I was once a party RA. On a floor with residents my own age, I hosted small gatherings in my room that may have featured cocktails, watched The Family Guy in rooms where my residents may have been smoking pot and attended parties where boxed wine was perhaps the guest of honor. I also think I had one of the most cohesive floors, and in the case of the sophomore experience—one characterized by its proverbial “slump”— that’s saying a lot.

But I didn’t start my job with an intention to break the rules. In fact, I kicked off my stint as an RA with a hard-line approach: I didn’t go to parties, large or small, anonymous Kirk dance parties or soirées hosted by friends. As we all know, much of college socializing (especially on the weekends) occurs in the presence of alcohol. For fear of being caught in the same room with booze, I stopped hanging out with my friends as much, I missed all the gossip that went down at parties and I quickly fell out of the loop. When I did once make the decision to attend the quintessential Macalester event, the drum circle, I was reprimanded. I was called into Sarah Griesse’s office and given a stern warning with an implicit threat that I could lose my job. But it wasn’t an opium den, I kept thinking. It was a party; people were singing, chatting, flirting, making awkward but heartfelt attempts at vocal percussion and, yeah, drinking. But I was certain at the time and am still convinced that the draw that night was not the lukewarm Minnesota beer; it was a night of some of the best things college can offer: a dorm room crowded with people you know, like and respect enamored of their own youth, hanging out, having fun.

But the Director of Residential Life apparently didn’t see the joy of the collegiate experience quite the way I did and still do. When I explained to her that it was my job to foster community and that’s exactly what I had been doing that night, that my residents were happy and safe and engaging in the kind of appropriate experimentation that is developmentally healthy for college students, and moreover, that I had been feeling excluded from the community I was helping to create, that I was lonely and quickly growing depressed, I asked her, “What am I supposed to do?” She asked me if I’d thought about going to Mac Cinema.

It was then that I stopped thinking about the repercussions of breaking the rules and started thinking about my own well-being, which meant behaving like a college sophomore and not the Gestapo. Luckily, I didn’t suffer from my choices the same way this year’s RAs so unfortunately and unfairly did. RAs should get to provide a space where people want to get to know each other and do; and then, the RA should be able to participate in that experience. A good RA recommends a good restaurant, listens to you sob about your boyfriend, bakes you cupcakes on your birthday, irons out roommate problems, restocks the condom box and shares her flavored coffee. It should not be the job of RAs to police their peers; that’s what security is for. Give students the job of reprimanding and disciplining kids their age and you’ll have hateful hallways with nasty messages and vomit left on the RA’s door (as was the case of a woman on my staff).

Despite its pitfalls, I loved the job once I turned it into what I wanted it to be (I was diligent about the cupcakes, perhaps not as great about the condom box). As a girl who had met approximately seven people her first year, I suddenly felt not only connected with my class, but in some part responsible for a corner of its camaraderie. To allow the position of RA to fall into disrepute as social suicide is to quickly lose the applicants most qualified for the job. Let the job be one students gravitate toward because they love the Macalester experience and want to help enrich it.