Communication among Long Hall residents and the dormitory’s resident assistants has improved since complaints of tension existing between the two groups surfaced at the beginning of the semester, according to a Long Hall resident. Lawrence Briggs, freshman from New Orleans and secretary of the Nicholls NAACP, said he received complaints from other Long Hall residents at the beginning of the semester regarding the absence of black resident assistants in the dormitory.
“There was tension between the residents and the resident assistants,” Briggs said. “The main thing was the [black] students didn’t have anyone to relate to. The people who had lived in Long before knew that there had been black RAs, and they wanted to know why we didn’t have anyone black on staff.”
Diane Garvey, director of residence life, said she has spoken to many Long Hall residents and has listened to their complaints.
“For a lot of them [Long Hall residents] it was never race; it was that they didn’t feel like they could talk to the RAs,” Garvey said.
Garvey said she did receive a complaint from a student who said the front desk staff of Long Hall was being too strict, especially with black students. After investigating, she said the students complaining about front desk procedures were not concerned with race issues but were rather troubled by a lack of communication with the staff.
“The students felt the staff was too much to their own group and were not a part of the community,” Garvey said. “The staff didn’t realize that’s how they were being perceived.”
In response to the complaints, representatives of each floor have been included in Long Hall’s weekly staff meetings on Sunday nights in order to inform the staff of student issues, Garvey said. In addition, a community student officer from University Police and a Long Hall staff assistant have been included in the meetings.
Garvey said the residents have been satisfied with these efforts.
“The staff is more approachable,” Garvey said. “There are more visitations [of resident assistants visiting residents] even when they [the resident assistants] are not on duty. We’re offering a chance for residents to speak their minds.”
Briggs serves as a floor representative at the staff meetings. He said many residents voice their opinions to the floor representatives, who in turn voice those opinions at the staff meetings.
“The situation has gotten better,” Briggs said. “There had been tension before because there was no communication. Things are changing slowly for the better.”
Although the floor representatives are not considered staff, Briggs said because the three floor representatives are black, the Long Hall staff has become more diverse.
Garvey said it is important for the resident assistants to reflect the diversity of the campus. In terms of race, she said aside from Long Hall, all other dormitory staffs are reflective of the population. However, she said the Office of Residence Life does not include race with diversity but rather focuses on student involvement.
“We don’t look at race,” Garvey said. “We look at if the staff as a whole reflects the population as a whole in terms of athletes, Greeks, different majors, honors students, band members and different organizations.”
The qualities the Office of Residence Life seeks for resident assistants are maturity, good judgment, motivation and an ability to interact with others, along with a required 2.0 grade point average, Garvey said. She said during the hiring process, the Office of Residence Life tries to mix returning residence assistants with new ones, in addition to balancing personalities that will compliment each other. In addition, she said returning resident assistants are given the choice of relocating to a different dormitory.
“The personality of the team sends the message of the building,” Garvey said. “We [the Office of Residence Life] recognize when we miss the target and correct it- that’s what we’ve done this semester.” She said from the residents’ perspective, the team was not able to communicate to the residents what was going on or make them feel like they were a part of the community.
However, Garvey said the absence of black resident assistants in Long Hall this semester was not an oversight.
“It was experienced RAs and new RAs, personality types, abilities and what the staff recommended,” Garvey said. “It was never, ‘We have this many African Americans and this many whites, Asians, Jewish, Catholic’- that was never taken into consideration. It was judgment, maturity- intangible qualities.”
In addition, the hiring process in the spring is more difficult because since fewer students enroll in the spring, the recruitment pool is smaller, Garvey said.
