The students in charge of on-campus residents have remodeled their house.
The Residence Halls Association reorganized its structure to program its events with less bureaucracy, allowing students to become more involved and promote community unity sooner.
With the new structure, RHA has been able to get meetings and activities earlier in the year. Normally, everything would be starting around the fourth week of school, said Aramis Watson, RHA adviser. For instance, RHA started the year with an open house on Aug. 26 and about 80 students attended, Watson said.
“It’s been a big work in progress,” said Jessica Behl, RHA president.
RHA created the new structure in January at its annual retreat. The old structure included one person managing programming events, as well as having a vice president, treasurer and chief of staff. There were also area counsels formed from each area of the Residence Halls in charge of programming events for their own areas.
RHA wanted to get more people involved and realized it needed a new system. It got rid of the area counsels, created an executive board and formed committees such as the First Year Student board and the Media and Marketing board, Behl said.
Only four weeks into school, RHA has already seen some growth, said Clint Hugie, vice president of RHA.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in the committees and our activities are well attended,” he said.
But students have mixed opinions about all the new activity going on.
Kshama Vaghela, a junior in biology, has seen an increase in activities, but she isn’t very happy about it.
“It’s kind of a nuisance when I am trying to study,” she said. “But I think it’s awesome that they are getting more opportunities to get involved.”
Other ways students can become involved will be through community council meetings that will be held the first Wednesday of every month, Watson said. Anyone can come and ask questions and get involved in the community.