By. Nathan Cram
Bangor, ME- RA’s can be found on just about every college campus in the country. An RA, or a Residence Assistant, is an upperclassmen student that is in charge of their own residence hall floor. They are essentially a guide for the students that live in the resident halls. But they are also full-time students as well. They have to do nightly duties, and make sure that nothing bad happens in the dorms. Otherwise they have all of the same responsibilities as a normal student, along with a few extra things they have to do.
Each resident dorm has an RD, or a Resident Director, who is in charge of all of the RA’s. Dustin Ramsdell is the Resident Director of the Darlings Learning Center on the Husson campus. He spent two years as an RA at University of Delaware where he was receiving his undergrad degree. He then went on to grad school for two years at Rutgers to receive his masters degree in education. Dustin says that he has always wanted to help people, and with some help from his peers and mentors, he decided he wanted to do this for a living. “Just being a student leader on campus, being involved, helping other people. Helping students with whatever would happen in the residence halls. I’ve just always had that desire to help people and I really enjoy the college campus environment.”
Becoming an RA does come with some benefits that may help people decide whether or not they want to do this job. Dustin explains that RA’s do get some privileges that regular students would not normally have. “They get compensated in terms of their room and board and meal plan. That is covered for each semester that the RA’s are here. They get to stay over breaks, and they don’t have to pay for that as well.” Each RA also gets their own room to themselves, unless in a dorm building like the Darlings Learning center which has two room suites. In that case two RA’s share a suite.
The process of becoming an RA, is almost like applying for a job, which is essentially what you are doing. You go through an application process, and make sure that they have all of the correct requirements. “They must hold a 2.5 cumulative GPA, and have been a resident at some point so they have an idea on how things work”, says Ramsdell. They then go through an interview process, in which they are asked questions about what they would do in certain situations that RA’s have to go through. And last they do a panel interview where they talk to resident officials, and then they make their decisions based on all of the given information.
But being an RA is not just a job where you are just in charge of other students. It also comes with a lot of helpful opportunities to learn new skills. “The benefits of being a leader to your peers, being responsible for people, and gaining communication skills. Also planning events and being held responsible for sensitive information, knowing that some things can’t be said. There are a lot of transferable skills that are beneficial to people being an RA”, says Ramsdell.
The Resident Assistant application is accessible via the Husson University website as of February 1st.
Application on this page:
