I want to be an RA

In My Humble Opinion
1

I’m applying to be a Resident Advisor for the spring term at my university. I had my interview today with the Resident Director of the building with open spots. At the end of the interview he talked about how important programming was and how there was a need for more of what he called ‘social programs’. The typical ones put on are movie nights and pizza parties, things of that ilk. He also mentioned that he was really looking for out of the box ideas about to get people to attend since college sophomores tend to be pretty apathetic about attending dorm sponsored events. The usual rouges of free food and ‘dorm money’ are no longer pulling people in. Competition is stiff for the few open spots, so I’m going to take him up on his request for new and creative ideas and ya’ll are the most creative bunch I know.

Here are a few of my ideas:
Drive in movie night: Block off a portion of the parking lot and have people watch a movie rather than all huddling around a small TV in a dorm room.
Ice Skating night: I’ve played hockey for 16 years and it’s my main passion in life. I plan to take kids to an ice skating rink for an evening and see where it goes.
Scavenger Hunt: It could be something in dorm, or something in the greater LA area.
Secret Santa: Pretty standard and would be opt-in, not required.

The resident director is not afraid of really outrageous ideas either. He mentioned for a sexual awareness event he would “have a bunch of transvestites come to school and dance around.” (We are a catholic school and this would never fly, but ideas such as that would impress him)
So I put it to you. What type of programs did your building offer that were successful in getting participation? What did the RA’s themselves do to get people to attend. In addition to social programs we are asked to put on programs in the areas of wellness education, spirituality, community service, diversity & intercultural, faculty, time management/academic skills, and alcohol awareness. Any and all help is appreciated.

CMiller

2

Pay them to attend.
That would have gotten my attention.

3

What gender is the dorm? (oops… “residence hall”!)

I was an RA in a co-ed dorm for a few years at Texas A&M, and we had our best luck with stuff that was either controversial or just plain fun.

Controversial: We had a gay/lesbian panel come in for a moderated discussion. Thing was, our RD went out of his way to find stereotype busting people to be on this one- we had this big, handsome strapping gay cowboy-type, a pretty good looking lesbian girl and a couple of other normal people who happened to be gay. No lesbians with crewcuts or flamboyant gay men. This program turned out interesting, because in spite of the fundamentalists showing up bibles in hand (I shit you not!), it stayed civil and interesting.

The most fun one was the “Roommate Game”, which was sort of a silly take on the Newlywed Game that we did.

4

It’s been a few years for me, but what sucked us in was free food. That got the numbers in. Not much else would. If free food isn’t cutting it try something better than the usual cheapest pizza available on campus which is what we always got. Maybe something different like dim sum or a proper barbeque would work.

Stuff like movie night never got my attention since I had a TV and could watch a movie with my friends in a room that wasn’t as disgusting as the lounge invariably was.

My one idea would be a mixer with a girl’s dorm. My dorm was all male, and a mixer with a girl’s dorm would have gotten the attention of most of the residents. If the dorm is coed, try it with a girl’s floor. If the floor is already coed, then please disregard.

5

The dorm I am applying for is actually a set of 2 bedroom/1bathroom apartments with a courtyard in the middle. Since the apartments are self contained it becomes harder to get people to leave, especially sophomores who are ‘over’ programming. The builiding is coed and probably has a 60/40 girl to guy ratio (as does the school).

Bump: I love this idea. Our school is Catholic, but is liberal enough that they would allow something like this to go on. I also had suggested bringing in a professor of Islamic studies to talk about Islam and its place in the world today. Things like this are what he’s going for.

Thanks all for the advice, keep it comin!

6

Consider me to have been one of the “apathetic” ones.

There’s absolutely nothing you could have done, short of bringing in strippers and a pony keg, to get me to attend an “RA Organized” event.

If I wanted to be alone/study, I’d be doing that. If I wanted to be out drinking and partying, I’d be doing that. Never in college did I want to sit in the common room with the other people who just happened to be assigned to the same building as I was, no matter what was going on.

Perhaps I attended some early ones freshman year when I didn’t know anybody, but once you meet people, you have a lot of things to do. . .all of them more interesting than anything organized by an RA. And even if he did organize something I thought was fun, I probably wouldn’t have gone anyway, because he was the one organizing it.

Sorry, dude, but the RA was the guy in college telling me to quiet down. Not the guy in charge of my good times.

Here’s what I’d tell him, “look man, these are 20 year olds. They drink. They gamble. They have sex. If they have to have an RA, the best thing we can do is keep him out of their hair.” Will that be outside the box enough for him?

That said, maybe try a “poker tournament”. That’s a big thing now, and it seems to have trickled down to the level of office ladies, so if your dorm can handle Secret Santa they can handle poker. It’s not gambling if they don’t put up their own money and you can offer 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prizes of free pizzas, movie rentals, whatever.

And, its legal in California anyway. Who knows. . you might find your calling organizing poker tournaments.

7

Since you have a lot of women, a couple of programs that went over quite well were personal safety programs. One girl had a woman come out and demonstrate certain safety techniques and devices, and another one had one of the black belt members of the school’s martial arts club come out and teach certain techniques (he was certified in self-defense training or some such thing).

That’s about all I can think of that was worthwhile… most of the programs sucked balls and we just did them because we had to.
Hey- ** Trunk ** brought up something that might be easy to forget after all the indoctrination/training they put you through.

Your residents are adults. Treat them like it. Respect their decisions to drink and/or fuck like crazy, and don’t give them the student affairs talk unless things are a real problem. The last thing you want to do is be “The Man”, for a couple of reasons- first, it sucks to live with people and have them exclude you from things because you’re “the Man”, and second, they won’t tell you a damn thing, and you won’t know what’s going on with your residents. If you respect them and only get on to them for flagrant violations of the rules, then they’ll probably cut you a lot of slack.