Office hours. We are required to have them and often complain when they largely go unattended or if they are packed with students. Weren't those 2 hours supposed to be used for writing or catching up on emails? Students experience various feelings attending them: intimidation, anxiety, comfort, encouragement. Discomfort can abound at asking for help from a professor who looks nothing like the student and sounds too busy to care. Meanwhile women and instructors of color expend much more emotional labor listening to students who come with more than just questions about the class. In this roundtable discussion, I propose a conversation around a radical model for increasing office hours efficacy: mandatory office hours for every student in every class once every semester. Can mandating office hours build personal relationships, motivate students and instructors, and keep communication channels open? Especially since teaching/learning is increasingly remote and mediated, personal connection and relationship building has never been more critical to student success and student engagement. This roundtable will open the discussion for comments about issues related to mandating office hours, including: time intensity, relationship building, power dynamics, professionalization, location, communication, equity and advocacy, and navigational capital. Such a round table would bring together voices who might want to see office hours attended more, learn strategies for setting emotional boundaries, debate the merits of mandating a practice. This roundtable should include students, graduate students, professors at various stages of their career, and colleagues from across campus.

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