VSA, ResLife to streamline relationship

Brian Farkas News Editor

The structure of House Teams will be significantly changed as of the beginning of the 2007-2008 academic year. In February, several Vassar Student Association (VSA) Council members met with representatives from the Office of Residential Life to discuss the VSA-Residential Life Ad Hoc Committee’s (VRAC’s) final report.

VRAC outlined several changes to the Residential Life system. One change was the redefinition of the Community Fellow position. According to VSA President Abel McDonnell ’07, “The committee felt that the position was not clearly defined, lacked direction, and wasn’t particularly necessary or successful.”

Therefore, it was proposed that the Community Fellow be made into a position that would better support the faculty House Fellow to aid in academic programming. VRAC Chair President Christopher Smith ’07 explained the new position, expected to be called the House Fellow Intern. “We decided to make the position tied to the House Fellows, to give them a specific student to work with for programming and other efforts during the year and be their liaison to the house team,” said Smith.
In addition to acting as a liaison, the House Fellow Intern’s responsibilities might include organizing panel discussions or other sorts of forums for discussion. “Given that VSA [House] officers will now have the additional support of sophomore and junior reps, the move made even more sense,” said McDonnell in reference to the recent VSA decision to add these representatives.

As of press time, it was unclear if students who applied to be Community Fellows for next year were aware of the upcoming changes. Many current House Team members did not know of the redefinition of the role of the Community Fellow, despite last month’s deadline for Community Fellow applications.

The role of the House Intern will stay the same, but will now be called “Student Advisor.”
These moves come as part of a larger effort for a closer relationship between the VSA and Residential Life. VSA Organization Executive Sam Charner ’08 hopes that the partnership will result in “more shared information, [to prevent] duplicating things and putting drain on everyone’s resources and time.”

Director of Residential Life Luis Inoa, House Interns and House Advisors were also consulted about the House Team changes. However, Inoa also said that the discussions “happened quickly, so I can imagine that more students would have loved to participate in the change process.”
Part of this increased collaboration comes in the form of a new budgeting process. Previously, each dorm had a VSA budget, a Residential Life Budget, and a Cluster Budget, each with its own set of rules and regulations. Beginning next year, there will simply be a single, larger VSA budget for each dorm.

“This new system makes a lot more sense,” said McDonnell. “In previous years we’ve seen a lot of pressure to spend the Residential Life and Cluster Budgets because they disappear at the end of the year, whereas the VSA Budget rolls over. Standardizing this process will make programming much easier for everyone involved.”

VRAC made several other budgeting suggestions, all of which were discussed between the Office of Residential Life and members of VSA Council. “We suggested the creation of a ResLife capital fund for things like DVD players, bookshelves, TVs, etc,” said Smith.

Charner hopes that each dorm can be guarenteed certain supplies. “We also recommended that ResLife create a master inventory of the minimum supplies each dorm should have (i.e. two TVs, eight couches, a pool table, and so on). So, if something breaks, it just gets fixed without the layers of bureaucracy.”

“What we’re trying to do is move programming responsibilities within the dorms back to VSA officers and work with Residential Life to help make all house positions more clearly defined and meaningful,” said McDonnell.