The 10-Minute Rule

Resident advisers have the dual roles of serving as both administrative enforcers and the prime source of community-building in undergraduate residence halls. Using their leadership positions, they have the ability to foster safe and exciting communities on their floors. In an effort to make residence halls more secure, Columbia’s Office of Residential Programs recently announced stricter standards for RAs, each of whom serves on a rotating schedule as the “on-duty RA” for one or more residence halls. A new policy will require the on-duty RA to remain within a 10-minute walk of his or her residence hall during the day, in addition to the current policy which requires them to be inside their residence halls during nighttime hours. While this directive seeks to provide students with someone to turn to in moments of crisis, it will do little to make students feel more secure. Instead, the focus of future policy changes should be on cultivating closer ties between RAs and the residents to whom they are assigned.

Resident advisors have 56 official duties, including promoting community development and knowing their residents’ academic, personal, and social concerns. Especially within first-year dorms, RAs can ease the transition to college life and offer helpful advice and guidance. A strong RA can do much to bring community to the sometimes unsocial environment of the dormitory.

However well-intentioned, the new policy requiring on-duty RAs to stay near their residence halls is seriously flawed. Given the burden it places on RAs, it will likely prove difficult to enforce. The policy will make it harder for those RAs who obey it to hold off-campus jobs when they are on duty, and the burden will fall heaviest on RAs who need to work to make ends meet. But most of all, the policy unreasonably assumes that students will rely on the on-duty RA for assistance. Rather than expand the role of the on-duty RA–who is necessarily a stranger to most residents–the Office of Residential Programs should give every RA the proper incentives to take a more active role on his or her floor. While RAs are evaluated at the end of the year by their graduate advisers, there should be a formal way for students to evaluate their RAs as well.

Resident advisers have great potential to improve their residents’ college experience. For that to happen, RAs must perform their work diligently and reach out to their own residents. Tying them down when they are on duty will only alienate RAs without improving the services they provide.