Author: Laura Bertocci
Residence Life and Housing Services (RLHS) Community Director Chad Myers confirmed on Friday that, starting next year, RLHS will no longer hire students as hall coordinators (HC) to work in campus residence halls.
According to Myers, the shift in hierarchy is a result of increased pressure on the community directors (CD), the top employees in RLHS, who have been overwhelmed by their duties this year.
The main cause of this is an influx of student conduct cases this year, which CDs are in charge of managing.
The class of 2013’s number of conduct hearings have surpassed those of previous grades, said Myers.
“We’ve had a rise in conduct cases this year. We can’t have student staff hear conduct cases so right now the three community directors have been holding them and its eating up our time,” Myers said.
He believes the shift in hierarchy will improve ResLife’s overall presence on campus.
“[The changes] will allow our office to be more aware, and we can continue what we’re doing and know what we’re doing right,” he said.
Community directors will remain the top position in the new hierarchy, but the former duties of the HCs will be split between the new positions of graduate student assistants (GSA) and mentor residence advisors (MRA). Beneath those positions will be normal residence advisors (RA).
The GSA position was created as an extension of the CD and will be in charge of providing assistance to the administrative wing of ResLife, Myers said. The GSAs will be either Oxy graduate students or graduate students from other colleges or universities who have the necessary qualifications to fill the position.
“Having a grad student who is required to work in the office and putting time into this is a good idea, because no senior is going to have tons of time. I could see myself screwing it up. When you have too much on your plate, something is going to suffer,” Jacob Berry (junior) said, a current HC who next year will serve as an MRA.
The MRA, according to the application’s job description, is someone “hired to provide assistance to the staff and [RLHS] department.” The goal of an MRA is to mentor less experienced RAs within their hall, and to jump- start projects or programs in the residence halls – a role that the HC normally fulfills, said Myers.
“[The MRA is] there to be that link between student RA staff and professional staff,” Berry said. “If something needs to get done within a hall, the MRA will be delegating roles and making sure things happen without actually being in charge of people.”This year’s HCs understand that the new positions are more of a split rather than an expulsion of their responsibilities.
“My job is getting split in half and getting added to,” said HC for Wylie and Bell-Young Halls Sara Fulton-Koerbling (senior). “The more people-related stuff that I do will fall to the MRA, but I also do administrative things that I envision the GSA will be doing.”
Berry, who was originally upset with the decision, has now changed his mind, and has decided to embrace the opportunities the new positions provide, he said.
“I realized that it was better to work with [the professional staff] on the changes they were trying to make . . . I’m happier to work with [them] and make sure the people they hire are right for the job,” he said.
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