing and Residence Life on a wide range of matters, and our office does collaborate with HRL to provide that training on topics related to Community Standards.”

It seems apparent that DPS and the Office of Student Responsibility have overlap and work with many of the same cases and violations, but it was evident that DPS was not able to speak about current preventative measures in place to the extent that the Office of Student Responsibility was. This ability to speak on current preventative measures is a necessary talking point for both parties. Like Beatty, hundreds of other students each year will deal with a disciplinary process and it is so important for parents, faculty, staff and the student body to all be on the same page when it comes to being informed on SLU’s efforts to make the campus a safe environment.

The Trials and Tribulations of Journalism Today

By: Nina Carlsen

Journalism today is constantly evolving and changing as technology allows it to. This is oftentimes thought as a great feat that allows for multiplatform journalism, specifically, to thrive. The concept of having multiple platforms to embed into and enhance your piece of writing is made possible by technology. At the same time though, this seemingly endless tool of the internet and the social platforms that come along with technology, can be what ultimately hinders journalism the most. Multiple articles have been released about big news providers restricting comments in order to limit the toxicity and negativity that so many journalists receive daily. It is only fair to imagine that this issue would make it very difficult for some journalists to continue enjoying their work and maintain a passion for writing when so much hate is brought upon them.

Another issue that is prevalent in journalism today is using ethical judgment on how to break news to your audience. Some news stories are universally triggering, jarring or scarring for most people, but journalists still have to do their jobs and report. Deciding whether or not to use graphic images and videos is a dilemma that many multiplatform journalists face. Social media allows for the circulation of content at an extremely fast pace so it is necessary that journalists make the correct judgement calls on these breaking news stories so as not to trigger or offend the masses. In this way, journalism is a high stakes job and this difficulty that comes with making judgement calls is something journalists today should anticipate.

Lastly, for multiplatform journalists and journalists in general it can be difficult to have free reign when one works for a specific news platform under a set of authoritative figures. Oftentimes journalists are told or at least pointed in a direction of what to write and how to write it, especially when starting off in the industry. This can be discouraging and cause for power balance issues if one's boss is too demanding or overbearing.

These struggles are to be expected as journalists enter the current job market. Unfortunately dealing with negative comments, stressful judgement calls, and work pressures is something that is being asked of journalists. Finding a good support system within the industry, seeking mental health support, job searching, aiming for promotions, etc. are a few ways that journalists may be able to cope with these challenges.