ResLife makes structural changes to improve on-campus living

This academic year has ushered in a host of changes within the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife). According to Christopher Rossi, the associate dean of student affairs,ResLife has put a number of reforms in place that provide co-curricular resources and support for students.

Former ResLife Director Yolanda King has left Tufts, and a number of new staff arrived over the summer, adding to staffing changes over the past several months. In addition, the office's organization has changed, with new structures for residence directors, resident assistants and upper-level managers. Rossi said all these changes are aimed at improving the Tufts experience.

“We believe here at Tufts … that learning extends beyond the classroom," Rossi said. "Things that happen in the classroom are just a part of your experience and growth here at Tufts."

New Dorm Organization 

Rossi said that ResLife has transitioned from the area residence director model, with dormitories grouped into four areas guided by professional residence directors, to a model with seven designated areas, each led by a graduate residence director (GRD).

Ben Grace, the GRD for Metcalf, Richardson, Stratton, Sophia Gordon and Hodgdon Halls, explained that he serves as the point person between professional and student staff.

“The best way to describe the GRD role is that I serve as a liaison between the ResLife professional staff and my [First Year Advisors] FYAs and Community Development Advisors (CDAs)," Grace told the Daily in an email. "Since I live on campus and interact with my FYAs and CDAs more frequently than professional staff, I am better able to convey departmental updates and information in our team meetings or one-on-one interactions."

Grishma Rimal, the GRD for Carpenter House, Carmichael Hall, Wilson House and West Hall, agreed that communication is an important part of her role.

"I personally believe in maintaining open and clear lines of communication,” Rimal, a first-year student at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told the Daily in an email. “I try my best to ensure that recommendations, information and feedback from my staff members to Residential Life and vice versa are communicated properly. At the end of the day, we are all on the same team."

Redefining the Student Staff Role 

Student staffers have been divided into two groups: First-Year Assistants (FYAs), who live in first-year dorms and focus solely on the transition to college, and Community Development Assistants (CDAs), who live in upperclassmen dorms and assist with community-building. Previously, all student staff served as resident assistants (RA), a role that made no distinction by residents' class year. 

Lead FYAs and CDAs are student staffers assigned to manage each zone, taking on added responsibilities of coordinating CDAs and FYAs and scheduling the duty rotation, according to the ResLife website. 

“If we have issues we can go to [the lead FYA or CDA] or we can go to the GRD,” an FYA Vera Guttenberger said. 

Guttenberger, a junior, added that her zone has two “leads.”

Nicholas Kosht, a senior and a lead FYA in Hodgdon Hall, explained how this year’s FYA and CDA roles are different from the past RA role.

“The goal [of having FYAs and CDAs] is to build community," Kosht said. "That was the RA’s job as well, but I think the perception on campus was more of a policing role."

Sarah D’Annolfo, ResLife associate director for residential education, further clarified the differences between the FYA and CDA roles.

“The kinds of resources and the intensity of individual support [given by] FYAs is very different than that of CDAs,” D’Annolfo said.

Rossi and D’Annolfo said that, while first-year students might need help navigating SIS and registering for classes for the first time, upperclassmen potentially require other kinds of assistance, like help in navigating the housing lottery system, moving off campus or seeking advice from the Career Center.

Moreover, ResLife has added CDAs to Latin Way and Hillsides Apartments this year. According to Rossi, 24 percent of Tufts students lived in unstaffed dorms as of February 2016.

“It was highly unusual for how Tufts likes to approach residential life to have that level of understaffing,” Rossi said.

For the first time this year, FYAs and CDAs served as orientation leaders, instead of the previous system in which a separate group of orientation leaders taught first-year students how to register for courses and aided them in finding community on campus. Rossi explained that while orientation leaders in previous years did important work, it usually did not continue post-orientation. On the contrary, FYAs and CDAs can easily develop more ongoing relationships with their residents, he said.

“Using our FYAs and CDAs as our primary student leader[s] from day one allowed this community building to start and to have students start to find an anchoring and a grounding and a foundation in this new environment,” Rossi said.

New Projects for Housing Operations

Matthew Austin,  ResLife's associate director for housing operations said FYAs and CDAs have been trained to handle lockouts; students no longer have to call Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) or pick up a loaner key, according to Austin. He explained that this frees up TUPD’s availability on campus and generally streamlines the process of handling lockouts.

Austin added that bed optimization is a new focus of ResLife. Over the summer, ResLife's Housing Operations division conducted renovations in Richardson, Hodgdon, Metcalf and West Halls that allowed for greater bed capacity in dorm rooms -- for example, third beds were fitted into large enough doubles.

Austin explained that bed optimization helps students bypass the off-campus housing lottery by accommodating more students on campus.

“We’re not in the business of forced triples like you might see some schools do,” Austin said. “If we made a single into a double, these two people need to be able to live there comfortably, so there were specific standards ... put in place for that.”

Changes in Staffing Structure

These profound changes to student residential life are accompanied by significant changes within the ResLife office itself.

“Before, we had a generalist, all-hands-on-deck approach to most of the projects that were happening in Residential Life and things that were happening across campus. There are benefits to that, but one of the trade-offs was that we didn’t have specialists who were focused on the large areas of work,” Rossi said.

Austin’s and D’Annolfo’s specialist positions arose out of a response to these inefficiencies, Rossi said. According to Rossi, Austin and D’Annolfo started working in April and July respectively, after Jerome Holland, the former assistant director of ResLife, and Carrie Ales, the former assistant director for community and judicial affairs, both left Tufts in April.

Sarah D’Annolfo's role in residential education centers on co-curricular learning, partnering with the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs and assisting with students’ health and safety needs.

Yolanda King, who served as the director of ResLife for over 15 years, has recently stepped down from her role to pursue other opportunities, according to a Sept. 14 email to the student body from Dean of Arts and Sciences James Glaser.

"King was integral in leading the Residential Life strategic planning initiatives as well as in developing strong collaborations with various University departments to enhance the campus experience for our students," the email read. "Throughout, Ms. King performed these varied and challenging responsibilities with unflappable calm and dedication."

ResLife is heading into the academic year with its new staff, a changed structure and a revitalized agenda.

“We’re trying to change the perception of ResLife on campus, [because] for a while it’s been pretty negative,” Kosht said.