Don’t get me wrong, sometimes my favorite part of the day is coming home to see 10 of my residents talking outside of my room, their faces light up as they hear my keys jingle and from down the hallway. I love connecting with my residents, listening to them complain about their homework, answering every question you could think of and giving them a hug when they “just can’t even.

One thing that my residents will never know — I need them just as much as they need me.

Community building is a large portion of my contract with REHS. Building genuine connections with each resident is something expected of us. 

Starting with fall move-in, we are expected to connect with every resident on our floor at least once a week, then log these interactions in an online database.
Building community is the most challenging part of being an RA.There will always be the one resident that doesn’t want anything to do with you, that’s a given. 

When I open my email to five different residents expressing to me they’re homesick, asking to watch a movie with me, or saying they just will never understand statistics and they’re thinking about dropping the class — that means everything to me, because it tells me: they respect my help and opinions, they thought of me in their time of conundrum, they need me.

I can only imagine how horrible the Akers RA’s feel. Within a day, they went from being a respected university employee with a family of East Neighborhood RA’s, a warm(ish) room, full access to food and 50 residents that needed them. It was all ripped away, for trying to be a college student.

Those residents are now, hurt. Destroyed and astonished, they have gone on living in the dorms, without an RA on their floor. When REHS eventually hires a random student to fill the vacant position, they will be expected to connect with each resident, although it is unlikely the new RA’s will be welcomed.
I will always wonder, did REHS even consider their residents? The situation in Akers truly shows that RA’s are just numbers and residents are just a PID, income with a stuinfo account.

I am a Resident Assistant, but I am also a student at a B1G University, an athlete, a girlfriend, a best friend all when trying to enjoy the best time of my life. I want to experience college, to go out, to join clubs and make new friends, REHS has taken all that away from me by turning the small issues of alcohol into a scandal, ruining 10 student’s lives.

As much as Akers is trying to bring back the past, the semester is moving forward. On-campus housing sign-up opens October 26th, houses and apartments are already signing leases. Will you choose to LiveOn? I won’t.

The writer of this letter asked to have their name redacted for fear of losing their job as an RA.