As Residence Hall Association president of Towers for two years, College of Engineering sophomore Zach Herbert said he saw members struggle to adjust to their responsibilities when dealing with a frequent turnover rate.
“Every year there is almost 100 percent turnover,” he said. “All the people, all the presidents and the executive board members make their contacts and they fix the problems and learn how the system works, and then they leave and get replaced in the beginning of the year and start all over again.”
With this in mind, Herbert and College of Arts and Sciences sophomore Jonathon Scarbeau recently took an idea that had been discussed among presidents and Residence Life members at Boston University to create the RHA Overarching Executive Council, which will be implemented in the fall, Herbert said.
“I didn’t want to make any changes to the current structure, but I did want to model it off of how other schools do it where we [would] have a centralized leadership in RHA with some sort of overarching council,” he said.
However, Herbert said the OEC needs to work on a more permanent constitution over the summer so they can present it to Student Union in the fall and get a vote on it.
Union President Howard Male, a senior in the School of Hospitality and the School of Management, said Union has not yet approved the OEC but “looks forward to working with OEC members over the course of the next year.”
“I believe their tentative document has significant areas of improvement,” he said in an email interview. “I’m glad that the OEC members have promised to involve next year’s executive board in the discussions about the goals and structure of this organization so it best unifies the student voice to improve undergraduate student life.”
Herbert, the newly elected OEC president, said the OEC plans to work with incoming Union members to solidify out aspects of the constitution and help improve the quality of residence and student life.
“We’re still ironing out the details, which is a part of the responsibilities of this group, to make a formal constitution, take everyone’s input,” Herbert said.
Scarbeau, who serves as the OEC vice president of treasury, said they needed leaders who could focus on the entirety of the RHA community.
“We’ve seen a lot of problems with the continuity amongst all the different residents halls,” he said. “We talk about doing events together and it kind of falls apart because there’s no central leadership.”
ResLife Associate Director Daryl Healea said because of the high RHA president and board member turnover rate each year, the OEC would be able to more effectively train new members with their own experiences.
“RHAs aren’t elected until mid-to-late September most times,” Healea said, “[The council] will . . . provide additional [aspects] to our training, because they’ve been there, done it.”
Herbert said he remembered last year it took him about a whole semester to learn the ropes and build relationships with administration.
At the general assembly meetings each RHA held to vote on the OEC, 122 residents voted in favor while five voted against, he said.
College of Communication freshman Frank Brogie, a Towers resident, said he voted in favor of the OEC at a council meeting because he thinks it will help the atmosphere at BU.
“I think that BU needs a little boost when it comes to school spirit,” Brogie said, “I think the RHA and [OEC] are definitely groups that would be able to do that as far as school spirit goes.”
Scarbeau said as treasurer he will be responsible for researching ways on how to maximize funds given to RHAs from the undergraduate student fees.
“I definitely think there’s a lot of waste and a lot of things that should be looked at and investigated to make sure we’re actually kind of spending this money the best way for the students,” he said.
Shelton Hall RHA President Dean Borza, a CAS sophomore, said although it might not happen for a couple of years, he would like to see RHA manage its own budget instead of having to go through the Student Activities Office.
“It wouldn’t happen anytime soon, and the framework for that hasn’t been established yet,” he said, “but it would be nice to be able to just right a check for events from our own allocated funds instead of filling out forms well in advance.”
Brogie said he thought the RHA would already have an overall executive council due to its large student body and number of residences.
“I was actually surprised that we didn’t already have something in place already because it seems kind of like a no-brainer that we would have a council that connects all the territories,” he said.
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