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1 126 The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, September 26, 2007
The inner struggles of an RA
our a.m. is a time for sleeping. It is not
a time for MIPs or DPS. It is an hour
when my duties as a resident adviser
should have paused, and it is certainly not
an hour for fire alarms. But there I was, the
clock at 4, putting on street clothes and step-
ping out into my hall to round up my fresh-
men.
A quick secret: All resident advisers hate
fire alarms. They hate the bureaucracy of the
whole ordeal - the standing across the street
in the cold, the checking of every room for
stragglers and the subsequent $450 fine. RAs
- all of them, from the ones who hand out
MIPs every day to the ones who don't care
enough to hand out a single one - hate fire
alarms.
But as I stepped into the hallway and
saw the smoke creeping out of room 4026, I
quickly saw that it was no false alarm.
It's a difficult balance - you want to be
cool and hip, and at the same time, you need
to maintain the authority that pays your
room and board.
At the beginning of my junior year, I was
assigned to that bunker of bunkers, the
cement kingdom on the hill, Mary Markley.
I thought I was prepared.
Two weeks before most of my peers had
even started to think about their back-to-
school outfits, I was already preparing for
the school year. RA training started early,
and by the end, not only was I an acronym
fiend, but along with my 40 new colleagues, I
had endured the Community Learning Expe-
rience (the CLE) created door decorations
and planned Community Building Activi-
When is a drunk
resident too drunk?
ties (CBAs) And finally I tried not to appear
overeager as the first residents arrived.
The Kellys and Jessicas came streaming
in, followed very closely by the minors in
possession(MIPs).
It's not as though RAs enjoy writing you
up; you almost always earn your punish-
ments. The bottom line is, as much as I hate
to do it, it's my professional duty to catch you.
So if you're thinking about banging on the
vending machine at 2 a.m. because you know
that shaking it just a little more will loosen
that temptingly cheesy, crunchy bag of Chee-
tos, resist. If you're thinking there's no place
like the hallway after-party for your spot-on
caterpillar imitation, desist. Your resident
adviser, no matter how cool you think he or
she may be, is legally obligated to address
any issue that violates the community peace.
And although calling for "backup" (i.e. the
Department of Public Safety) is (in most
cases) the resident adviser's prerogative,
there are many times when you, the belliger-
ent resident, leave us with no other choice.
As in the case of the billowing smoke that
night, I ignored it. I banged on the door until
I felt sure there was no one in the room, and
then did my best to shepherd the rest of the
residents out into the street. And in any case,
while at first it had looked smoke from weed,
the more of it that billowed out from under
the door, the more unsure I was.
During the year, the seemingly constant
fire alarms and smoke in the halls were actu-
ally the least of my problems. That year, "3
a.m. lockout" was my middle name. I accom-
panied residents to the ER more times than
the cafeteria has served chicken broccoli
bake. I called the Ann Arbor Police Depart-
ment about a handgun and spoke with the
bullet-proof-vested SWAT team that arrived
two minutes later.
The truth is I wasn't much of a badass dur-
ing my two-year stint as an RA. Although I
called DPS a few times, I only wrote up one
person myself, and that was because I found
her unconscious, tangled in the dirty, com-
munity bathroom pipes at Markley.
Theoretically, I spent 20 hours a week
being an RA, the other 148, being me. But I
found I often put my real life on hold - home-
work or social appointments were secondary
to medical or emotional crises.
In a sense, I'm an RA for life, even though
I felt like an asshole at first. I notice it when
I show up at an undergraduate party and am
mobbed by throngs of unbelieving ex-resi-
dents or when I wake up to early-morning
distress phone calls. I had had no ideaI could
learn to be so clear-minded during emer-
gency situations, a calm mediator to angry
disputes, authoritative in the face of insolent
confrontation.
I now live in an apartment with a very
forgiving fire alarm. I can burn candles and
incense and even my food. But the strict
institutional life I led at Markley will remain
a crucial part of who I am. The fire alarm
turned out to have been set off a group of
unruly knaves who unleashed the fire extin-
guisher, causing huge damage. They didn't
really get in trouble. The boys from 4th But-
ler, who tried it the next night, however, did.
- Marianna Anderle de Sylor
is a graduate student.
BLUMKE
From page 9B
shock.
"You were in the military?"
asked one girl, who was looking
at me with astonishment. "Why
would you do that?"
Conversations like that are com-
mon, and on countless occasions I
proudly talked with people about
being in the military and what it's
like. Most of the time I enjoyed
explaining it. Many students I talk-
ed to knew little to nothing about
the military. For many, our conver-
sation would be their first contact
with a service member. But after a
while, the questions and the shock
started to take their toll. As a stu-
dent veteran at the University of
Wisconsin once said, "I feel like a
monkey in a cage."
I missed talking with other ser-
vice members. There's a common
ground you find easily with other
people in the military and there's
a sense of purpose that comes with
the job. After a few years in the
military, you tend to have a lot of
stories that don't play well at house
parties.
It wasn't until May when I read
an article about student veterans
that I realized I wasn't the only one
in that position.
I realized there must be other
veterans on campus who felt the
same way, who wanted and needed
the social network of other service
members.
So I made some calls, started
working with the Student Activi-
ties and Leadership office, and
set up a student veterans group
on campus with the help of a few
other veterans. There aren't many
of us here. But there are enough to
create a presence on campus. Even
if the group doesn't go anywhere,
though I think it will, it's already
been a huge success, if only because
of the friendships I've made in the
last few months, which I already
know will last a lifetime.
I
MCVEY
From page 7B
In military terms, we're a
"dual-military." It's stressful in
the sense that we both can be
called on to pack our bags and
serve, but we might not go to the
same place. Or I might be sent
overseas when he finally comes
home. In the National Guard,
units deploying overseas typi-
cally serve for 15 months as well
as an additional three months
in-country, or state-side, pre-
paring for the deployment. That
amounts to roughly a year and a
half away from civilian life at a
time.
So while it would throw a
wrench in my plans to get a
degree, my greatest fear about
being called to serve a tour in
Iraq is that my husband and
I wouldn't be able to see each
other for more than a year at
a time. He's been gone since
February of this year. And if he
makes a career out of the Army,
or if I do, the military will do its
best to make sure we see each
other, but it won't always be
possible.
Some might call it a burden;
others would call it a choice. But
either way, answering the call
of duty as a student, soldier and
a wife is extremely hard. One
thing I have really learned from
all my experiences thus far is to
be humble. It's so easy to take
the opportunities in this coun-
try, let alone on this campus, for
granted. In the blink of an eye,
everything can change.