The new Residence Hall Association Overarching Executive Council at Boston University aims to bring the leadership of the hall councils back to the students, officials said.
“We never had student leadership on top — it was just each RHA for themselves,” said Zach Herbert, president of the OEC. “There was no collaboration or communication, it was all led by the administration and Residence Life.”
Herbert, a junior in the College of Engineering, said he created the OEC to improve continuity year to year since there is typically a 100-percent turnover rate in the hall councils.
The OEC consists of four students who have had experience in RHA and can act as a mentor for the newly elected RHA members to offer support and guidance, Herbert said.
This way, the new members can figure out their jobs faster and become active right away.
“In addition to the coaching, mentoring and advising role, we also plan on taking care of larger scale quality of life issues,” he said.
The primary focus of the OEC at the beginning of the semester is getting the hall councils up and running right away, Herbert said.
“I definitely feel that the OEC is a good idea,” said Molly Trillo, president of the West Campus Hall Council. “It’s definitely something that’s going to help keep everyone on the same page in the RHA.”
Trillo, a sophomore in the College of General Studies, said when she was a hall council treasurer in the 2011–12 academic year, she found the organization was very disjointed and could use some overall guidance.
“The presidents tried to keep each other updated, but no one really had any idea or understood enough about what was going on in other areas of campus,” she said. The OEC is making it possible for RHA to return to being a student-run organization, Trillo said.
“This will keep RHA in the hands of the student body instead of handing our issues to the faculty advisors when we can’t handle something,” she said. “Now, if there is a problem, I could go to Zach first, and we can handle it as students.”
Members of the OEC have been in the positions the new RHA members are in now, so they know how to connect with the administration and deal with daily issues, said Andrew Cho, president of the Warren Towers Hall Council.
“I think its necessary,” Cho, a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences, said. “I’m just a freshman, but it sounds like before [the OEC], it was all do your own thing. It should be centralized to bring us all together because we’re all trying to do the same thing.”
The Daily Free Press reported in April that Union expressed concerns that the OEC would splint the student voice and cause confusion.
“One cohesive project can be implemented to assist all students,” said former Union President Howard Male, a Class of 2012 graduate of the School of Hospitality Administration and School of Management in a previous article. “It’s not necessarily just an RHA issue, and we would want to make sure that a communication channel is established so that issues could be identified.”
Tessy Aura, president of Student Village II Hall Council, said it benefits students to have a source to consult.
“I think they’re [OEC] making it known that they’re there as a resource,” Aura, a senior in CAS, said. “They’re doing a good job making us feel comfortable in our new positions. We are still in charge of our own councils and make our own bylaws, but they guide us and are there for support.”
After the new RHA gets accustomed to the way the system works, Herbert said his next plan is to look at larger scale quality of life issues.
“We’re there to follow up on a lot of things that weren’t able to be followed up on last year,” Herbert said.
He said he plans to look into putting more trash cans on Bay State Road, creating an online portal for maintenance requests, formulating a better method of recycling in all of the residence halls and making housing floor plans available online for all students.
Chris Lisinski contributed to the reporting of this article.
