Housing and Residence Life at the University is defined by many evolving paradoxes. Thinking about on-Grounds dorms conjures up images of mold and floods, just as quickly as it exemplifies shiny new developments in Gaston-Ramazani and the Ivy Corridor. Similarly, the same organization that uniquely grants resident advisors self-governance is also the one which repeatedly has disempowered those very leaders. These paradoxes seem to be deeply ingrained in the culture surrounding HRL’s administrative decisions. And as HRL continues to revise long-standing systems under the guise of progress, these paradoxes increasingly reveal a pattern of undermining grassroots student leadership.
HRL is a capacious organization composed of many different stakeholders. The ones with whom students interact the most frequently — and who are also most disempowered by recent administrative decisions — are the resident staff. Within this group, resident advisors are supervised by senior residents who oversee the entire building, and work with RAs to establish a community within their respective residence halls. Each year, RAs and SRs move residence halls through a system designed by HRL. In the past two years, this system has been reformed in ways which concerningly disempower grassroots leadership like SRs.
In the past, SRs classically selected their RA staff based on forms detailing candidates’ experiences, preferences and housing considerations. A snake draft allowed SRs to select RAs based on these characteristics, oftentimes resulting in residence halls which were cohesive in programming ambitions, mental healthcare resources or other specific focuses that SRs looked for. However, this system changed after concerns from administrators regarding that staffs were not diverse in experience or skillsets — in 2024, HRL randomly preassigned 25 percent of returning RAs to various dorms, completely disempowering them of any choice…