As a resident adviser for the past two years at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Soneida Rodriguez was trained to help students navigate a maze of complex problems: Racial slurs. Debilitating depression. Date rape.
Even so, she felt unprepared for the crises she’s facing this fall: Panicked calls from a student whose friend tested positive for Covid-19 and who worries she’ll be next. News this week that Rodriguez herself might have been exposed to someone with the coronavirus and needed to be quarantined and tested.
“We are on the front lines at the end of the day,” said Rodriguez, a 21-year-old senior. “We’ll be the first to suffer if there’s an outbreak in our community.”
We are on the front lines at the end of the day. We’ll be the first to suffer if there’s an outbreak in our community.
This fall, the already-heavy load on RAs — typically 19- to 21-year-olds with a few weeks of training — is becoming unbearable for a growing number of them on campuses across the country. The life-or-death stakes of the pandemic have pushed some to strike and others to quit, threatening the public-health measures at colleges that rely heavily on RAs to enforce the rules.
It’s understandable that colleges would expect RAs to monitor and report public-health violations since they’re the “eyes and ears” closest to students, said Karen Levy, an assistant professor of information science at Cornell University who has written about her concerns over asking students to police one another.
But at the same time, RAs who are expected to be students’ mentors and confidantes end up having to play “good cop/bad cop” and take on a role that could endanger their health, she said.
Turning to One Another
At Michigan, Rodriguez feels she can no longer ensure the health and safety of her students because of what she and other critics consider inadequate testing and lax enforcement of safety protocols.
Late Friday she said she was suffering from a cough, sore throat, and fever — worrisome signs since the cafeteria where she’d been eating daily is in a residence hall where a cluster of Covid-19 cases was reported on Thursday. She said she was waiting for someone to accompany her to a building where she’ll remain in quarantine while she awaits testing.
Last week Rodriguez helped organize a strike by dozens of RAs on her campus, demanding better Covid-19 protections and hazard pay for student employees like her. More than 100 RAs voted to stop performing such duties as letting in students who are locked out and staffing mailrooms. The effort was inspired by a similar push last month at Cornell, where RAs called off a strike after administrators met with them and agreed to discuss their concerns.
In an interview with The Chronicle, Rick Gibson, Michigan’s director of university housing, and Martino Harmon, vice president for student life, said the university had strengthened its response to reported public-health violations to make it clear that, while the focus is on educating students rather than punishing them, there are consequences for flouting the rules. In a new round of surveillance testing, RAs will have priority if they apply, the officials said.
“They’re in the front lines, and we understand their fears and concerns,” Harmon added.
He said the university does not extend hazard pay to any employees and can’t do so for RAs, who often receive free room and board, and sometimes a small stipend, in exchange for a job that burnishes leadership skills but can burn students out.
Rodriguez recalled an afternoon last year in which she pivoted from advising one student about which courses she should take to calming another who was having a panic attack and threatening to hurt herself.
“Ultimately, RAs are responsible for helping lay the groundwork for people’s success at the university,” said Rodriguez, a first-generation college student who, as a freshman, turned to her own RA when college seemed overwhelming.
Entering college is a huge challenge even in the most normal circumstances.
“Entering college is a huge challenge even in the most normal circumstances,” she said. This year, in particular, “I have so much empathy for the stresses our residents are facing.”
As word of those stresses spreads on social media, RAs on campuses around the country have been looking to one another for ideas and support. RAs at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge have been demanding better personal protection as well as fewer required in-person interactions with students. An LSU spokesman, Ernie Ballard III, said that the university had responded to such concerns by reducing the number of student visits required and that it’s working to get RAs more masks.
At the University of Virginia, RAs complained that a two-hour Zoom training session on Covid-19, followed by an email that repeated the information, did “not get close to providing … the emotional, psychological, and physical tools as well as detailed knowledge on how to handle situations related to containing the spread of the virus in residence halls,” they wrote in a letter last month to university housing officials. Brian T. Coy, a Virginia spokesman, said the university had expanded both educational resources and protective equipment for RAs, and would continue to do so through the fall.
The Last Straw
One of the biggest sources of anxiety for many freshmen living on campus, RAs told The Chronicle, is the threat that a surge in Covid-19 cases could prompt their colleges to send them home.
The University of North Carolina at Wilmington came close: In an effort to “de-densify” the campus and make social distancing easier, it notified freshmen on September 8 that half of the students living on campus in double rooms would have to move to singles or study remotely for the rest of the academic year. If roommates couldn’t decide themselves who would leave and who would stay, the university would randomly reassign them. Some turned to their RAs for help.
For Laila Beverly, a 20-year-old junior, that was the final straw. She quit her RA job on the Wilmington campus last week and drove home to Pennsylvania, where she’ll study remotely.
Before she left, Beverly told her story anonymously in an interview with North Carolina Public Radio, describing her frustration with the guidance she had received from administrators. She said she was afraid she would be fired if she spoke out in her name, but after she quit she agreed to speak openly to The Chronicle.
At least two other Wilmington RAs have also left their jobs.
The pressure on RAs had been building long before the pandemic. RAs at Wilmington are among the employees responsible for reporting to the Title IX office when they hear complaints of sexual misconduct.
As someone students felt comfortable confiding in, Beverly heard about and reported five such cases last year, she told The Chronicle. In addition, she said, she reported four students whose behaviors had led her or others to fear they might be at risk of suicide. Even when RAs are assured that they’re expected only to steer students toward campus experts, they can’t help feeling responsible for those who confide in them, she said.
“We’re told to direct students to the counseling center, but sometimes you feel like that’s not enough for someone who’s away from home for the first time and going through the worst experience of their life,” Beverly said. “You have to listen and be compassionate, make sure they’re OK, and check in afterward.”
One of the hardest things about this fall, she said, is that students would ask her for information about coronavirus-testing requirements and other rules related to Covid-19, and she wasn’t able to answer them. When she reported some students for refusing to wear masks, she learned that others, with multiple violations, were still living in the dorms.
I was overwhelmed and scared, and then I would find comfort in my co-workers.
She and other RAs would sometimes get together and cry. “I was overwhelmed and scared, and then I would find comfort in my co-workers,” Beverly said. “But we’d have to go on angry walks after meeting with student-housing [officials], just to blow off steam.”
Christina Schechtman, a UNC-Wilmington spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The Chronicle that RAs are encouraged, as part of their routine training, to reach out to campus counselors. “The full-time, professional staff in Housing and Residence Life also recognizes the challenging times that their student employees may be facing, and has encouraged RAs to reach out to the Counseling Center for support,” she wrote.
Over the summer, the university updated its pandemic protocols and guidance for RAs, she said. University housing officials explained to them how their roles would change under the pandemic, and gave them the opportunity to resign. “A small number stepped down then,” Schechtman wrote.
But not everyone can afford to quit such jobs, even if they wanted to. Many RAs, like Rodriguez at Michigan, depend on the free room and board — worth about $12,000 at Michigan — that typically come with the position. Moreover, Rodriguez doesn’t have a home to return to if she lost her job; her mother and sister had to move in with their extended family after pandemic-related pressures forced them to sell their home, she said. The family includes an elderly relative Rodriguez is afraid she might infect if she joined them.
“Now,” she said, “we’re being forced to choose between basic necessities, like eating and having a roof over our head, and doing what’s best for our health.”
