Starting this Fall, dorm residents might discover their resident assistant is also their new roommate.
The Department of Housing and Residence Education will be bunking some RAs with residents because it accepted more housing contracts than there are standard housing spaces.
“Many of the RAs are still unhappy about it, but overall there is an understanding on why they did it,” said Paul Buchman, a 20-year-old UF mechanical engineering junior and a future RA of Tolbert Hall. He’ll be sharing a room with a resident in the Fall.
Sharon Blansett, assistant to the associate vice president for Student Affairs, wrote in an email that the department only accepts as many contracts as it anticipates having space for. However, the number of accepted contracts fluctuates due to factors such as time of year and amount of anticipated cancellations.
“It is a low possibility,” Buchman said. “But it has happened before, and they tell us that it has happened before.”
RAs were notified mid-April about the anticipated need to use RA double bed dorm rooms in the coming fall semester, said Blansett.
They were given the option to volunteer to room with a resident in exchange for monetary compensation. RAs who do not volunteer but end up living with a resident are also compensated, but to a lesser degree. Buchman chose not to volunteer, as those who forgo the higher compensation have a chance of the resident being moved out.
Buchman said residents who do not secure standard housing space are first placed into late-application triples, then into overflow housing, then into RA rooms and finally into emergency rooms. They are then removed in reverse order as spaces open up in the residence halls.
Blansett said RA doubles are a common overflow occupancy management technique at many universities.
But Josh Novick, an 18-year-old UF computer engineering sophomore, has concerns.
“Usually if you have a problem with your roommate you go to the RA, but if your roommate is the RA, then I guess you go to the hall director?” he said.
Buchman doesn’t anticipate that this situation will last very long. A new residence hall is scheduled to be completed in Fall 2015 and will add more rooms for student housing on campus.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 6/3/2014 under the headline "RAS might share rooms with students"]
