RAs were mistreated by Res Life

Dear Editor:

I would like to draw your attention to a matter concerning the procedures Residential Life adopted in its recent dealings with me. These recent actions of the staff of Residential Life have affected the current RAs, the several RAs that resigned this year and their respective floor communities.

Since the beginning of this academic year, nine RAs have resigned and about three are returning. This is a clear indication that something is wrong, considering the fact that last year we had 15 returnees and no resignations.

Many current and former RAs have been treated very badly by Residential Life. We (i.e., the RAs pulled up this semester) have been yelled at, told that we've done awful jobs and that there is no alternative for us other than termination. The odd part about this is that we were never pulled up by our respective hall directors on the charges leveled against us. Our residents respected us and thought that we were doing a great job. In short, we were never given a warning of any sort and the reasons for hauling us up seem baseless and empty. Furthermore, Residential Life had the audacity to employ us for a full day’s work at the carousels for new RA applicants on Sunday before giving us this very nasty talk on Monday. They made us spend three hours on Wednesday night preparing for the carousel plus six hours at the carousel on Sunday, all the time knowing that they were going to be terminating our duties the very next day.

This might be a great strategic business move considering the fact that we were still employees of Residential Life, but we are also students and we expect to be treated with some modicum of respect by our employers. We feel used.

Put yourself in our position right now: we have no on-campus employment, we need to find another place to live and moving out of your room is one of the most difficult tasks especially when it is in the middle of the semester with midterms around the corner. Is this fair? Can Macalester students simply be hired and fired at will with no warning whatsoever?

Not only is this unjust, but the manner in which it was carried out is nothing short of disgraceful. I, for one, have never before been spoken to like I was in the Residential Life office that Monday. I was shocked and left quite speechless. Something needs to be done about this, and fast.

I got together with several other RAs who feel the same way about Residential Life and approached Myra Garnes (the Assistant Dean of Students) so that we could fix this situation and not allow future RAs to go through the trauma that we did.

Niranjan Arulpragasam ’06
 

Cold weather should be no surprise

Dear Editor:

On Monday, Mar. 8, I was surprised and delighted to find fresh powder on the ground, courtesy of a snowfall so thick that I could barely see 10 feet in front of me. Now, while I realize that I may be one of the few people around here who genuinely enjoys winter and all that it brings, I think it’s kind of funny that the first words out of everyone’s mouths were complaints about the weather. Hey stupid, this is Minnesota! Hopefully you did a little research on the area before you made your decision to go to Macalester, and if you did, you probably learned that it is located in one of the coldest states in the union. It’s not like they tried to hide that from you, so why the surprise? Why the hatred? It’s 28 degrees out there—not bad, considering what it was like in January. And doesn’t anyone think snow is pretty? I know that whiteness is an undesirable quality among the educated liberal types, but still, the world, much like a good cake, is better with a layer of frosting. Am I right? My enviro-savvy friends tell me that the earth is getting warmer every year. We have to savor the flavor while we can, dammit! So please, don’t hate winter—winter doesn’t hate you; it just thinks that you should suck it up and put on a sweater.

Jack Phinney ’06