BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | August 28, 2007

The ten-day long Resident Assistant training, which took place prior to Orientation, has left this school year’s new group of hallparents fit, robust and ready to welcome the incoming first-years from the Class of 2011 as well as the returning students.

Training, which lasted from Aug. 19 to Aug. 27, was organized by Coordinator of Residential Life Liz Derickson, Associate Dean for Student Life Myrt Westphal and the second-year RAs. The goal was to instruct incoming RAs regarding general hall and dorm policies, potential scenarios that could arise in the dorms, information on the various campus resources and facilities available and tactics to create a vibrant hall environment through decorations and activities.

“A lot of [the training] is really about strengthening the RA community and reinforcing that it stretches beyond the RA and connects with the other folks who work in the college and provide support to students,” Derickson said. “Having fun is in that list of goals. That’s a big one. We have a lot of fun.”

“I think the main point of RA training is getting RAs prepared for handling issues that might arise in our halls,” said Mertz RA Seth Hara ’08. “It also includes introducing and familiarizing RAs to the resources on campus. I really appreciate getting to know better certain aspects of how Swarthmore operates. I feel like that is definitely important as an RA — to know your resources and how to use them to direct the students.”

In order to learn how to handle a wide array of situations, the RAs were not only given the rundown on party guidelines, roommate contracts and vandalism policies, but also took part in an intense training called Behind Closed Doors in which they had to handle simulated scenarios in an acted-out hall environment and were really put to the test as an RA.

“The second-year RAs set up … scenarios that we actually had to handle,” Hara said. “We broke up into groups and took turns playing the part of the RAs. The designated RA would come into a room or would wait for someone to come to them with a problem. There would be some situation and, of course, they did all of the biggest problems that you could think of, whether it was someone being sexiled, causing noise out in the hall or having drugs or alcohol in the room. We would have to then handle the situation. Afterwards, we would debrief in the group and discuss what we did well or ways we could have handled it better.”

“That session, Behind Closed Doors, tends to be one of the most memorable and most engaging of the sessions,” Derickson added. “It takes of all of those hypothetical issues and puts them into an immediate situation of concern that requires them to make use of those skills they learned in sessions. They had props, they rehearsed … It was a blockbuster hit. The logistics were just impressive. They laid it out in a way that worked really well.”

In addition to doing role-playing and receiving instruction in problem-solving skills, the RAs also met with the Deans, Facilities leaders and resource providers on and off campus, including Associate Dean for Multicultural Affairs Darryl Smaw, Counseling and Psychological Services Director David Ramirez and Swarthmore Borough Mayor Eck Gerner.

Mertz RA Nicole Nfonoyim ’08 recalled a “planning residential life” component in which they were given a list of things to do in Philadelphia, places to go and the range of prices of restaurants and various other locations in the area. “One idea was to take the hall to a baseball game,” she said.

The campus resource training also consisted of a tour of the campus facilities and meetings with the most important members of these services, some of which included the dining services, the environmental services and the bookstore. “We would go to different parts of campus and have small group meetings with the different facilities people,” Hara said. “They would each have time to talk to us and say what they need from us as RAs and how we could make their job easier.”

“I was an RA my senior year in Wharton,” Derickson said. “I really pitched into study breaks and we had some upperclassmen that really put a lot of effort into making that happen. That was the momentum that our hall carried throughout the year; and there was this real connection between the different students on the hall. Have faith that you can have a lively dynamic even when folks are at very different moments in their Swarthmore career.”

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