With the buzz around campus growing, and with The Mac Weekly publishing both an article and a letter to the editor dealing with the issue, as a former RA (and again one next year), I thought that it was time to examine this issue from a different perspective.

Being an RA is a lot different than most students realize. When Res Life says that the main job of an RA is to build community, they really do mean it. They mean it so much that we have to do programming that often feels ridiculous, but more importantly pointless. We have to put up a new bulletin board every month, though I’m not convinced it helps to build community. We have to do between three and six (depending on the RHD) “floor programs” a semester. For the RAs who are good at building community, the floor dialogues often feel like a waste of our time and frankly, for those RAs who aren’t building a community feeling, these dialogues probably aren’t going to make any difference at all. But all the same, we do them. We don’t do them because we approve of the policy of having new bulletin boards and floor dialogues. Instead we do them because we signed a contract about a year ago that said, in exchange for fulfilling this role, we would become some of the best-paid student-staff at Macalester. We would also live in some of the best accommodation on campus. However, in return for these perks, we were expected to fulfill certain obligations that we accepted when we signed our contracts.

It’s not the most important part of our jobs, and frankly it’s not the most fun part either, but enforcement of policy is another aspect of the job that we all agreed to (and were more familiar with) when we took our jobs last year. Now, Res Life’s requirements in this regard aren’t very tough. We don’t have a dry campus and we are not out to “write people up.” Really, when it comes down to it, our job is to enforce quiet hours and to keep people safe. However, students under 21 aren’t allowed to possess alcohol, and like this policy or not, all RAs signed a contract where they agreed to enforce this policy. More so, Res Life has very little leeway within their policy on this issue because the rules that Res Life has are already a loose interpretation of state laws governing alcohol.

I’m not going to bother pointing out the inherent hypocrisy in an RA violating a rule that she or he was hired to enforce; in fact, an objection to the alcohol and drug rules on campus would be a legitimate one, and one which I am sure Sarah Griesse would not at all mind hearing from an RA. In the end, though, when RAs take it upon themselves to determine which policies they will enforce (and abide by) and which they won’t, they are being negligent in their duties and should not be surprised or even upset when they are dismissed. However, there is a step beyond even this level of incompetence that has occurred.When we are on duty, our job is pretty dull. We sit in a room and basically hand out vacuum cleaners and board games for three hours. Then we have to go back to our rooms and stay there till the morning. In a lot of ways, keeping us in our rooms is a hassle, particularly because, as Frank Arulpragasam said in his letter to the editor in last week’s The Mac Weekly, we are in the end students first. But, even more important than building community, RAs are hired to make sure that everyone within their responsibility is safe. It’s why there are alcohol rules and it’s why we have to be on duty. I will never forget last year when I came down to fill out the duty log in the hall office, only to get a frantic call that someone had attempted to commit suicide. This situation, although a rare one, is perhaps the most important role that we fill. That is why we are there and, frankly, anyone who drinks while fulfilling the obligations they voluntarily assumed when they signed his or her contract deserves much worse than being fired.

We don’t always support the decisions that central staff makes. And surely we don’t support all of the policies that it has. We did, though, agree to fulfill the job that Res Life expects us to fulfill. RAs who have problems with Res Life’s policy should object to that policy. In fact, they are in a unique position of having direct and frequent contacts with those people that determine the policy, and as such should take advantage of it. But when, in any job, a person refuses to fulfill the functions they were hired to fulfill, they should not be allowed to continue working and receiving a paycheck—your money, I may add—and the RA position is no exception.