Gailey Hollingsworth: New Place, Same Sparkles

I met Gailey Hollingsworth, the new Assistant Residence Director for Women’s Quads at Union University, in the Lex.

“Okay, Knapp, I’ve never been here before, so what should I get?” Hollingsworth asked as we walked in. I explained how the Bistro Boxes work, we paid and we sat down around the corner.

Hollingsworth may be the new ARD at Union, but she is not a Union graduate. Instead, Hollingsworth graduated from Anderson University in Anderson, South Carolina. She loves her alma mater, and often gushes about it, but decided to come to Union all the same.

“My experience at Anderson was stellar,” Hollingsworth said. “But I knew I needed to get out and get more experience.”

With this in mind, Hollingsworth made the move from Anderson, which was only 20 minutes from her hometown, to Jackson, Tennessee this summer to take up the vacant ARD position at Union. It is her first experience as an ARD, but she is not at all new to Residence Life. In fact, this will be her fourth year in a Residence Life capacity.

“My first year as an RA was in 2020 during COVID,” Gailey explained. “I told myself I would never be an RD — that sounds like the worst job in the world. And then the next two years I stayed in ResLife as a Senior RA where I had more responsibility and I realized that actually ResLife is really great. I had great RDs that were by my side through it all. They really poured into me and taught me a lot about the Lord and relationships with other people.”

The move from Anderson to Union has not come without challenges. Not only is she now an ARD rather than an RA, but she is doing this new job in a new place. Union’s dorms, ranked as some of the best in the country, are made distinct from other colleges because of their apartment-like style. One school that does not have apartment style is Anderson.

“I’m used to hall style, seeing people in the halls, hanging out in the lobby until 12am or 1am. Some of my best moments in college were times I had in my dorm, whether that was in my room, someone else’s room, or in the lobby,” Hollingsworth said. “So, coming to Union has been a really big adjustment because I’m not able to to see all the people I live with and see all the residents because it is apartment style, not walking down a hallway where you can smile and say, ‘Hey, how are you?'”

One big difference she has noticed is that people do not leave their door open or stop by when someone else’s is.

“I wish people would come and stop by when I leave my door open, but they don’t because they don’t know if they should do that because it’s like an apartment and not just a dorm room. But I would love for people to,” Hollingsworth said.

This adjustment has not stopped Hollingsworth from pouring into the women of campus. Ashley “Ash” Lafferty, the Women’s Quads Residence Director, described her as “the human version of sparkles.”

“The way she dresses is sparkly and bold colors and like fun and glam,” Lafferty said, smiling.  “It took her three weeks of RD Training and RA Retreat for her to get to a point where she was like, ‘Oh, my social battery is running out.’”

It is not just Hollingsworth’s energy that sticks out though. It is her heart for people.

“She is literally here because she loves college girls and wants to get to know them and wants to care for them and wants to love them in a way that Christ does,” Lafferty said. This sentiment was echoed by Hollingsworth when she explained her “why” for being an RD.

“It’s one of the only jobs that you really get to live where you work and really love on college students and help them through some of the most formative years of their life,” Hollingsworth said.

It is therefore with a heart full of love and care for her residents that Hollingsworth has been taking action to overcome the unique challenges for ResLife at Union with both intentionality and creativity. Sometimes that means inviting people to lunch, being present in the Bowld or simply leaving her door open.

As Ash Lafferty put it: “Gailey meets everybody, she knows their names, and she wants to get to know them more. She is 100% herself all the time and she can’t help but be that.”