Res Life Mentors

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With applications to MSU increasing, many on-campus students are forced to live in triple rooms. In an effort to fix this problem, resident assistants may be required to have roommates starting this fall.

MSU freshman Aliza Weiss is going to be a resident assistant this fall, but she has mixed emotions about having a  roommate. “RA’s room should be a safe place somewhere where any resident can come at any hour day or night, and speak to the RA about very confidential matters,” said Aliza. She thinks that having a roommate will be a major  inconvenience to her work. “If my roommate has dispute with me, to stress that, she should speak with her RA, which is me, so it is very biased.”

But the decision was made because of residence hall overcrowding.

Kathy Collins, the new director of Campus Living Services and Residence Life said the housing situation was the result of increasing applications from out-of-state student and international student. Kathy said, “it ended up this fall that students were living in triples, otherwise live here as transitional housing.” According to Kathy, if each of the 300 RAs on campus could take a transitional roommate, that will help thousands of students.

However, she thought some RAs may have some misunderstandings about this decision. RAs are only going to have a roommate for a very short period of time. In 4 years on average, MSU has 400 no-shows. Kathy said that once they identify who those students are, they will be quickly and swiftly move those students that are living with those mentors into those vacant spaces.”

While RAs and University Housing may not agree with the new policy  both groups agree that this will be a challenge at first. “Some RAs are 24, and they have 18 year’s old roommate, that is a different maturity level”, said Aliza.

“I think it is challenging for freshman to live three in a dorm. And I don’t want our mentors, or any others to lose sight of that. I think it is also challenging for a freshman to live with mentor” said Kathy. And she hopes RAs will work to support the decision before next semester.

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