Resident Adviser

From WikiCU, the Columbia University wiki encyclopedia

From WikiCU

A Resident Adviser (also spelled Advisor) or RA is a student charged with supervising students living in a set of rooms in a residence hall. RAs get free housing to do this. RA duties include:

sorting out Room Condition Reports
busting parties
fighting the noble war on drugs, tobacco, and in first year dorms, alcohol (or looking the other way and generally not caring much about it at all)
being in charge of the vacuum cleaner
work with the CPA for area-wide programs

Until 2007-2008, Columbia RA's had to be juniors or seniors. The Office of Residential Programs began considering freshmen to serve as RA's during their sophomore year for the first time in 2006-2007. Barnard ResLife had initiated the practice years in advance.

RA's at Columbia are a mixed bag. Some are awesome, others are highly questionable choices for the position. Some RA's have suggested that Residential Programs actually hires unqualified candidates with the reasoning that the position will "help them grow." The indescribably poor reasoning skills that go into this logic should be expected from Columbia administrators.

Summer RA's are hired directly by Housing Services.