Ball State University’s tenure as host institution for Student Affiliates of Division Seventeen (SAS) has come to an end as of August 2019. While maintaining the purpose of increasing student membership and involvement in the Society of Counseling Psychology, Ball State’s executive board has pursued unique initiatives aimed at strengthening the organization and providing opportunities to its members. Over the course of our 3-year term, three main themes emerged: 1) Social Justice and Equity, 2) Membership Engagement, and 3) Organizational sustainability. As such, the current report will include a description of these themes and a review of SAS activities and initiatives in the last year. In celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Counseling Psychologist, this report will begin with a brief overview of SAS and its history.

Ball State University has had the honor to have been selected by Cleveland State University for the 2016-2019 Student Affiliates of Seventeen (SAS) Host Institution term. SAS is an organization that welcomes graduate and undergraduate students alike in counseling psychology. The purposes of SAS as an organization are to (a) increase membership and member engagement, (b) provide students with learning and networking opportunities, and (c) highlight student accomplishments. To achieve the aforementioned goals, four distinct committees were established. The chairs of the Scholarship, Engagement, and Collaboration (SEC) committee have worked to conceptualize and implement initiatives focused on communication and collaboration between diverse groups of students and professionals within the field of counseling psychology. A committee new to SAS is Prevention and Promotion in Mental Health. Chairs of this committee are dedicated to encouraging and supporting student engagement in prevention work, particularly in mental health. The Social Justice and Advocacy committee members continued to facilitate and increase conversations around social justice and advocacy issues. The chairs of the Multiculturalism committee focused on the expansion of awareness in multicultural engagement in research and practice. Reflecting on the last year and a half serving as the host institution for SAS, there are many activities we have performed to accomplish our goals and many more that we have not yet realized.

Ball State University has had the privilege of serving as host institution for Student Affiliates of Seventeen (SAS) for 2 years. The purpose of SAS is to increase student membership and engagement in the Society of Counseling Psychology (SCP), provide students with opportunities to learn and network, and highlight counseling students’ accomplishments. The SAS executive board developed two broad goals for the 2017–2018 year, including outreach to nonmember counseling students and engagement of SAS members. Inspired by the SCP and other divisions, SAS placed an emphasis on webinars as a means to engage and provide information to a geographically diverse membership base. The SAS executive board has conducted outreach, organized student programming, distributed funded awards, and had an active presence at various conferences. Furthermore, SAS has provided members with resources including networking, funding opportunities, and leadership positions.

The theory of intersectionality posits that people possess multiple identities varying in the level of privilege and oppression. The current study assesses participants’ prosocial behavior toward a target possessing sexual, disability, and gender minority identities. Prosociality was measured using the validated and reliable dictator game. The authors predicted that targets with increased minority identities would receive less prosocial behavior from their partner than targets with fewer intersecting identities. Contrary to our hypothesis, it was found that participants were significantly more prosocial toward targets with a disability, than toward targets without. Consistent with our hypothesis, these researchers found that participants were significantly less likely to be prosocial toward targets who were gay than straight. These results have implications for rehabilitation counselors working with clients with intersecting marginalized identities. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to experimentally explore observed prosocial behavior toward individuals with intersecting gender, disability, and sexual minority identities.

It could have been better. It should have been better.