<p>My daughter is @Oberlin College and signed up to be an RA because we thought that she could get free boarding. Apparently, there seems to be a new policy and the RA’s get a single room for the price of a double and the student gets only a very small stipend. One of their major duties includes them doing “cop functions” such as patrolling the bathrooms @ Midnight on the weekend. I wouldn’t seem so bad except that a pair of them is to walk the dorms other than their own (5 or 6 of them) on either North or South campus even in the rain/snow. Sometimes a pair would not go out, leading the home RA to cover anyway. In addition to this function, they are responsible for answering all resident questions at all hours, monitoring the ETOH and drug use, and providing dorm events. Other private colleges without “labor rights” in their slogan have their RA’s serve in a nurturing not policing role.
If we pay so much in tuition, why can’t the college Security drive their cars and do the midnight safety checks? If anything goes wrong in the dorm who is really responsible?- the school or the poor underpaid/overworked student?
My daughter feels trapped since she’s afraid that quitting would show inconsistency on her grad school application.
Any suggestions?</p>
<p>Sorry, but not a lot of sympathy here. D obviously made a mistake, by thinking she was getting “free boarding”. I think she should stick it out for this school year. My son’s school actually has a freshmen curfew. During the first 6 weeks of school, the R.A.s have to take attendance on weeknights at 11pm. His R.A. was fired for “inappropriate use of a key”, when he entered a room to look for a stolen item, reported by another resident on the floor. Too bad, as S really liked the R.A. It is a tough job.</p>
<p>Hmm, my DD is an RA (it’s called dorm warden at her school which is amusing) and she gets a great suite and food for no cost; if she does not work over summer she would pay I think half price, but as a PhD she will be there and work.</p>
<p>She is responsible for covering several shifts a month and the biggest issue is alcohol use and the worst kids to deal with are the sassy ones who want to be brats. So far she has had a great year and their house seems to have lucked into a great group of freshman. Why did they imply free room and then only give the discount? Does your DD get her food, too? DD is supposed to never work more than 20 hours a week and that has not been any problem.</p>
<p>I find it hard to have a lot of sympathy as a RA myself (we call them CSAs). If Oberlin is anything like SSU, they tell you SEVERAL times what you’re getting into before you fully commit to the position.</p>
<p>We do get free housing and a large amount of “Dining Dollars” (to paint a picture, most of us have trouble going through them unless we are very generous and treat our residents/friends to stuff, which is kinda the point anyway). We also get a small(ish) stipend each month.</p>
<p>In return, we do most of the same things OP listed…we are available to our residents pretty much at all hours, and we rotate being “on-call”. When we are on-call, we cannot leave our “Village” (housing area) after 7 PM. We have an on-call bag and an on-call phone. Residents, other CSAs, and the police can call the phone to complain about noise, get let into their room if they’re locked out, etc. We also have to do “rounds” of our village to check for problems and really obvious parties or other possible housing violations.</p>
<p>We do this in any type of weather, and we are on call from 7PM at night until 8AM the next day (noon the next day on weekends). We are on call about 20 nights per semester (approximately).</p>
<p>We also have to put on “programs” for our residents, to give them something to do (1 social and 1 educational per month).</p>
<p>I think the main reason your D is experiencing trouble is this:</p>
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<p>RA is not something you do purely because of free housing. The job is just too consuming and draining (both physically and emotionally) to do ONLY because of free or reduced-price housing. If she is miserable, she needs to quit at winter break. Again, if Oberlin is anything like SSU, they ALWAYS have a TON of people on the waitlist and won’t really have problems finding someone else.</p>
<p>Are we overworked? Sometimes. Our job varies quite a bit by week, day and even sometimes hour. Our supervisors tell us at training that there will be days when we hate our jobs. If it was an hourly-paid job, we would make about $2.50 an hour.</p>
<p>Would we have it any other way? Absolutely not. I’d say about 90% of our CSAs love their jobs, if for no other reason than because of the connections you make with your residents and the rest of the staff.</p>
<p>I’m sorry your D is having such a tough time. Did she sign a contract that spelled out what she was agreeing too?</p>
<p>I was an RA a million years ago, and it was really hard and really worthwhile and … character-building. We were expected to serve the dual role of disciplinarian and confidante. I would liken it to being a boss or a parent. You wish you could be close friends with some of your charges, but at the end of the day, you are in charge of them. I had to talk a kid out of a suicide, break up a vicious fight (between girls), bust kids for pot when I wish I didn’t have to, talk kids through grief when a floormate died, etc. We did get room and board and we did sign a contract. I never heard of RAs serving only the nurturing role without the policing role. Lucky kids.</p>
<p>I am still in touch with many of the RAs I worked with and will consider them close friends forever. There was a ton of competition for the positions when I was in school. I think we all looked at it as a terrific leadership opportunity with the bonus of room and board. I’m really sorry if she didn’t realize what she was getting into. She should stop midyear and not worry about it. They will find someone else easily. If she does something else with her second semester that is comparable - say a leadership role in a student organization? - it might not hurt her grad school app.</p>
<p>I know this is an older thread, but I just read an article from 2007 about how many Oberlin RAs dislike the job. Maybe you should contact ResEd, OP, and tell them how miserable your D is. It seems like a lot of RAs there have similar problems.</p>
<p>There are so many threads on this site that mention unhappy students and suggest that RAs are there as the initial line of help for adjustment and support. I found this to be the case for my children both when they urned to their RAs for advice and when they were RAs. It is disturbing to read this one and see such a negative appraisal.</p>
<p>I know policies and qualifications must vary greatly from school to school but certainly at a small school one should have had a pretty decent idea of responsibilities from one’s own first-year experience. To me the statement “signed up to be an RA because we thought that she could get free boarding” reflects a poor choice to start with from the housing office hiring point of view as well as the RA herself. Presumably she was able to come up with a better reason when applying for the job. Possibly there wasn’t much interest in RA positions (though at some schools it is quite a competitive process to get the position). It sounds as though some of the RAs may not be doing their jobs if they are indeed not making their non-local outdoor rounds, so the problem would seem to extend beyond the OP’s daughter in terms of RA performance and motivation. (I am not saying it sounds like a good policy but as an RA you can’t just ignore what you are supposed to do.) Patrolling for passed-out students in one’s own hall (including bathrooms) strikes me as a reasonable if distasteful thing to ask of an RA. The intangible empathetic part is key too, reflected superficially in things like being available when students are concerned about work load or upcoming exams. It would be really sad if a students reached crisis pint because she felt alienated from her RA or the RA did not know the correct protocols or channels to go through to guide her to further assistance. I wonder if the housing office is aware of the issue and working to improve things in the security and motivation realms if they are as described. </p>
<p>Her hall is now past the first part of the year, which is when they probably most needed a good RA. No way of knowing how hard it will be to find a decent substitute but perhaps if there are students returning from a semester abroad the housing office can find one, though it does sound as though staffing may have been problematic to start with. If the RA in question quits would she then have to pay regular rates for the single room, or move to a double to make room for a new RA?. </p>
<p>If “she’s afraid that quitting would show inconsistency on her grad school application” she could just leave the RA position off the application. I would hope she has better qualifications than this semester’s “job” experience to present, since it doesn’t sound as though this was one that has much to do with her interests or strengths. I do think if things are as bad as portrayed that she should address her concerns with the housing office for everyone’s well-being.</p>