College RA’s Are Fed Up

On Wednesday, September 22nd at 8:30 p.m I sat down with a veteran RA, the following article is based on that interview.

A few days before scheduling an interview with an RA source, I was tipped off by a fellow student worker that a group of our RA’s have a particular set of grievances with the administration and are up in arms about the atlas-like weight that has been placed on their shoulders. As I was completely unaware of such drama taking place I immediately focused my sights on what was going on because of the importance of the concerns at hand.

Upon sitting down with the RA I was rather nervous I will admit, I wanted to lend an open ear to their concerns without interjecting my own opinions, and in the spirit of that concern I will keep up such a sentiment through the rest of the article. I am a student worker, but not an RA and as such, I am not as privy to their hardships as I would need to be in order to write a first-hand account, so I will let them speak for themselves.

My source did not mince words when they said that “the administration, the bosses, residence life, and the coordinators, are generally not treating us well. It is all demands all the time and no respect. They like to talk about teamwork, but in reality, it is them telling us what they want us to do at all times without regarding our needs.” Now, these words on their own might seem inflammatory and exaggeratory, but from what I have gathered they are anything but. In fact, I do believe that they are being rather forgiving.

For context, it is important to understand the specific complaints that the RA’s have rather than just discussing them in the abstract. They are upset that:

• “They are understaffed, people are quitting,” and they are not being compensated with extra pay for the extra slack that they have to pick up. They believe that “if they are not going to hire another RA, they should be paying us the RA’s salary.” The shortage has led them to have to work four days straight on duty, which lasts until 2 am on the weekends.
• They are given a base salary of $300 per month for the work that they carry out which “would not be adequate for a normal student work schedule, let alone the kind that an RA has to carry out.” Unlike most student workers, RA’s are effectively never off duty as the expectations placed on them by the college require them to be attentive to their residents at all hours of the day and night regardless of what they are doing.
• They are made to be the face of the college’s pandemic policy as it relates to masking as they are in charge of enforcing said policy in the residence halls. It is no secret that there is a subset of students on campus who not only do not follow pandemic policy but belligerently defy it any chance that they get, and the RA’s are the primary victims of their ire. Both the backlash and non-compliance have led to disillusionment amongst the RA’s and is draining them. They are burnt out and on the verge of quitting.

It is important to understand that “more compensation [for the work of being an RA] does not mean more money all the time, if they can’t pay us more on stipend then they can give us a discounted room price, or discounted/free housing,” and the fact that they are doing next to nothing is rather telling.

As of now, there are posters that are going up around the residency halls for those who would be interested in becoming an RA, and they have most likely been put up in an effort to address the staffing shortage. But if they do not address all of the other core issues that are found within the system itself the new RA’s will feel just as burnt out and used as those who came before. “The RA’s are at the end of their ropes, they are stressed out, they are unhappy, they are treated unfairly by the administration and res life, it is not any one person’s fault, it is the system, and they need to start prioritizing the people who consistently prioritize this campus.”