By
Hillary Davis
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Community-Resident Assistant Board tackles positive and negative aspects of working in Res Life
Resident assistants seeking a support system among colleagues and a more direct route for bringing concerns to their supervisors have formed an organization committed to improving their experience.
The Community-Resident Assistant Board allows RAs, as well as community assistants, their apartment-complex counterparts, to share pertinent issues about their jobs and residence halls, and offer feedback to the Department of Residence Life.
"Positive, negative, regardless - you have fellow staff members that can sympathize all across campus," said Cory Shapiro, a Coronado resident assistant who facilitated last night's meeting of about 30 RAs and CAs. "I see this as our opportunity to be more a part of Residence Life."
Although the group faced opposition at first - Shapiro said many hall directors and other leaders within Residence Life feared the group would take a negative approach to discussing RA and CA issues - the board is gaining the support of UA's Residence Life staff.
Shapiro said he does not want the group to assume an "us vs. them" stance with the directors in Residence Life, but instead bring RAs and CAs closer to the department.
"We all love the experience," he said. "The only thing is, there's room for improvement, like anything else. That's where we want to help."
A shaky year is nearly over for RAs and CAs - this year, several assistants were fired or quit, claiming a lack of administrative support. With the introduction of the board, RAs and CAs can have an advocacy group for their interests, which some have said are secondary in the eyes of Residence Life staff to the experience of the 5,500 residents who live in University of Arizona dorms.
"If you have all these happy RAs and CAs that's going to make it better for the residents," Shapiro said.
The board will help RAs "avoid all the nastiness" that has already occurred and has the potential to occur, said Chris Robertson, also a Coronado RA.
"CRABS provides a way to intervene before a labor union has to be formed, or anybody has to quit," he said.
The young organization, which began formally meeting in January, has not yet yielded many tangible accomplishments, Shapiro said.
However, the group has been able to ensure that every future resident or community assistant will receive a manual outlining their duties - including a section on the appeals process for terminated assistants - and that more improvements to the Residence Life system are expected in the future, Shapiro said.
"We feel just from being established now, the results will follow," he said.
