DIFFERENT first-year students adjust to life at the University with varying degrees of success. To make this adjustment easier for everyone, the Office of the Dean of Students/Residence Life funds a very capable Resident Staff Program. Of this staff, first years interact mostly with the Resident Assistant on their particular hall (or suite, if they are unfortunate enough to live in Alderman Road housing). RAs generally exist for the benefit of first years. However, with the current set of duties that RAs are sworn to perform, they are horribly less effective than they can and should be. RAs should serve mainly as advisors and resources to first years, not as policemen who monitor and punish students for engaging in drug and alcohol use.
The Office of the Dean of Students/Residence Life states that the RAs' purpose is "to enhance the intellectual, social and cultural experience of students at the University." The office goes on to acknowledge that a given RA will be effective in this important goal only if he is able to establish an "adult-to-adult, non-parental" relationship with his residents (www.virginia.edu/~odos/rlo/positions.html).
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Enhancing first years' experiences at the University does require an RA to develop a relationship with his residents based on equality and trust.
An RA must be available to relate advice and knowledge to his residents from the standpoint of an experienced member of the University community. But by acting as enforcers of drug and alcohol policy, RAs come to be seen, validly or not, as parental figures of authority rather than as peer advisors.
Although RAs are employees of the Commonwealth of Virginia and sworn to uphold state law, they need not actively seek out infractions and enforce regulations to the degree that they do now. This active enforcement not only destroys any hope of an "adult-to-adult" relationship of equality between RAs and residents, but it also ultimately fails to prevent alcohol and drug abuse among first years. This is the opposite of what the Office of Residence Life wants, though it undoubtedly is what currently exists.
To make the system work ideally, RAs truly must relate to their residents on the basis of equality. They could then use this relationship to help students make wise choices about drugs and alcohol. If they offered advice rather than punishment for their residents' drinking or drug habits, they might reason students away from substance abuse rather than simply scaring them out toward Rugby Road.
Reason stays with students wherever they go, whereas vigilant RAs live only in first-year dorms. A trusted RA who wisely counsels his residents might be able to keep them free from drugs and alcohol for the rest of their lives, rather than only their first short year of college.
In a phone conversation, Assistant Dean of Students John Foubert from the Office of the Dean of Students/Residence Life stated that if drug and alcohol policies were not enforced in dorms, the environment of the dorms would be chaotic and detrimental to first-year students.
While this point is valid, there is no need to place the responsibility of actively enforcing policy squarely on the shoulders of RAs. If the University employed one or two student non-RAs to enforce regulations in each dorm, it would succeed in maintaining order in its residence halls while simultaneously preserving the vital closeness of RA-resident relationships.
The first-year housing experience is a wonderful opportunity for the University to provide an RA to counsel students, while allowing them to make their own choices. Assisting them in making their own decisions would help them develop into both healthy and self-sufficient individuals. This opportunity now is being squandered, and students are being kept sheltered under close supervision for an extra year before they finally are free to go off Grounds to make their own substance abuse choices without the aid of experienced counselors.
The University employs campus police officers to enforce drug and alcohol regulations. The main function of RAs should be to give advice to residents and share knowledge with them from the voice of experience.
By enforcing drinking and drug regulations, RAs lose the trust and respect of their residents and make themselves less effective as the counselors that they should be.
In the role of advisors rather than enforcers, RAs would be able not only to curb drinking and drug habits on the basis of reason, but also to provide assistance to students in a diverse range of other issues. As things are currently, residents are too busy hiding booze and pot under their beds to go ask their RAs for some help.
(Anthony Dick is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.)
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