0 p p 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.