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William Harris
Brandi Bradley
ENC 2135
10/14/15
Resident Advisors: Promoting a Healthy Community
On most every university campus dotted throughout are many buildings filled with rooms
meant for students to reside within, residence halls. These buildings are multi-tiered with
multiple amenities designed for student use, kitchens, bathrooms, sinks, showers, and trash
chutes all for enabling a relatively clean and safe living environment within the
compartmentalized rooms. These buildings require staff, administrator and cleaning, who all
work together to keep the halls cleared and free of dirt and any health concerns. Yet another
component of this environment is the residents themselves. The dwellers within these halls
coming to school for a better education and an enrichment of their own human capital. It is in
interaction with this group that resident advisors fulfil a purpose within this community, as well
as providing a necessary service to the residents in the form of social interaction and leadership.
The resident advisor provides this critical service in the form of social programs and floor
activities designed to get residents out of their dorms to interact with one another and promote
the creation of a more connected community. They take multiple different approaches to this
task, but a real problem exists for them in how exactly they can get people involved in their
activities and lead to a more cohesive community on the floor.
In order for resident advisors to be truly effective in how they deal with their
communities they need to have an understanding on how to deal with and interact with their
residents. Often times residents come into school with dispositions that may lead to substance

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abuse, previous mental disorders, depression, and a wide range of social or emotional
disadvantages that may impede their ability to work in a close proximity community
environment. In research done by Dennis Thombs and others, they research the effectiveness of
resident advisors training for first aid and dealing with substance abuse, claiming that current
methods are inadequate for teaching resident advisors the necessary steps to take for successfully
dealing with such events. Dennis in affirming the importance of such training says that,
Alcohol use, drug use, and mental health disorders are not rare in the US college student
population. He also utilizes data from the American Psychiatric Association stating that, the
following proportions of 19- to 25-year-old US college students met criteria for certain
conditions: 18 % for any personality disorder, 13 % for alcohol dependence, 12 % for any
anxiety disorder, 11 % for any mood disorder, 8 % for alcohol abuse, 4 % for drug abuse, and 1
% for drug dependence. Another national study found that in the past school year, 43 % of
college students felt so depressed it was difficult to function, 9 % seriously considered suicide,
and 1 % attempted suicide. (Thombs 2014) The resident advisors must then be able to act in
such ways that can overcome these problems that can be found within residence hall
communities. Its imperative that resident advisors are able to overcome this boundary or else
their ability to communicate and interact with the residents will be impeded, it requires
tactfulness on the resident advisors part to deal with those suffering from dependences and
mental disorders or depression. This form of support comes either in the form of being present
for the affected individual as well as being proactive in their addressing of the situation, they
must be able to foresee future problems and solve them before they become more expansive.
This type of support comes in the form of gatekeeper training for suicide prevention,
enabling resident advisors to more adequately and quickly come to deal with problems as they

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develop. Deborah Taub and Susan Pasco both address gatekeeper training in their research and
how to better implement it in college training of resident advisors. Deborah states that, RAs
interact with students more than other student affairs professionals and are therefore in a position
to intervene more directly in students' lives, and, the resident assistants (RAs) who live and
work within the residence halls on college and university campuses are critical targets for
gatekeeper training. Its the resident assistants prime placing within the community of
incoming students who may need help that puts them in the best position to help identify
problems occurring within the community. It is integral to the effectiveness of the resident
advisors attempts for social involvement that there are no maladies affecting the resident
population in such a negative way. By initiating such a thing as gatekeeping training into the
resident advisors repertoire it both allows for more efficacy of the resident advisor in how they
are directly influencing the lives of others as well as providing for the well-being of the
individual who can then contribute to the community as a whole. (Deborah 2013)
Outside of atypical situations involving suicidal thoughts or tendencies, its important for
resident advisors in their effectiveness to address the social cues they receive from their
residents. While some of these can be indicative of a greater problem as was shown before, in
most cases it can just be a direct connection to how well received certain advances are. A
resident advisor for Landis Hall on the FSU campus, Kelli Doyle, shared her insight on her
interactions with residents, Ideally I would love to communicate with everyone face to face in a
perfect world where we were all here all of the time. She values the ability to make a personal
connection with her residents on a daily basis that then both strengthens her own bond with the
community and increases the chances of communal participation at later points in time by
residents who have already interacted with and are more at ease with her. Kelli also detailed how

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she approaches different situations, often adapting her own disposition towards the resident in
order to communicate on a more effective level with them. Kelli went on to use an analogy, Its
just like trying to teach a classroom full of different children. Youve got to change your tactics
to appeal to them. Its a multi-tiered and varied approach that works best in situations such as
this. A majority of the time figuring out how a person best responds to certain social situations
takes a lot of time, which is why it would be prudent of the resident advisors to be able to
quickly adapt to such situations. It is in this way that training the resident advisors to accurately
interpret and react to different facial expressions as cues is an effective way for adapting to the
emerging situations they may be faced with in the residence hall community. Accurately
interpreting the feelings and emotions of residents can allow the resident advisor to more quickly
address issues as well as more effectively influence and encourage participation by students in
the residence hall as a whole as is the intent of resident advisors.
Another important aspect that contributes towards the success of resident advisors and
their programs stems from the way they communicate with the resident advisors. While there are
face to face interactions that rely a lot on facial and tonal cues. Yet a lot of communication
occurs while resident advisors are away from the dorm and while students are away as well. In
the college environment, a lot of students are transitioning from one place to the other in a very
rapid and hurried flow that is what is to be expected of a high load schedule and a spread out
campus. The opportunity for a lot of face to face interactions and appeals is simply not present
as the most available form of communication, rather the resident assistant must utilize posters,
fliers, and postings on doors in order to inform and connect with their residents. Kelli mentions
this, Even if its not verbal communication its a form of communication (posters). At least its
still me putting an extension of myself out there even if its not in person. She recognizes the

