It’s been a year since officials announced the cancellation of GW’s Resident Adviser program, which placed an upperclassman on individual residence hall floors to provide support and guidance for residential students. In its place, administrators have appointed professional staff members, called community coordinators, to oversee the hundreds of students living in each hall.
One and a half semesters in to the community coordinator program, freshmen and sophomores who were brand new to campus this fall have been forced to navigate the transition to college life without a peer mentor to look up to. Although administrators’ reasoning for cutting the program was valid, citing RA safety concerns and managing coursework on top of RA responsibilities, completely doing away with the program was not the solution. The University should bring back the RA program to offer peer support for residential students while keeping community coordinators on hand as a professional resource to step in when issues arise that go beyond what’s reasonable for an RA to handle on their own. This would help students, many of whom are living away from home for the first time, adjust to college life in an independent and fast-paced environment like GW.
The RA program as it stood at GW was not without its flaws. RAs complained for years about insufficient compensation, demanding work schedules and perceived insufficient support from administrators. Officials rescinded their monthly stipends in spring 2019, instead distributing dining dollars as payment, and gave some RAs roommates, eliminating major attractions of the position. This occurred even as many RAs complained that they were being given additional responsibilities that could become overwhelming. It’s understandable that RA responsibilities should require time and effort, but it should not turn into a full-time job.
Rather than continuing without an RA program, GW should reinstate the program by listening to RAs’ complaints regarding insufficient compensation and overwhelming schedules and make changes accordingly. By reestablishing the RA system, undergraduate students – especially first-years and transfers – will have an extra source of support as they navigate the college experience.
RAs are undergraduates with their own college experience, who were conscientious and hard-working enough to add RA responsibilities to their already-busy schedules. RAs should not act as enforcers or disciplinarians or take the place of professional full-time staff or GW Police Department officers. Rather, they should work in tandem with professional staff and partners to create a better on-campus living experience for students.
GW ended the RA program to ease pressure on the student RAs, but this move merely shifts greater responsibility toward the community coordinators. These community coordinators work during “normal business hours” Monday through Friday, and during the “off” hours, one community coordinator on call is the primary point of contact for a collection of buildings, called neighborhoods, which house several hundreds of students.
But college life does not submit to a schedule based on business hours, and it’s unreasonable to expect a single community coordinator on call to effectively support and oversee hundreds or thousands of students scattered in multiple buildings for hours on end. An RA for each floor or for every few floors could act as a support system for residents during later hours and connect students to community coordinators when necessary. Scheduling set shifts for these RAs could prove useful as well.
The University tried out rescinding the RA program. Now they should return and reform it. The University, to its credit, has proven itself to be capable of reforming parts of the RA system. In the aftermath of the RA unionization effort, GW officials amended the RA agreement to create more specific guidelines for when an RA could be fired. This addressed a source of dissatisfaction among some RAs, indicating that GW is capable of improving the program.
As GW emerges from the pandemic, it’s more important than ever that students feel a sense of community and support.
Evan Wolf, a freshman majoring in political communication, is an opinions writer.
