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The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
Resident advisors don't get pleasure from writing you up
I
I
By MARIANNA ANDERLE De
SYLOR
On Dorm Life
Sept. 26, 2007 -- Four a.m. is a time
for sleeping. It is not a time forMIPs
or DPS. It is an hour when my duties
as a resident advisor should have
paused, and it is certainly not an
hour for fire alarms. But there I was,
putting on street clothes to go round
up my freshmen.
A quick secret: All resident advis-
ers 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 their back-to-school - outfits, I was if you're thinking about banging
to the ones who don't care enough alreadypreparingfortheschoolyear. on the vending machine at 2 a.m.
to hand out a single one - hate fire RA training started early. By the end, because you know that shaking it
alarms. not only was I an acronym fiend, but just a little more will loosen that
But as I stepped into the hallway along with my 40 new colleagues, I temptingly cheesy, crunchy bag of
and saw the smoke creeping out of had endured the Community Learn- Cheetos, resist. If you're thinking
room 4026, I quickly saw that it was ing Experience (the CLE), created there's no place like the hallway
no false alarm. door decorations and planned Com- after-party for your spot-on cater-
It's a difficult balance - you want munity Building Activities (CBAs). I pillar imitation, desist. Your resi-
to be cool, and at the same time, you tried not to appear overeager as the dent adviser, no matter how cool
need to maintain the authority that first residents arrived. The Kellys you think he or she may be, is legally
pays your room and board. and Jessicas came streaming in, fol- obligated to address any issue that
At the beginning of my junior lowed very closely by the minors in violates the community peace. And
year, I was assigned to that bunker possession (MIPs). although calling for "backup" (i.e.
of bunkers, the cement kingdom on It's not as though RAs enjoy writ- the Department of Public Safety) is
the hill, Mary Markley. I thought I ing you up - you almost always earn (in most cases)the resident adviser's
was prepared. your punishments. The bottom line prerogative, there are many times
Two weeks before most of my is, as much as I hate to do it, it's my when you, the belligerent resident,
peers had even started to think about professional duty to catch you. So leave us with no other choice.
With 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 mybest to shepherd the rest
of the residents out into the street.
And while at first it had looked like
smoke fromweed,the moreofitthat
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 actually the least of
myproblems. Thatyear,"3 a.m.lock-
out" 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 Department about
Friendly, expert tailoring from jeans to formals
Come see what everyone is raving about!
a handgun and spoke with the bul-
let-proof-vested SWAT team that
arrived two minutes later.
The truth is, I wasn't much of a
badass during my two-year stint
as an RA. Although I called DFPS a
few times, I only wrote up one per-
son myself, and that was because
I found her unconscious, tangled
in the dirty, community 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 - homework or
social appointments were second-
ary to medical or emotional crises.
In a sense, I'm an RA for life, even
thoughI felt like an asshole at first.
I notice it when I show up at an
undergraduate party and am
mobbed by throngs of unbeliev-
ing ex-residents or when I wake
up to early-morning distress
phone calls. I had had no idea I
could learnto be so clear-minded
during emergency situations, a
calm mediator to angry disputes,
authoritative in the face of inso-
lent 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 Mark-
ley 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 extinguisher, causing
huge damage. They didn't really
get in trouble. But the boys from
4th Butler, who tried it the next
night, did.
TAXI
From Page 3C
Mexican," said Linda, who is
Indian. "They get into my cab and
throw out every Spanish word
they know."
Linda said students don't
always acknowledge that they're
acting racist after making
assumptions like that, though.
"Everybody thinks of them-
selves as noble," she said.
Last year, a law school stu-
dent said to her, "You must have
dropped out in the third grade."
Once, a football player got in her
cab and said, "OK, so you're a
crack whore, right?"
Apparently, that one player
mad enough of an impression
Sqon Linda to make her resent the
whole team.
"I really love it when the foot-
ballteam gets spanked," she said.
She still drives the cab, she
said, because after putting her-
self through school, debt has lim-
ited her options.
"I am actually held hostage
by student loans," Linda said.
"That's why I started driving
a cab, because I was taking my
exams without books."
THE MELTINGPOT
Ifa statistician were to try to
predictwhereUniversitystudents
come from based on the sample of
studentswhoride withthem,their
results would likely be skewed.
"If you count every person
that goes to school here, it's gotta
be fifty percent of the popula-
tion coming out of Long Island,"
Linda said. "How diverse can
Long Island be?"
Johnson said the diversity
among University students was
oneofthemostprominentfeatures
of Ann Arbor. From the blend of
ethnicities to the wide variety of
subjects students pursue, Johnson
said he has seen it all.
"I got a dancer in here one day,
a nationally-ranked tennis player
in here another and someone in
med school doing breast cancer
(research)," he said.
Despite Johnson's 'rosy out-
look on the University's diversity,
he said it's far from the ideal mix
he would like to see.
"The saddest thing I've seen is
how few black students there are
here," Johnson said. "And it just
breaks my heart."
Because of this, Johnson, who
is black, said he worries that if his
teenage daughter doesn't have a
flawless academic record and ster-
ling recommendations, she may
not have achance to get into auni-
versity she wants to attend when
it's time for her to apply to college.
Johnson said that one of the
worst incidents he's seen while
driving a cab involved racism.
He once drove a student home
to a fraternity after a football
game. When the student got out,
a meter maid was issuing a warn-
ing because of trash on the lawn.
"He talked to her like a dog,"
Johnson said. "His disrespect for
her really ticked me off."
He said he couldn't help but
thinking that disrespect had to
dowiththefactthathewaswhite
and she was black.
Johnson, who volunteers at a
non-profit organization through
his church providing mentors for
young African-Americans, said
that usually when he encounters
University students he feels con-
fident that they'll contribute to
the greater good when they leave
the University.
"But this guy scared me about
our future," he said. "I thought,
'Wow, will this be our governor
someday?'"
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