It’s 2:07 a.m.
A first-year college student stares at the ceiling, phone on 3%, with a hold from student accounts in their inbox, the dining hall closed until Monday, and their roommates gone for break. There isn’t a person to call who can fix any of it. They are brave and very much on their own.
If that scene has never brushed your life, campus can feel like a tidy calendar with helpful offices. But for students who navigate without a traditional safety net—some from foster care, some from homelessness, some cut off by family—college can tilt in an instant. Our rules make sense at 2 p.m. They wobble at 2 a.m.
I’ve long believed a college should be the city’s front porch—light on, door open, someone already moving toward the hinge before you knock. Radical hospitality – an ethic of creating spaces where people feel fully seen, heard, and embraced – isn’t a sentiment; it’s a system. It shows up in budgets, policies, and the way we answer the phone.
Wily Scholars teach me this every day: the courage is already present. The question is whether our institutions will match it.
What’s really going on
We built higher ed for a mythical “traditional student” who always has backup. That myth bakes into everything: forms that never ask the right question, policies that punish volatility, operations that sleep through school breaks. Needs get hidden because we rely on FAFSA checkboxes and polite disclosure. Everyone touches the problem—student accounts, financial aid, housing, counseling—so no one owns it end-to-end. Good people, old operating system.
And when compliance gets louder than care, we hesitate. We build guardrails so tight that common sense can’t merge onto the road. Students learn the choreography of referral ping-pong.
I don’t question the heart. I’m asking for a tune-up.
How we show up (who “we” is)
By “we,” I mean campus leaders and boards; faculty; student-facing staff in student accounts, financial aid, housing, and counseling; and our partners in philanthropy, employers, and alumni.
We move at the speed of trust. Believe first; verify later. We stop narrating “deficits to fix” and start amplifying assets that are already there. We test every bright idea against one question: Does this still make sense at 2 a.m. for a student with no one to call? If not, back to the workbench.
Radical hospitality becomes a practice: not just welcome week, but winter break; not just the brochure, but the hold; not just the mission statement, but the meal plan on a Sunday night in January.
What it looks like in real life
Give this responsibility a name and a home. Appoint a Dean for Scholar Success with authority across student accounts, financial aid, housing, and counseling. When someone owns the whole, students stop falling through seams.
Fund a 48-hour micro-aid lane—small grants (up to $750) that move in hours, not weeks. No committee gauntlet. A simple record, a follow-up conversation, and we’re back on track.
Put a break-housing guarantee in writing. Life doesn’t close for intersession. Keep the meal access and the lights on.
Flip the logic on holds from student accounts. Study first. Balances under $1,000 shouldn’t block registration. Create repayment plans that match how students actually earn and pay.
Install one human number—a single line answered by someone empowered to solve things and make warm handoffs. Students shouldn’t need a backstage pass to the institution.
Bring in a benefits navigator one day a week. Braid SNAP, health, and housing supports with institutional resources. It’s not charity; it’s navigation.
Give faculty the syllabus signal—a standard line that says, If you’re navigating college without family support, here’s your direct path to help. Secret knowledge should not be a graduation requirement.
And because community is infrastructure, pay for it: Pack stipends for peer connectors and mentors who stay.
How we make it stick
If we don’t measure it, we won’t resource it.
Track time-to-help—request to resolution in under 48 hours. Count stop-out rescues and successful re-enrollments. Monitor break security—who had housing and meals when the campus went dark. Ask about belonging directly—Do you feel known by name and story?—and listen to the answers. Watch momentum: credits earned, persistence, and completion.
Put those numbers in front of the president and the board. Tie cabinet goals to them. Celebrate the wins. Fix the gaps.
Seed it with money you can see: reallocate 1% of tuition revenue to a Basic Needs & Belonging Fund and report out quarterly. Sunshine is an accelerant.
Run a Wily Audit on every policy: Does this help a student with no safety net succeed? If not, change it. Not next year—now.
What you can do before midterms
Presidents and boards: stand up the Dean for Scholar Success, launch the micro-aid lane, publish the break-housing guarantee.
Faculty: add the syllabus signal, send warm referrals (people, not links), use early alerts for students who go quiet.
Student Affairs and Financial Aid: Replace blanket holds with hardship pathways; make the fast lane visible and simple.
Philanthropy and employers: fund the Belonging Fund; offer skills-based volunteering for benefits navigation, budgeting, and career bridges.
Alumni and neighbors: join a student’s Pack. Be the person who stays.
Why it matters
When one student who has been carrying their world on their back walks across the stage, a whole neighborhood gets a little taller—siblings, cousins, future colleagues, the next young person who hears “you can.” A diploma is not just a credential; it’s a public work. It changes the conversation at the kitchen table that may not yet exist—but will.
Wily Scholars aren’t asking for rescue. They’re asking us to make sure courage isn’t the only currency required to graduate.
So here’s my invitation: take your campus through the 2 a.m. test. If the front porch is dark for students without a safety net, flip the breakers. Rewrite the policy. Move the dollars. Put a chair on the porch and keep the music playing through finals and winter break.
The WIly Pledge: Until colleges can develop personalized supports tomorrow to meet the needs of college students without a safety net, Wily will be there. Supporting one student at a time. If you’d like to build this with us—on your campus, in your district, or at your foundation—please reach out to us at [email protected]. Let’s widen the circle and make the welcome real.
Influences and acknowledgments
This piece stands on the shoulders of researchers, practitioners, and storytellers who have sharpened my understanding of basic needs, belonging, and what it really takes for students without a safety net to thrive.
Emi Nietfeld’s Acceptance: A Memoir reminds me of navigating instability and the systems that are supposed to help.
Anthony Jack’s Class Dismissed: When Colleges Ignore Inequality & Students Pay the Price gave me a familiar and crucial lens on inequality, culture, and the hidden curriculum of campus life.
Steve Pemberton’s A Chance in the World: An Orphan Boy, a Mysterious Past, and How He Found a Place Called Home is another familiar story of endurance and the power of community.
Further influences include the work of Howard Thurman on hospitality and the “sound of the genuine”; Tressie McMillan Cottom’s structural critiques of education and opportunity; belonging research by David Yeager and Greg Walton; and the practiced wisdom of student affairs professionals, foster youth advocates, and—most of all—the Wily Scholars whose courage and clarity continue to teach us what an open front porch really requires.
