After a change to the Housing and Residence Life program was finalized over the summer, resident advisors are now responsible for a Thursday night on-call initiative.
“It’s about elevated risk,” Jackson Nell, fourth-year College student and chair of the resident staff program, said while describing the reasoning for the change. “When you’re not in classes and your routine is disrupted, you’re more susceptible to taking those risks, and that’s what happens increasingly on Thursday night, and that’s because a lot of students don’t have Friday classes.”
Last spring, Nell analyzed the number of incidents reported to the University Police Department and found a large number of incidents occurring on Thursday nights.
“What we found in the data is that there are actually more incidents occurring on a Thursday night than on a Friday and a Saturday,” Nell said. “Clearly there’s a lot of activity going around in our communities that we want to be on top of and proactively responding to.”
Nell said he felt this demonstrated a need for a Thursday on-call initiative, in which designated staff in each association can be contacted on Thursday nights from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. the following morning.
Previously, there was not a designated person in each association on Thursday nights and responsibility was diffused among staff.
Nell said this created stress for resident staff, and senior residents often ended up assuming the responsibility for Thursday nights.
“In the past, Thursday nights were kind of a hard burden to share as a group about who is going to be taking care of things if something comes up,” Nell said. “Now there’s someone who’s there and the staffers can be like ‘okay, I can go to the library and feel like I have this time to study’ in a way that they might not have had before.”
Sam Havron, a third-year Engineering student and RA, said he understands how Thursday nights could be stressful.
“When there isn’t any one clear person to point to — like when it’s on Friday or Saturday nights you know who’s on coverage, you know they are the point of contact — but when it’s not so clear it usually defaults to the senior resident,” Havron said. “That can be difficult to manage just because the SR may not be there on Thursday nights because they have other commitments, or in some situations you really just need to have someone that’s actually readily available.”
However, Havron, who has worked in the Woody-Cauthen association, said the staff he has worked with has never had any significant issues on Thursday nights.
“In the past we’ve always been fortunate enough to have at least two or three staffers around on any given Thursday night to be able to handle situations,” Havron said.
How each dorm association handles the Thursday night on-call initiative is up to the individual SRs and RAs of each association.
“Maybe I’ll serve three to five times this semester on Thursday,” Havron said. “How many people are on Thursday night call is really dependent on what you and the staff decide with your SR.”
Havron said in his experience residence staff is willing to work with RAs to make sure they have enough time to do everything they need to do.
“It’s about presence and it’s not about reacting to a situation in particular,” Nell said. “It’s about projecting the resources of this program to our residents on those nights.”
Although the Thursday on-call initiative was not formally announced to resident staff until July, Nell said the change started with some conversations with SRs back in the spring, and the possibility for the initiative was included in the language of the resident staff employment agreement.
“The employment agreement for resident staff is updated each year to reflect changing needs of our residential communities and the University,” Assistant Dean of Students Andy Petters said in an email statement. “The version for 2016-17 was finalized prior to any resident staff accepting their offer to serve on staff for this year.”
Petters said the language was changed so that coverage was “at minimum” two days per week and included the possibility of adding additional coverage as needed.
“This change in language better reflects how RAs are sometimes on coverage during major University events, prior to semester breaks, weather emergencies … which is something we've historically expected from resident staff,” Petters said.
RAs will not receive an increase in compensation for the new initiative. Nell said this initiative is part of RAs’ existing job duties related to their presence in their respective association communities.
The 221-member RA staff is compensated with room and board, as well as a meal plan.
“This isn’t anything that is adding in terms of raw quantifiable hours of work,” Nell said. “It’s something that is very much an extension of their rhythms in their communities.”
Petters pointed to language in the resident staff employment agreement stipulating that “the residence hall work outlined above is not easily translated into hours worked per day or week.”
“We have historically expected all staffers to be available for their respective community should something arise on a night that there is not a designated staff member on coverage,” Petters said. “The addition of on-call responsibilities for a designed RA in each residential community on Thursday evenings does not warrant an increase in compensation, as this mainly creates a point person in each residential community to be available on those nights.”
Law Prof. J.H. Verkerke, who is also the director of the Law School’s Program for Employment and Labor Law Studies, said while he is not familiar with the specific details of the Thursday on-call system, he finds the resident staff employment agreement unusual in two ways.
“First, all of the compensation takes the form of in-kind benefits — housing, meals, plus dollars — rather than cash. Employers usually pay wages,” Verkerke said in an email statement. “And second, the number of hours and schedule are only loosely defined. That’s common for salaried professional jobs, but far less common for lower-level positions like this.”
Given that the employment agreement does not set a fixed work schedule, however, Verkerke said the University is likely within its rights to adjust the RAs’ work schedules.
“On the whole, I don’t see any contractual commitment on the part of the University that establishes a fixed schedule for work or even that firmly limits time demands — other than perhaps a long-run average approaching the figures mentioned in the training section,” he said.
The training section of the employment agreement estimates RAs will spend no more than 10 hours per week on residence hall work, although SRs may spend up to 15 hours per week.
“There are days and weeks where the number of hours worked may be higher than normal for RAs, and there are other weeks where the number of hours worked may be lower than normal. It's important for us to make sure there is a relative balance in responsibilities throughout the year,” Petters said. “We empower our senior residents to monitor this balance with each of their RAs and to make supervisory decisions accordingly. This is not a change.”
The Thursday on-call initiative will include all undergraduate communities on Grounds.
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