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effect that such postings and effort shows to the residents and details, and its not just the work
put in that shows in her efforts to communicate, its also the way these posters are designed. A
lot of factors come into designing a poster that catches the eye, delivers a message, and doesnt
spend too long going into too much detail and losing the viewer. Kelli said how she takes such
things like font, color, pictures, titles, and even placement of the posters on the walls and doors
into account, trying to post them at around eye level or if theyre small slips taping them directly
to the handle in order to ensure the content is viewed by the residents of the dorm. Again
though, such efforts into advertising events and keeping residents involved can be disregarded by
residents who either dont wish to participate, or dont have the desire to connect with many
people, seeing college as less of a balance between social and school work and just being that of
schooling. It plays into the expectations of social interactions that many people come into
college expecting.
There are specific tropes and expectations typical in the collegiate atmosphere that has
been propagated with a plethora of films and media surrounding it to the point of oversaturation
and making the various different sects within colleges compartmentalize themselves into
stereotypes and byte-sized pieces that can be easily digested and identified. This serves as a
disadvantage to the incoming student as these expectations dethrone their typical paradigms they
utilize for social interaction, playing into the stereotypes they believe to be expected of them and
as a result continuing a cycle of unhealthy social communication and identification. The real
way to rely heavily on the social classifications of college students is on a more case by case
basis that flushes a majority of previous information out of the system, similar in how porn
compares to actual sex and war in movies compares to real combat. This theme of countering
stereotypes has been seen in several books and one such book is the anti-war Slaughterhouse 5

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that begins with an affirmation that it wasnt men fighting in these wars rather it was boys, a
subversion of the previous and typical expectations for war as a mens game and showing the
actual truth of what was going on in the system. This is one of the things that a resident advisor
must also be able to comprehend of the incoming freshman who typically fill their halls. Being
college students themselves is very helpful in assisting their understanding of their lower peers
and is one such way that the resident assistant works most effectively in their appeals to the
residents. When they must take up a role as both a friend and an enforcer to combat such
tendencies as shown previously, sometimes cognitive dissonance can take place as the resident
advisors personal disposition must be disregarded as they uphold the law of the land in their
decisions to reprimand and verbally accost the violators of such protocols. It is in such
interactions that the resident advisor then faces conflict of interests, maintaining the order of the
community and its cohesiveness as an environment through enforcement of rules designed to
increase the healthiness of the whole system versus being a locus of friendliness and
communication that residents can rely on. Its a balance between being too cool for school and
having a stick up your butt. Kelli faces troubles with how she regulates herself and her image
in the hall community. She describes herself as a very friendly person who also just wants to be
liked, but not necessarily be friends with, by everyone under her care as it stimulates more
interaction in the community and encourages them to see her as not just a leader, but someone to
talk to, Theres not a clear divide between the friend and the enforcer, its hard to cross that
divide sometimes. A consolidation between the two roles or an instance of split personality are
ways in which to incorporate both positives and negatives of other side, and its the ability of the
resident advisor to apply their knowledge in such a way that it inspires the confidence of the

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residents and enables them to them him/her as a leader and social focal point among their
community.
The training involved in making resident advisors out of current students is an arduous
process that involves comprehensive coverage of the multitude of differing tasks that must be
addressed in the residence hall. Kelli detailed that in her training, We get training before every
semester of being an RA, we have a week and a half before summer session, 3-5 days for spring,
3 weeks for fall, as well as describing the typical workload of such a day, Were always
prepared and kept updated on changes, its always good to review even if you think you
remember everything. We go through very intense training all day long sometimes from 9am -9
pm. This amount of training works into the ethos of the resident assistants position in the
hierarchy of the hall system in that the residents, having knowledge of the extensive training
coupled with their expectations of leadership, place these resident advisors on a pedestal within
their view that initially makes them seem as infallible members of the community from which a
sort of code of conduct is drawn from. As time develops however and exposure to this leader is
increased, some faults can be accentuated within them as the resident realizes they too are also
student at college that have their own emotions and feelings as to what exactly a leader is to them
and who they look up to as leaders themselves. It is in this way that resident advisors can also
offer not just this position of leadership in the communities but also as a conduit for the growth
of the individual within the community in the widening of their worldview and conceptualization
of leadership. This leads to a growth in the personal cognitive qualities of the individual and
instigates a healthier community as the individuals within it shed their past lives and lead into a
more advanced state of being that is conscious of their fellow human beings that are going to be
involved in their lives.

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Social facilitation is just one small part of the problem that resident advisors face, their
real problem is in assisting the growth of people who may need it, diffusing situations,
alleviating worries and emotional distress, lessening the burden of social interact by taking the
first steps themselves are all way in which the resident advisors move to make a better life for
their residents. Not only while they are within their halls during that specific year, but also in the
future as they change and grow in college becoming better as people and stronger as individuals.
Some may be resistant to this advance upon their previous beliefs, but its only for their own
benefit and can assist them in learning to live life with a fuller and more developed purpose
befitting a benevolent and moral human.