Breaking the RCA telescreen

In many schools, resident assistants act as extensions of campus police and the deans’ offices — at Villanova, RAs are charged with patrolling hallways, breaking up parties and reporting violations to authorities. Since RAs often have the ability to write up and report students, they are viewed as cops attempting to get fellow students in trouble, instead of simply mentors and friends. This is precisely what creates dangerous situations in many schools — in emergencies, students are often unwilling to work with RAs, and instead choose to deal with emergencies themselves. This choice to refuse more experienced help can jeopardize the lives of sometimes dangerously ill students.

Our RCA system is inherently designed to fight this problem. We deliberately withhold reporting powers from RCAs to reassure students that RCAs are fundamentally different from the police. We encourage our students to view RCAs as caring mentors. And because Princeton so strongly emphasizes that the RCA is a mentor and not a patrol officer, we undergraduates willingly go to our RCAs for emotional support, academic advice and help in the event of both alcohol- and non-alcohol–related emergencies.

It’s this very communication line between older students and underclassmen that the University is jeopardizing by requiring RCAs to patrol hallways. Although having RCAs on call with University-provided cell phones during weekends will help ensure that an RCA is always readily available for emergencies, requiring them to patrol hallways twice per night for “significant” alcohol violations places RCAs in a policeman’s role.

One can certainly envision students avoiding RCA surveillance when considering that RCAs are effectively obligated to break up parties in any of the following “high-risk” situations, according to “Rights, Rules, Responsibilities”:

¶ Serving hard alcohol

¶ Underage possession of hard alcohol

¶ Possession of any common source of alcohol

¶ Any pre-gaming or drinking games

¶ Any large amount of alcohol relative to the number of people in the room

¶ Any behavior that “infringes upon the peace and privacy of others.”

Since RCAs de jure must end a broad variety of parties, they are faced with an unfair choice: They can choose to patrol and likely alienate advisees, or they can choose to shirk their patrol duties, maintain the trust of their advisees, but risk their jobs. Never should school policy force RCAs to make the choice between mutually exclusive alternatives of fulfilling obligations and serving students; however, this is precisely the choice facing our RCAs.

The University may point to our peer schools, many of which require RAs to be on call during weekends. But neither Harvard nor Yale, whom the University presumably referenced when referring to peer universities with similar on-call systems, have such systems. When on duty, Yale Frocos are “expected to be in the dormitory and readily available to the freshmen, other counselors, and to the dean and master throughout the evening.” Similarly, Harvard senior staff are on call simply to respond to emergencies — not to patrol hallways.

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Although emergency prevention by curbing high-risk drinking is critical to protecting our students, it cannot come at the expense of critical emergency response — that is, a clear communication line between students and RCAs. Drinking is a reality of college life for much of our campus, and that certainly won’t change very much if RCAs patrol for alcohol violations more aggressively. What will change is our perception of our RCAs, and whether we have a line of defense that may be the difference between bring a sick freshman to McCosh and jeopardizing that freshman’s life. If the school’s intention is to prevent alcohol-related deaths and injuries, it ought to protect its best student safety net.

Adi Rajagopalan is a sophomore from Glastonbury, Conn. He can be reached at arajagop@princeton.edu.